Workers at Volkswagen's plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee have overwhelmingly voted to join the Anido

Auto Workers Union.

It's the first time workers at a foreign carmakers plant in the American South have unionized.

It gives the UAW a foothold in the least

unionized region of the country. New York Times reporter Noam Schiber has

covered labor unions for nearly a decade. Noam, how big a deal is this?

This is a really big deal.

The UAW had spent decades failing to organize some of these big plants in the South despite spending millions and millions of dollars and in some cases years and years

only to have the vote fail and you know have the election lose and have to go back to the drawing board.

So this is a really big breakthrough for the UAW.

And what's the significance of it?

Yeah, so the UAW is now involved in a major campaign to try to organize unorganized auto facilities really across the country and there are many of them, just Volkswagen but Japanese automakers like Toyota, Honda,

Korean automakers like Hyundai and of course Tesla and domestic electric vehicle makers. This is a really big moment for the auto

industry as we transition to electric vehicles. The UW is really concerned that

wages and work standards will collapse basically as we make this transition

unless they're able to unionize all these non-union automakers.

So this is a really big step toward doing that

as we make this transition.

As you mentioned, the OAWs have been trying to do this for a while and failing.

And at this plant, workers twice voted in the past 10 years not to unionize, voted against

the union.

What was the difference this time?

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