Workers at Mercedes-Benz in Alabama start voting this week on whether to join the United Auto Workers union. Last month, Volkswagen workers in Tennessee voted overwhelmingly to unionize.

If you go by headlines, the last 12 months have delivered major wins to organized labor.

But despite well publicized victories the rate of U.S. union membership fell to a record low in 2023. Just 10%.

And in southern states, the push to unionize can still be a grinding, uphill battle.

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(Note: This episode originally ran in 2023.)

Union membership in the U.S. has been declining for decades. But, in 2022, support for unions among Americans was the highest it's been in decades. This dissonance is due, in part, to the difficulties of one important phase in the life cycle of a union: setting up a union in the first place. One place where that has been particularly clear is at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Back in 2008, Volkswagen announced that they would be setting up production in the United States after a 20-year absence. They planned to build a new auto manufacturing plant in Chattanooga.

Volkswagen has plants all over the world, all of which have some kind of worker representation, and the company said that it wanted that for Chattanooga too. So, the United Auto Workers, the union that traditionally represents auto workers, thought they would be able to successfully unionize this plant.

They were wrong.

In this episode, we tell the story of the UAW's 10-year fight to unionize the Chattanooga plant. And, what other unions can learn from how badly that fight went for labor.

This episode was hosted by Amanda Aronczyk and Nick Fountain. It was produced by Willa Rubin. It was engineered by Josephine Nyounai, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and edited by Keith Romer. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

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Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tenn., voted overwhelmingly to unionize with the UAW, setting a new trajectory for labor unions in the American South.

Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tenn., are voting this week on whether to join the United Auto Workers union. Two previous attempts to unionize the plant failed. Ballots will be counted on Friday.

Autoworkers at Volkswagen's plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., will vote in mid-April on whether to join the United Auto Workers union. Mercedes workers in Tuscaloosa County, Ala., will soon follow.

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