Q. After eight failed attempts to organize foreign-owned plants in the South, the United Auto Workers (UAW) finally prevailed at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with 73 percent of ballots cast in favor of unionization. With 30 percent of US auto workers in the South, is the historic win a harbinger of things to come?

A. The UAW’s victory in Chattanooga suggests that the employer playbook—including locating plants in rural areas with little union membership, deploying pro-company messaging, and donating to community organizations—has begun to break down. Three factors explain why.

First, the 2023 election of charismatic electrician Shawn Fain as UAW president marked a turning point. He has used forceful rhetoric and innovative tactics to score wins at the bargaining table, including pay and benefits increases, that employers were unlikely to grant on their own.

Second, the UAW revamped its top-down approach to organizing, empowering pro-union workers to tailor their efforts, for example, dispensing with visits to undecided Southern workers at their homes. 

Finally, the UAW’s relationship with VW’s German works council leadership, which represents employees in the workplace, has dramatically improved. The council intervened in several instances to soften VW management’s resistance to unionization and to urge Chattanooga employees to vote for the UAW.

Victory elsewhere in the South isn’t a sure thing, but Fain says that the UAW intends to get all US auto workers to join the union—doubling its membership. There are about a dozen more campaigns underway, and at least 30 percent of the workers at Toyota’s Missouri engine plant and Hyundai’s factory in Alabama have already embraced the UAW—a key first step toward a formal election.