In late October, the UAW announced that more than 2/3rd of its 4,000 Volkswagen Chattanooga workers had voted to authorize a strike (The UAW did not announce the exact strike authorization vote numbers.)
In both 2014 and 2019 the UAW narrowly lost union elections by a few dozen votes. Finally, the union won a resounding victory in April of 2024 when 72% of the workforce voted to unionize.
As a reporter who has covered the organizing effort at the plant for more than 12 years, it seemed incredible that, after so many years of struggling to win support, an overwhelming majority of workers at the plant would vote to strike…