Southern Governors Unite Against UAW Expansion Efforts

Six Republican governors from Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas issued a joint statement opposing the United Auto Workers expansion into their states, framing the union as a special interest that threatens local jobs.

Their pushback came as roughly 4,300 Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee prepared to vote from April 17 to 19, 2024, after the union narrowly lost organizing drives there in 2014 and 2019.

About 6,100 Mercedes Benz workers in Alabama were set to vote from May 13 to 17, with more than 5,000 having signed union support cards.

The organizing surge followed the UAW record contracts covering 150,000 workers at General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis, which included raises of about 25 percent phased in by April 2028.

Volkswagen had already granted an 11 percent raise, lifting top assembly pay to $32.40 an hour, still below the roughly $42 earned at unionized Detroit plants.

UAW President Shawn Fain vowed to keep organizing nonunion automakers after leading a six week strike in the fall of 2023.

The votes became an early test of whether the union could break into the traditionally nonunion South.

Six Republican governors warned in April 2024 that the United Auto Workers would threaten Southern jobs; days later, 2,628 Volkswagen Chattanooga workers voted yes against 985 no, the first Southern auto plant organized by election since the 1940s Labor Notes. Alabama Mercedes workers pushed back that May, rejecting the union 2,642 to 2,045 ABC News, and Hyundai's Montgomery drive went quiet amid reports of roughly forty percent support. Chattanooga held firm: after authorizing a strike in October, workers ratified their first contract by 96 percent this February, a raise running through February 2030. Whether any second Southern plant signs before that deadline is now the union's test.