UAW gambles on organizing Volkswagen’s Tennessee plant

Volkswagen's factory in Chattanooga, Tenn., has been a success by any measure since its opening in 2011, building more than 250,000 Passat sedans and employing some 2,000 workers. Yet it's now the center of a controversy over its future — namely, whether VW will invite the United Auto Workers to unionize the factory, a first for a foreign automaker's plant in the South.

Today, the UAW confirmed it had been in talks with VW about organizing workers or setting up a German-style worker council at Chattanooga. The possibility has already drawn criticism from Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam and other Southern Republicans, who warn that any UAW organizing could deter businesses from locating in their states. But even if the UAW garners an invite to Chattanooga, it's no guarantee of a warm welcome from the workers themselves — and it's not a battle the UAW can afford to lose.

"The UAW believes the role of the union in the 21st century is to create an environment where both the company and workers succeed," the union said in a statement Friday. "The UAW appreciates the opportunity to have direct discussions with VW management. Ultimately, however, it's the workers in Chattanooga who will make the decision on representation and a works council."

While the UAW still holds sway at U.S. automakers' plants, it has never won the right to represent workers at a foreign automakers' plant where it wasn't invited in — with one exception: VW's first American factory in Pennsylvania, which closed in 1988. The union lost an organizing vote at Nissan's Smyrna, Tenn., plant in 2001, failing to collect 30% of the ballots cast, and while it has targeted other factories owned by Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Mercedes, it's not pushed for an organizing vote at an automaker's plant since.

That lack of union activity has been a selling point for Southern states as they've won billions of dollars in investments from global automakers, who now run 16 U.S. assembly plants. Where families in Michigan have generations of union members, there's no such tradition in many Southern states, and even at starting wages of $14-$17 per hour — less than a typical Detroit factory worker made a decade ago — such factories often draw thousands of applicants for open jobs, and offer better benefits than most other employers in their states. And booming auto sales have translated into plenty of work at U.S. factories; according to the August employment figures released Friday, automakers and suppliers added 18,800 jobs last month in an otherwise weak market for new work.