'The perfect storm': Inside the UAW’s drive to organize the South

CHATTANOOGA — Isaac Meadows, a 40-year-old assembly line worker trying to unionize Volkswagen's sprawling crossover plant here, said most of his coworkers are open to discussing the pros and cons of joining the UAW.

Just don't show up on their front porch to do it.

"Last time in 2019, they did house calls, and a lot of people got very upset," said Meadows, referring to the 2019 unionization vote that failed by a slim margin. "We've avoided that pitfall."

It's one small way the UAW has overhauled its approach to organizing and learned from past mistakes after multiple attempts to gain a foothold at transplant automakers across the American South either fell short or fizzled out.

The UAW believes a more personal, worker-led strategy — coupled with the allure of the rich contracts negotiated with the Detroit 3 last fall, new leaders who have distanced themselves from a damning corruption scandal and a better understanding of the opposition's playbook — gives the union the best opportunity in decades to deliver on an ambitious $40 million push to expand its dwindling ranks.

"Conditions are as favorable as they've been in my lifetime," UAW President Shawn Fain said in an interview. "It's a culmination of a lot of things, but I do think the times we're in right now, obviously workers are looking for a better way."

Upcoming elections will show whether workers agree that the UAW can provide that better way. VW employees here are voting this week, and another vote at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama is expected by early May.

The two sites will be a good measuring stick; the UAW has failed twice since 2014 to organize VW's Chattanooga workforce, and multiple attempts to unionize the Mercedes-Benz site outside Tuscaloosa, Ala., haven't even led to a vote.

Fain is confident the UAW can break its losing streak.

"I think we're going to win a lot," he said. "Once you see the first domino fall, you're going to see a lot more follow."

The southern U.S. has been described as American labor's Waterloo.

"The challenges in the South, in particular, are multiple," said Stephen Silvia, a professor at American University and author of "The UAW's Southern Gamble: Organizing Workers at Foreign-Owned Vehicle Plants."

Transplant automakers, he said, mostly operate in rural areas where workers have long commutes, making it difficult to get together for organizing activities. They often provide in-demand jobs that draw large applicant pools, allowing them to screen workers and choose those who would be unlikely to join a union.

And even if the wages don't quite match what unionized Ford Motor Co., General Motors and Stellantis pay, auto factory jobs are still among the highest-paying positions around.

Politics also plays a big role. Many of the governors and legislatures that have handed out large incentives for automakers to build their plants are Republicans who are opposed to unions and who have been vocal in their opposition anytime an organizing drive starts.

The UAW's own struggles haven't helped its cause. Past unionization efforts weren't far removed from the Great Recession, when the UAW agreed to big pay cuts and other concessions to help the Detroit auto makers stay afloat.

"That is not a good sales pitch," Silvia said.

Then, a wide-ranging corruption scandal that sent two former UAW presidents to jail for embezzling dues from members was another blow to the union's image and perception among southern auto workers.

But that all changed last fall, supporters say, when the UAW negotiated historically rich raises at the Detroit 3 and clawed back some of the concessions it gave up more than a decade ago.

"It showed the UAW can deliver," Silvia said. "That was something that was absent in the earlier drives."

Even as the ink was drying on the Detroit 3 contracts, UAW officials noticed that old websites encouraging nonmembers to join the union — relics from past organizing drives and dormant for years — flickered to life as worker information started coming in. Soon, staffers in Detroit were fielding calls from around the country asking how to start the process of joining the union.

"The Big 3 campaign had a lot to do with it," said Yolanda Peoples, a VW employee and member of the union's volunteer organizing committee. "Watching the big contracts come through, it opened a lot of people's eyes as far as what could be possible here at Volkswagen."

By late November, Fain announced an ambitious drive targeting 13 automakers that, if successful, would roughly double the UAW's membership. Internally, the union was determined to change its strategy.

"Our union's been a top-down structure forever," said Fain, who was elected president in March 2023. "One thing we're doing differently — the workers are leading this fight. Literally, we're staying out of the way."

That's welcome news to Jeremy Kimbrell, a Mercedes-Benz worker in Alabama and a member of the volunteer organizing committee there. The 46-year-old, who has been at the plant for 24 years, had grown disillusioned with the UAW after failed attempts to organize, when representatives from Detroit would come down and tell them what to do.

"We'd have to go about it this certain way," Kimbrell said. "It really was almost like a second job for everybody involved — just so controlled." Union supporters at Mercedes-Benz weren't even sure they'd stick with the UAW for their next drive, he said.

"We were at the point where we were fixing to go independent," Kimbrell said.

