With the Trump administration dismantling labor protections, getting to this point was an uphill battle. “I think their struggle has also illustrated some of the existing, very persistent flaws in our labor law system,” said Jennifer Sherer, who directs the Worker Power Project at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. “The fact that it took, you know, almost two years from their organizing victory to the first contract … workers should never have to wait that long.”
Union workers, broadly, enjoy higher pay and better job protections than nonunion workers do, so it’s no surprise that the agreement will instantly improve the Volkswagen workers’ lives: a 20 percent wage increase across the board over the life of the contract, better health care, guaranteed paid time off, and agreements to protect workers from unfair discipline and to give them a say in decision-making. “This deal proves what happens when autoworkers stand up and demand their fair share,” UAW president Shawn Fain said after the deal was announced. “People said Southern autoworkers could never form a union or win a union contract. Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga said, ‘Watch this.’”
The agreement could have implications beyond the plant—for nonunion workers in the state, autoworkers across the South, and efforts to unionize throughout the region—by proving that organizing efforts can succeed there. Legislators and employers in the South have long suppressed labor organizing as a way to disempower Black workers and depress wages. There are unions in Southern states, of course, but laws like “right to work” make it more difficult for workers to organize. Arkansas and Florida were the first to pass these laws, and many other states passed them in the 1940s and 1950s. Today, every Southern state has a right-to-work law, and union membership there remains much lower than in other regions.
