Reassembling the UAW: Insurgency, Contention, and the Struggle for Unionism in the American South

When Volkswagen’s Chattanooga Assembly Plant opened in 2012, the United Auto Workers were excited by the golden opportunity to organize in the anti-union South, where their efforts had been routinely thwarted. However, it took ten years and several attempts before the UAW was successful in unionizing the plant. Reassembling the UAW explains why.

Abe Walker chronicles the organizing campaign from its origin in 2014 to the union’s breakthrough victory in 2024, illustrating what went wrong—and...