Political opposition to the United Auto Workers’ southern organizing push is cranking up ahead of a first test of the union’s strength this week at Volkswagen AG’s Tennessee plant, where a worker vote on whether to join the union runs Wednesday to Friday.

A Tuesday joint statement from the Republican governors of Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas is the most forceful example of the anti-UAW political campaign so far, warning if the union is successful, it will threaten jobs and halt the region’s rapid recent auto manufacturing sector growth.

“As governors, we have a responsibility to our constituents to speak up when we see special interests looking to come into our state and threaten our jobs and the values we live by,” the governors wrote of the UAW’s organizing campaign, which has tabbed the Tennessee Volkswagen plant plus Mercedes-Benz Group AG and Hyundai Motor Co. plants in Alabama as its early targets.

After opposing past union campaigns at its Chattanooga plant, Volkswagen says it’s remaining neutral as its workers vote this week. But the joint statement from the governors — as well as recent press conferences held outside the plant — suggest the region’s conservative politicians plan to fight the union’s expansion aggressively.

Some have raised concerns about both the union’s Democratic-leaning politics, mentioning how it endorsed President Joe Biden for reelection. But a primary concern centers on how an expanded UAW presence in the South could tarnish the region's signature economic development reputation of having low unionization rates and robust right-to-work laws.

“The experience in our states is when employees have a direct relationship with their employers, that makes for a more positive working environment. They can advocate for themselves and what is important to them without outside influence,” wrote the governors, who pointed to examples of layoffs and plant closures at UAW plants as additional reasons to be wary of the union. The UAW declined to comment on the governors' statement.

In a visit to Chattanooga last week, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said a vote in favor of the UAW would be a "big mistake" and that workers shouldn't "risk their futures," by endorsing the union. "We've seen plants close that made a decision to go to unions," he said, according to media reports.

And before that, a group of Republican elected officials from surrounding Hamilton County also held a news conference outside the plant to urge workers to vote no.

"The UAW is a sinking ship," said Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp, adding that the "UAW cares a whole lot more about politics than its membership." Wamp declined an interview request from The Detroit News this week.

Further south, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey was already speaking out against the UAW before the joint statement, recently writing on social media that this "threat from Detroit" could hurt the state's growing auto industry, which led the nation with more than $11 billion in passenger vehicle exports in 2023, according to the World Institute of Strategic Economic Trade.

Her state is expected to host a second UAW plant vote at the Mercedes factory near Tuscaloosa in the coming weeks.

“Since Mercedes Benz announced they were making our state home to their first U.S. manufacturing facility in 1993, tens of thousands of Alabama families have been positively impacted," Ivey said in a statement to The News. "Let me be crystal clear that Joe Biden’s UAW has no interest in seeing Alabamians succeed. Instead, their interest here is ensuring money from hardworking Alabama families ends up in the UAW bank account. That is why they are willing to spend $40 million to gain a foothold in the Southeast’s automotive powerhouse.”

Alabama state Rep. Andy Whitt, a Republican who leads the House Economic Development and Tourism Committee, said the state's "booming" economy is largely thanks to its auto industry, so there's no reason to introduce a new dynamic.

"The old southern saying 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' comes to mind whenever the subject of union expansion is raised," Whitt said in an email to The News.

He said Alabama lawmakers passed the state's right-to-work law in 1953 after seeing some "disturbing" trends of nonunion workers at certain plants being intimidated or forced out by union members wanting a closed shop. In 2016, he added, voters overwhelmingly enshrined those right-to-work provisions in the state constitution.

Other southern politicians have raised concerns about corruption. In a recent column, Alabama state Rep. Scott Stadthagen, the Republican majority leader, mentioned the UAW's embezzlement scandal several years ago that sent multiple leaders to prison, then went a step further by arguing that the UAW and other unions are "multi-level marketing scams" designed to grow membership, but "only a few at the top get rich." Stadthagen didn't respond to requests for an interview.

Among the most common refrains among opponents, though, is that more UAW-represented plants in the South will hamper those states' economic development efforts and job creation. "(T)he prospect of unionization may deter companies from expanding or establishing operations in the state, fearing the added costs and complexities associated with union representation," Ryan Egly, the leader of the Lawrence County Chamber of Commerce in Tennessee, recently wrote of the UAW's expansion effort.

Dennis Cuneo, a site selection expert and former Toyota executive who has worked on a number of projects in the South, said there's something to that argument.

"The nonunion states, one of the first things they emphasize (to companies) is right-to-work, you don't have to worry about unionization down here," Cuneo said. "So if that paradigm changes, yes, it does change their ability to use that to attract businesses."

For some companies considering locating a new plant, a right-to-work law and low union rate is their top priority, he said, because they want to avoid having the added layer of bureaucracy of the union.

Cuneo said he expects state officials to ramp up their opposition to the union's organizing, especially if the UAW succeeds at the Volkswagen plant this week — possibly even to the point of threatening to withdraw state financial incentives for certain plants, which is something that some Tennessee lawmakers threatened in 2014, the first time the union sought to organize the Volkswagen facility.

"In Michigan, unions are a fact of life, a part of everyday life," he said. "They aren't in a place like Alabama, Mississippi — it's just different down there."

Southern leaders have experience snuffing out past union campaigns. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, for example, campaigned against a union at Boeing in that state, while then-Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant in 2017 argued the UAW's presence at a Nissan factory there would "end manufacturing as we know it" in the state. And Tennessee Republicans twice helped prevent the UAW from winning its vote in Chattanooga, with Lee in 2019 even addressing workers directly at the plant, and former U.S. Sen. Bob Corker strongly campaigning against the union in 2014.

Some lawmakers and other local officials don't appear eager to weigh in on the UAW's efforts, or at least not yet. The News reached out to local lawmakers and several other local officials around the UAW-targeted plants in Tennessee and Alabama, and few responded.

U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, a Republican whose district includes the Chattanooga plant, recently told a reporter he was staying out of the fray this time, after cheering the union's loss in 2019, and that he wanted "to let the workers decide." A spokesperson for Fleischmann did not respond to a request for more details on his thinking. A spokesperson for U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, a Democrat who represents both the Alabama Mercedes and Hyundai plants, didn't respond to a request for comment on the UAW's organizing efforts in her district.

Art Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, said he believes on a national level, at least, political opposition to the UAW's organizing efforts in Tennessee has been more muted than during the previous two rounds.

That shouldn't be surprising, he said, given that public support has been growing for unions nationwide, and of the UAW in particular during its fight for new contracts with the Detroit Three last fall.

"Why would you want to campaign on an issue that 75% of the public is against you on?" he said. "It's an election, let them vote."

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