“Many of the talking heads and the pundits have said to me repeatedly, before we announced, that you can’t win in the South," Shawn Fain (UAW president) told the cheering crowd. "But you all said, watch this. You all moved the mountain.”
Workers at the VW plant in Chattanooga overwhelmingly voted to join the United Auto Workers late Friday, giving the union a decisive foothold in the historically anti-union South.
Nearly three quarters of the workers voted to support the UAW, according to the final results from the National Labor Review Board. Of the 4,326 workers eligible to vote, more than 3,600 casts ballots over the three-day election.
The victory came despite strong opposition from a coalition of six Southern governors, including Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee who urged workers to reject unions in a letter on Tuesday.
