Tennessee's GOP governor says Volkswagen plant workers made a mistake in union vote

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Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee says he thinks workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga made a mistake by voting to unionize under the United Auto Workers in a landslide election

GALLATIN, Tenn. — Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee said Monday that he thinks workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga made a mistake by voting to unionize under the United Auto Workers in a landslide election but acknowledged the choice was ultimately up to them.

Ahead of the vote, Lee and five other Southern Republican governors spoke out publicly against the UAW's drive to organize workers at factories largely in the South, arguing that if autoworkers were to vote for union representation, it would jeopardize jobs.

Instead, the union wound up pulling 73% of the vote at a facility whose workers had narrowly rejected the union in 2019 and 2014. The Volkswagen plant vote was the first to follow a series of strikes last fall against Detroit’s automakers that resulted in lucrative new contracts. Workers at Mercedes factories near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, will vote on UAW representation in May.

Lee told reporters Monday that the Volkswagen vote was “a loss for workers." He noted that he has a “long history with skilled workers" — workers are not unionized at his family's business, Lee Company, which employs about 1,600 people in home, facilities and construction projects.

“I think it's unwise to put your future in somebody else's hands,” Lee said at an event in Gallatin. “But those workers made that decision based on the individual circumstances of that plant. I think it was a mistake, but that's their choice.”

The Volkswagen win was the union's first in a Southern assembly plant owned by a foreign automaker.

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