Chattanooga, Tennessee promotes its sustainable and innovative redevelopment policies, citing its public fiber-optic network offering internet speeds of up to 10 gbs, and its investment in ‘green’ businesses. For a company with comparable public-facing message, these discourses (combined with the then largest-ever incentive package offered for an automotive company project) drew Volkswagen to Hamilton County, one of the 11 counties which make up the Southeast Tennessee Foreign Trade Zone. After the construction of a new LEED certified manufacturing facility, VW itself called for the introduction of a program comparable to a Works Council, the style of organization which represents workers in all its plants worldwide. This process, however, was complicated by its location in the US, a right-to-work state, and a region seeking to keep wages low to promote automotive supply chain production. Two very different unionization votes, in 2014 and 2019, demonstrate how the many (often contradictory) interests in an FTZ can be difficult to discern, and are discussed by centering the perspectives of labor activists and automotive workers. The intersectional marginalizations experienced by some plant workers, within the context of historical and contemporary classed and gendered paternalisms, can be ‘greenwashed' by public facing messages of sustainability and 'good jobs.' This paper will examine how local socio-economic and political discourses complement and contradict those of transnational business, and how such discourses can affect the relationships and livelihoods of local workers, particularly women hired through temporary employment agencies.
