On Friday night, workers at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, unionized. The victory was decisive: 2,628 to 985, meaning 73 percent of ballots were in favor of unionizing with the UAW. Of 4,300 eligible voters, 83.5 percent cast ballots, a remarkably high turnout. These workers really wanted a union.

The win makes VW the only unionized foreign-owned auto plant in the South. While the UAW represents several Big Three shops in the region — Ford and GM have plants in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Texas — the VW shop is the first Southern auto plant to unionize through a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election since the 1940s. That’s momentous: the UAW has committed $40 million in additional funds to organize nonunion and electric vehicle (EV) workers, and with this win, that campaign will accelerate. No longer can anyone say that it can’t be done.

The Chattanooga plant was the site of several failed UAW organizing drives over the past decade. In 2014, the vote was 712 against, 626 in favor, a loss that followed from an anti-union effort that saw the state’s governor personally lead a captive-audience meeting discouraging workers from unionizing. In 2019, the vote was even closer, with 833 no votes to 776 yes votes. Now, at long last, workers have decisively won the fight.