Auto Industry and Manufacturing

Assembly workers at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga, Tennessee, plant have ratified their first union contract with the United Auto Workers, a historic breakthrough in the traditionally anti-union Southern auto industry. In a vote completed Thursday and announced Feb. 19, 2026, 96% of participating workers approved a deal that grants an immediate $6,550 bonus, a 20% wage increase over the life of the agreement through February 2030, and locks in reduced health-care premiums that are frozen for four years. By the end of the contract, top hourly pay will reach $39.41 for production workers and $49.86 for skilled trades such as machinists and electricians, not including cost-of-living adjustments, and workers gain added job-security provisions requiring Volkswagen to consult the union before layoffs and to keep the plant open and adequately loaded with production. The ratification caps a years-long organizing saga in which workers twice rejected UAW representation before voting yes in 2024, and it gives the union a concrete Southern wage-and-benefit template it can show non-union workers at other foreign-owned plants like Nissan, Toyota, Mercedes and Hyundai. Because Tennessee is a right-to-work state, workers cannot be forced to pay dues—set at a minimum of 1.44% of monthly wages—but the scale of this win will be used heavily in UAW and broader labor organizing campaigns across the South.