Catherine Rusoff
Alabama is front and center this week as the United Auto Workers seeks to build on recent victories in the South, a region long hostile to organized labor.
More than 5,000 Mercedes-Benz workers began voting Monday at a factory in Vance as well as a battery factory in nearby Woodstock. Voting, which continues through Friday morning, comes in the wake of a landslide victory at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee after two failed attempts since 2014.
“It’s potentially a landmark event. What the UAW stands to gain is an acceleration of the momentum to organize the other 11 non-union automakers,” Harley Shaiken, professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, told CBS MoneyWatch.
The UAW promised to commit US$40 million by 2026 to expand its reach to more auto and electric vehicle workers, including in southern states where BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Kia and Nissan also have operations.
The UAW has been on a roll since winning major concessions last fall Three major automakers in Detroit.
In Chattanooga, Tennessee, VW workers last month voted to join the union, the first southern auto workers outside the Big Three to do so. The UAW also reached an agreement with truck and bus manufacturer Daimler Truck, avoiding a potential strike of more than 7,000 workers in North Carolina.
But the outcome of this week’s elections is far from clear.
Corporate opposition to the UAW is much stronger from Mercedes-Benz than the union faced in Tennessee, with the National Labor Relations Board investigating six allegations of unfair labor practices brought by the UAW against the company since March.
Mercedes-Benz is accused of disciplining workers for discussing a union, firing union supporters and forcing employees to attend meetings with captive audiences while making “statements suggesting that union activity is futile,” the NLRB said.
“Volkswagen was lukewarm, Mercedes was vehemently opposed,” said Shaiken, who noted that the latter has hired a large consulting firm and is coordinating with local political leaders to combat the UAW.
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, for example, he said The state’s model for economic success is “under attack” by special interests outside the state. The Republican warned in January that the state’s status as a national leader in the auto industry — and the 50,000 jobs that come with it — is being compromised by the UAW.
Mercedes-Benz said it expects all of its workers to have the opportunity to vote secretly “as well as have access to the information necessary to make an informed choice” about unionization.
“We believe that open and direct communication with our team members is the best way to ensure continued success,” Mercedes-Benz said in an email.
Furthermore, Mercedes-Benz denied interfering with or retaliating against employees and dismissed the allegations made against it as being without merit.
Melissa Howell, 56, plans to vote against the union, saying she was wary of the UAW because of the bribery and embezzlement scandal that resulted in the arrests of two former UAW presidents. After treating workers poorly for a few years and supporting the UAW’s case, the company recently began improving conditions, said Howell, who has worked at the plant for 19 years.
“Mercedes says we are a family, a team, a fight. But over the years I’ve learned one thing: That’s not how I treat my family,” Brett Garrard, a 20-year employee, told the AP. Workers are unhappy with wages that don’t keep up with inflation, insurance costs, irregular work shifts and the feeling of being disposable in a luxury vehicle assembly plant, Garrad, 50, relayed. pay.”
Mercedes now offers a starting wage of $23.50 an hour for full-time production workers, with salaries reaching about $34 after four years, according to a state training website. Some workers said the company recently raised wages to hamper the union’s efforts.
A defeat in Alabama would be a blow, but not a lethal one, to the UAW’s campaign for unionization in the South, according to Shaiken. “They’re going to get up, dust themselves off and move on to the next candidate,” the labor economist said. It took the UAW three tries to achieve its recent victory at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, he noted. “That could happen at Mercedes-Benz.”
—The Associated Press contributed to this report.
