UAW Makes History at Tennessee Volkswagen Plant
Workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted overwhelmingly to (UAW) in a historic win for organized labor. The German automaker’s Chattanooga plant was the only VW factory in the world to not be represented by a union.
It was also the first time a foreign-owned auto manufacturing factory in the southern United States unionized. UAW’s will take place at two Mercedes plants near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in mid-May.
Republican leaders in Southern states have taken a hard line against UAW’s organizing efforts. The governors of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas signed on to a referring to UAW representatives as “special interests looking to come into our state and threaten our jobs and the values we live by.”
Labor expert Cedric de Leon, a professor of sociology and labor studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, spoke with è! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on è! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali, putting UAW’s Volkswagen victory into context.
Sonali Kolhatkar
joined è! in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of è! Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Media Institute’s Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (2023) and Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (2005). Her forthcoming book is called Talking About Abolition (Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women’s Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host” in her 2014 of the same name.
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