Volkswagen Election Was Labor’s Biggest Factory Flip in 16 Years

The United Auto Workers’ successful organizing campaign at Volkswagen AG’s Tennessee plant is a big deal for many reasons. The decisive April 20 election at the National Labor Relations Board has been heralded as both the first sign of a potential wave of unionization across the South and a key turning point in the UAW’s recruiting fortunes.

But it’s also a big deal for an even simpler reason: because it was such a big election. In fact, we haven’t seen a union win involving this many manufacturing workers in quite some time, based on an analysis of Bloomberg Law’s database ...