Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted overwhelmingly to join the United Auto Workers union on Friday.
Two previous attempts to join the union in the past few years had been soundly defeated. Friday’s vote, organized by the National Labor Relations Board, saw 73%, 2,628 people, vote in favor. Voter turnout was 83.5%.
The vote was seen by many as the first major test of the UAW union’s renewed efforts to unionize factories without unions, the Associated Press reported.
“I think it’s the reality of where we are and the times that we’re in,” UAW president Shawn Fain said after the result. “Workers are fed up in being left behind.”
“This gives workers everywhere else the indication that it’s OK,” he added. “All we’ve heard for years is we can’t win here, you can’t do this in the South, and you can.”
President Joe Biden had voiced support for the unionization drive beforehand and congratulated them afterward on the successful vote.
“Together, these union wins have helped raise wages and demonstrate once again that the middle-class built America and that unions are still building and expanding the middle class for all workers,” he said in a statement Friday.
Prior to the vote, six Republican governors, Govs. Kay Ivey (R-AL), Brian Kemp (R-GA), Tate Reeves (R-MS), Henry McMaster (R-SC), Bill Lee (R-TN), and Greg Abbott (R-TX), warned about potential negative consequences if workers voted in favor.
The governors said they were “highly concerned about the unionization campaign driven by misinformation and scare tactics that the UAW has brought into our states.”
“The reality is companies have choices when it comes to where to invest and bring jobs and opportunity,” the statement read. “In America, we respect our workforce and we do not need to pay a third party to tell us who can pick up a box or flip a switch. No one wants to hear this, but it’s the ugly reality. We’ve seen it play out this way every single time a foreign automaker plant has been unionized; not one of those plants remains in operation.”
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Biden spoke out against the letter in his statement congratulating the workers.
“Six Republican governors wrote a letter attempting to influence workers’ votes by falsely claiming that a successful vote would jeopardize jobs in their states,” he said. “Let me be clear to the Republican governors that tried to undermine this vote: there is nothing to fear from American workers using their voice and their legal right to form a union if they so choose.”
