WWNO 88.9: “After notching its biggest victory in decades, the United Auto Workers union is setting its eyes on an old battleground — the South.
A six-week-long, targeted strike in 2023 against the Big Three automakers — GM, Stellantis and Ford — led to new contracts guaranteeing wages going up at least 25% over the next four years.
Bolstered by their win, UAW President Shawn Fain said his next goal is recruiting non-unionized autoworkers, many of them located in the South. The UAW said Wednesday that 30% of the workforce at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Alabama, have signed union authorization cards and have created a public organizing committee. The Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, reached 30% last month.
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Stephen Silvia wrote about those efforts and the UAW’s other Southern union drives in his book, “The UAW’s Southern Gamble: Organizing Workers at Foreign-Owned Vehicle Plants.”
Silvia spoke with the Gulf States Newsroom’s Stephan Bisaha about the campaigns in the Gulf South and how the UAW can learn from them with its current push.”