But he gave the new leadership a chance, and was pleased when they promised to let workers lead the effort. So far, they've kept that promise, he said.

In February, when union support at the Alabama Mercedes plant reached the critical 50 percent threshold, it was Kimbrell — not Fain or officials from Detroit — standing behind a lectern making the video announcement that was blasted out on the UAW's social media channels.

"It's been totally different," Kimbrell said. "It was like removing a layer of aggravation. When workers feel like they're making it happen, and it's not coming by orders from someone else, they feel, I think, more invested in it."

At VW, a worker-led organizing drive involves a lot of conversations.

Union supporters hand out flyers outside the plant gates and on breaks that often include point-by-point rebuttals of arguments from the other side. They hold weekly informational meetings at a nearby International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union hall, and recently hosted members of the UAW's Ford bargaining team to show what workers can win in contract negotiations.

"We just put in the legwork," said Meadows, who began working for VW 14 months ago. "The base foundation has been person-to-person communication. That's probably been the biggest success of our strategy. It's personal. It's not somebody from the outside."

Kelcey Smith, a 48-year-old VW worker who started at the plant last year, said he takes a more "relaxed approach" to talking about the union. He said he has been able to convert a few coworkers who previously were on the fence by giving them facts and answering their questions.

"I let them make their own decision," Smith said. "If you overpressure people, it pushes them away from it."

Unlike past drives, the goal isn't solely to collect union authorization cards, which Meadows says don't always correlate to "yes" votes in an actual election. Instead, organizers have sought to create a network of support within every department and on every shift.

"We made a subgroup of volunteers called election captains who are in the plant, on their individual lines, talking to coworkers, spreading the word," Meadows said. "Organizing committee members could give information to the captains and know it was getting out throughout the plant."

Zachary Costello, another member of the organizing committee at the Chattanooga plant, said his biggest goal in trying to convert members is to dispel misinformation.

"It really sucks we didn't unionize the past two times, but it didn't do nothing," Costello said. "There were a lot of lessons learned."

One lesson learned relates to how union organizers are handling their well-funded opposition.

A few weeks before the vote, dozens of signs began popping up along Volkswagen Drive, the main entrance road. They bore messages such as "Don't Detroit my Chattanooga," "The UAW can't take a hint" and "Can't I just work in peace?"

The signs direct workers to StillNoUAW.com, which argues that unions are unnecessary and can't guarantee job security. The site says it's run "by VW Chatt workers, for VW Chatt workers," but it's unclear who exactly is behind it. A message sent through the site's contacts page requesting information was not returned.

Costello calls it part of the anti-unionists' "astroturf campaign," as in fake, the opposite of grassroots.

"There's a lot of money behind these campaigns," he said.

Workers said they put up some pro-UAW signs initially but for the most part have eschewed traditional organizing tactics such as radio ads or billboards.

"Most of that campaigning's for the public," Meadows said. "Ultimately, our time's better spent getting the voters. We've been spending all our time and resources on our coworkers, because they're the ones casting the vote."

The anti-UAW signs are a reminder of the challenge union supporters face. While VW has committed to neutrality, local business leaders and politicians recently held a press conference outside the plant voicing their opposition.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, last week said workers would be making "a big mistake" if they unionized.

Union supporters such as Meadows say the opposition's argument mostly falls into three themes: The UAW is too cozy with Democrats, unionization could lead to layoffs or the plant's closure, and the union is corrupt.

Some signs around the plant link the UAW to President Joe Biden, whom Fain recently endorsed, with messages like "Say no to Sleepy Joe."

The Center for Union Facts, a nonprofit "supported by foundations, businesses, union members, and the general public," according to its website, launched a campaign with ads and billboards that highlight unfulfilled promises from the Detroit 3 negotiations, the UAW's "anti-Israel stance" and its "track record of corruption," among other things.

"Auto workers have been burned by self-serving union officials in the past," Charlyce Bozzello, the organization's communications director, said in a statement. "Our goal is to make sure workers and the public have access to the full picture of what kinds of leadership and ideologies are driving the 'new' UAW."

Meadows said the arguments are mostly "scare tactics" that rely on falsehoods. He hopes rising public support for unions across the country will help lead to victory this week.

"It's the perfect storm," Meadows said. "We're going to set the stage for everybody else. We're going to get a good contract, we're not going to close, and all these other [workers] are going to see that, and hopefully it can help them in their campaigns."

Smith, who said he wants to join the UAW to improve his quality of life, believes the upcoming vote is a must-win if the union is to have any chance at the other automakers it is targeting.

"This is the widest that the window will be open for us when it comes to unionizing here," Smith said. "They say the third time's the charm. I have no doubt we're going to attain our goal."