Fresh off their contract victories against the Big Three US automakers, late last month the new leadership of the United Auto Workers (UAW) announced a bold campaign to organize all thirteen nonunion automakers in the United States. This includes more than 150,000 workers at Japanese, Korean, and German “transplants” like Toyota, Kia, and Volkswagen, along with domestic electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers like Tesla and Rivian. Already, the campaign seems to be getting results, with 30 percent of Volkswagen workers at a plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, announcing that they had signed cards in support of their union within the first week.

This is one of the most exciting organizing drives we’ve seen in the United States in decades. If successful, it would rebuild union power and raise standards in the critical manufacturing sector while establishing a beachhead in the largely nonunion South. It also provides a test of a risky organizing strategy that hearkens back to how the modern US labor movement first built itself.