“Powerful Progress: Autoworkers Unite After UAW Victory!

As the auto industry is slowly but surely marching towards recovery, an important move within the sector has recently been made in the United States. Thousands of autoworkers have chosen to join the United Auto Workers union, following a huge victory for the union over the Big Three auto manufacturers. The process of unionizing the autoworkers began when the United Auto Workers union filed a petition to certify the union at a factory owned by Toyota Motor Manufacturing in Kentucky. This petition came after the Big Three automakers in the United States, General Motors, Ford Motor Company, and Fiat Chrysler Automotive, relinquished the Right-To-Work laws, which prohibits them from requiring autoworkers to join the union in order to work at their plants. The pressure applied by the union was highly successful as the autoworkers of Toyota and Honda chose to unionize despite the fact that both companies are not bound by the Right-To-Work laws. The decision to unionize came as a major surprise to many people in the auto industry as both the Japanese automakers operate their North American plants in non-unionized states in order to maintain their competitive strength. The successful unionizing of Toyota and Honda’s autoworkers is a huge leap forward not only for the Big Three, but also for the labor movement in the U.S. The historic victory of the UAW has brought the voice of labor back to the industry and has given the autoworkers the courage to stand up for their rights despite the common practice of non-unionized plants among foreign automakers in the U.S. The potential for change in the auto industry across the United States looks to be a positive step forward for both autoworkers and the union. Now that Toyota and Honda have been unionized, autoworkers from both companies will have collective bargaining power to advocate for better wages and working conditions, giving them a stronger foothold in an industry that has seen a lot of setbacks since the pandemic — setting the stage for a brighter future in auto manufacturing.