The United Auto Workers union said it is prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in a bid to organize employees, including a new push for hourly factory workers at foreign-owned car plants in the U.S.

The effort is part of a major shift in focus by the UAW, which had spent most of the past 75 years extracting better wages and benefits from the three Detroit auto makers.

Now, after two of the Big Three were forced into bankruptcy, in part because of uncompetitive labor contracts, the union's new president intends to make a major push this year to organize workers at U.S. plants owned by makers such as Toyota Motor Corp. , Volkswagen AG and Hyundai Motor Co.

It will be a tough slog. Many of these plants are located in "right-to-work" states that historically have been unfriendly to unions, and where unionized workplaces can't compel a worker to join a union or pay the equivalent of union dues. Moreover, there has been almost no call by workers at these plans for unionization.

"I think this is an unprecedented effort by the UAW and pivotal to its survival," said Harley Shaiken, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in labor issues. But he said the union faces many barriers, including pay at many of these plants that is on par with the Detroit Three's and efforts by the foreign companies to paint the union as unnecessary and counterproductive.