In late April, Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee, delivered a staggering defeat to their employer. At the same time, they struck a blow to the racist political establishment that has long sought, with much success, to make the US South an impenetrable fortress girded by anti-labor laws. The third vote in ten years at the facility was won in a landslide, with 73 percent of the workers voting to join the United Auto Workers (UAW) with 84 percent turnout.

This opening salvo of the UAW’s march southward — specifically its campaign to organize the thirteen nonunion automakers — has rightly electrified workers in the region and the broader labor movement. Even as poll after poll shows that many millions of workers want to build a union at their job, the labor movement struggles to advance, plagued by a bunker mentality. The UAW has broken the mold in favor of a new industrial organizing drive, replacing a long-standing trend of concessions and collaboration with a renewed spirit of struggle. It’s a long overdue and welcome change from the status quo, which has resulted in fewer workers today belonging to unions than at any point in many decades.

Several weeks after the Chattanooga victory, workers at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Alabama, came up short in their election. Workers lost in a close contest, with 44 percent in favor of the union and 56 percent opposing. The Mercedes vote was a loss on paper, but the final tally is still a remarkable outcome. It comes after a blistering monthlong, multimillion-dollar union-busting campaign by Mercedes, and countless interventions against workers by Alabama politicians.