United States | Labour pains

Will unions sweep the American South?

The UAW won big at Volkswagen in Tennessee, but organising at other car plants is harder

A Volkswagon employee celebrates as results of the unionization vote trickle in at a United Auto Workers vote watch party in Tennessee.
Photograph: Getty Images
|Atlanta

Last July car parts as heavy as a small horse fell on Renee Berry. Three surgeries later she has metal rods, bolts and screws up her arms and cannot lift her two-year-old grandchild. In her 14 years working on the assembly line at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, she found the factory floor to be disorganised and unsafe. Eventually she joined a union drive to persuade her colleagues to take action. When workers voted in late April to make Volkswagen the first foreign carmaker in the South to unionise, Ms Berry fell to the floor in joy, raised her hands and called out: “Thank you, Lord, you heard our cry.”

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This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Will unions sweep the South?”

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