Workers at a Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama are set to vote on whether to join the UAW in mid-May.

Shawn Fain, the UAW president, is also targeting Tesla, whose boss, Elon Musk, has vigorously fought unionization efforts.

The UAW had been expected to win its latest vote given the firm support of workers beforehand, a quick turnaround from filing for the election to holding it, and a changing culture and landscape that has seen the US labor movement and the surge in the UAW’s popularity after its successful strike against the US’s domestic automakers last year.

“The UAW is sending a strong signal that big change may be coming to places where most thought the labor movement was dead and buried,” said professor Sharon Block, executive director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School.

The UAW’s organizing campaign throughout the transplant companies in the south is a bet that workers can’t be bought off so cheaply.

A spokesperson for Volkswagen said in an email ahead of the vote: “We respect our workers’ right to a democratic process and to determine who should represent their interests.

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