'Keeps the momentum': What the UAW's Volkswagen win means for its organizing campaign

Next on the organizing docket are two Mercedes-Benz Group plants outside Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Roughly 5,000 workers there will be able to vote May 13-17 on whether to unionize in a National Labor Relations Board-run election. The Vance assembly plant produces SUVs for the current GLE, GLE coupé and GLS model series as well as the all-electric EQS SUV and EQE. The Woodstock battery plant a few miles away provides batteries for the plant’s EQ models.

Meanwhile, organizing its first foreign auto plant in the South will send the union to the bargaining table with VW management. The German automaker issued a statement Friday thanking its workers for voting and didn't signal it would challenge the results.

“We just shouted,” said Yolanda Peoples, a 13-year VW worker who was a member of the organizing council. “We just leaped in praise. It was exciting. It was unbelievable. I’ve been in this fight for 10 years. We knew we had the numbers, but you never know until you get the results. We’re going to have a little extra pep in our walk in there Monday.”

‘Big win,’ now negotiate

The negotiations likely will bring about conversations over compensation, benefits, tiers and other matters. Fain wasn't made available by the UAW in time to comment for this story.

“You know and we all know the real fight begins now,” he said in a video after the votes were tallied Friday. “The real fight is getting your fair share, the real fight is to get more time with your families, the real fight is the fight for our union contract."

Meadows, the autoworker, said his top priorities were better pay, health care, paid time off and addressing certain safety and quality-of-life issues inside the plant.

Darrell Belcher, who's worked at the plant for 13 years, voted against union representation. He said on Saturday he was disappointed with the results, worrying the automaker could relocate some of its operations out of Tennessee and reduce jobs following the vote. Other auto companies might not want to move to the region, he added, if they know the union has a foothold there.

Following last year's negotiations with the UAW, Ford Motor Co. CEO Jim Farley suggested the automaker was evaluating its U.S. manufacturing footprint after its most profitable facility, the Kentucky Truck Plant, was the first truck factory to go on strike, despite Ford employing the most UAW members and building all of its full-size trucks in the country.

There’s a lot that has to happen between a union being recognized and a contract. Some workers at companies like Amazon.com Inc. and Starbucks Corp. after years still haven't seen a first contract. But it wouldn’t be surprising if there's an agreement at Volkswagen by the end of the year, said Marc Robinson, principal of consultancy MSR Strategy and a former GM internal consultant who was involved in labor negotiations.

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