CHATTANOOGA (AP) — Union voting gets underway for skilled-trades workers at the Volkswagen plant in Tennessee on Thursday.

The two-day vote is about whether the 165 workers who maintain and repair machinery and robots at the German automakers' lone U.S. plant want to be represented by the United Auto Workers union in collective bargaining negotiations.

The election is taking place despite a planned appeal by Volkswagen of a federal labor ruling allowing the smaller group of workers to seek to join a union rather than requiring a vote by all 1,400 hourly employees.

The UAW has been thwarted for decades in its attempts to organize workers at foreign-owned auto plants in the South. The union was defeated in a vote among all hourly workers in February 2014.