'Threaten our jobs and values': Southern politicians ramp up campaign against UAW organizing

Cuneo said he expects state officials to ramp up their opposition to the union's organizing, especially if the UAW succeeds at the Volkswagen plant this week — possibly even to the point of threatening to withdraw state financial incentives for certain plants, which is something that some Tennessee lawmakers threatened in 2014, the first time the union sought to organize the Volkswagen facility.

"In Michigan, unions are a fact of life, a part of everyday life," he said. "They aren't in a place like Alabama, Mississippi — it's just different down there."

Southern leaders have experience snuffing out past union campaigns. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, for example, campaigned against a union at Boeing in that state, while then-Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant in 2017 argued the UAW's presence at a Nissan factory there would "end manufacturing as we know it" in the state. And Tennessee Republicans twice helped prevent the UAW from winning its vote in Chattanooga, with Lee in 2019 even addressing workers directly at the plant, and former U.S. Sen. Bob Corker strongly campaigning against the union in 2014.

Some lawmakers and other local officials don't appear eager to weigh in on the UAW's efforts, or at least not yet. The News reached out to local lawmakers and several other local officials around the UAW-targeted plants in Tennessee and Alabama, and few responded.

U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, a Republican whose district includes the Chattanooga plant, recently told a reporter he was staying out of the fray this time, after cheering the union's loss in 2019, and that he wanted "to let the workers decide." A spokesperson for Fleischmann did not respond to a request for more details on his thinking. A spokesperson for U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, a Democrat who represents both the Alabama Mercedes and Hyundai plants, didn't respond to a request for comment on the UAW's organizing efforts in her district.

Art Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, said he believes on a national level, at least, political opposition to the UAW's organizing efforts in Tennessee has been more muted than during the previous two rounds.

That shouldn't be surprising, he said, given that public support has been growing for unions nationwide, and of the UAW in particular during its fight for new contracts with the Detroit Three last fall.

"Why would you want to campaign on an issue that 75% of the public is against you on?" he said. "It's an election, let them vote."