It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, May 08, 2024
Mercedes Benz Line Against Worker Uprising May Slip
Workers vote on union representation May 13-17 at Vance. Ala factory
By Pat Bryant*
Former U.S. Senator Doug Jones poses with two Mercedes workers.
A big battle between workers at Mercedes Benz Vance plant near Tuscaloosa, Ala and its German employer is about to come to a head. Voting begins on whether workers will be represented by the United Auto Worker (UAW) on May 13 through 17 and results will be announced May 17 by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). UAW has been on a roll. Southern worker oppression, tough and unapologetic, seems crumbling. A rather festive weekend of worker support events attracted community supporters in Birmingham and Tuscaloosa.
The United Auto Workers has filed a complaint with the NLRB of illegal company captive employee meetings and firing of workers who are advocating for unionization. Spokesman for Mercedes denies those allegations. This union battle follows a massive win of workers at the Tennessee Volkswagen plant, another German auto giant in which workers chose the United Auto Workers by a landslide. In Alabama, the main issue is pay and use of “temp workers.” A company spokesperson would not comment on pay structure.
Unionizing workers catch more hell in the South with elected leaders promising industrialists to provide docile workers in anti-union environments, nearly free land and no or low property taxes, and companies sometime keep state withholding taxes.
But feeling the power grip over workers slipping Governor Kay Ivey spoke in the media to company officials: “you need to fix this” referring to the system of threats and intimidation unique in the South. Alabama is a right to work state. That means every attempt of workers to organize is met with crushing company and government opposition. Employers can use the capital punishment for workers—firing—with no recourse. Workplaces that have unions provide a level of protection against unreasonable employer actions complained of at Mercedes Benz. Conversations with workers and community leaders show excitement and anticipation.
Several Democratic Party leaders came to support workers in weekend events in Birmingham and Tuscaloosa. The festive events with barbeque, music, and gelato in toasty heat. Former U.S. Senator Doug Jones, Alabama Democratic Party assistant chairperson Tabitha Isner, Birmingham’s Joshua Raby, the party Disability Chair were among many others that mixed with community leaders supporting workers.
Senator Jones said he was expecting as big a landslide in Alabama as at the Volkswagen vote in Tennessee.
Austin Brooks, an employee who has been at the plant two years was excited. But Brooks says workers are frightened to the extent that many will not take a union flyer. Austin says employees are temps for a year, and if they don’t rub anybody the wrong may become permanent.
10-year employee Jacob Rines, was a temp worker at Mercedes for 5 years 2 months and 19 days before he was hired full-time. The six-foot six husky guy may have rubbed someone the wrong way. This present campaign is his second time supporting unions at the factory. The rapid pace that workers have signed cards to unionize, he says, is amazing. He contributes worker excitement to the Big Three Automakers, GM, Ford, and Chrysler, contracting last year with United Auto Workers in a big 25 percent and higher pay raise. “It is proving that with a union we can win and get our fair share of representation,” Rine said.
Dr. Pam Foster, a medical doctor and medical school professor, said she is excited about the “possibilities of a union victory in Alabama.” She is an Alabama leader in the Poor People’s Campaign that will bring its leader the Rev. Dr. William Barber to Mercedes’ Vance factory on May 13th, the day voting begins. Barber’s presence will certainly boost a vote for unionization.
The South’s continued history of slavery, division and oppression of workers, is on the line. Tennessee, Alabama, Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, and Mississippi governors released a joint letter recently urging their followers to hold the line and not allow United Auto Workers to win at Volkswagen, Mercedes and other southern plants. That did not work in Tennessee.
Now local chambers of commerce, some elected and appointed officials are busy trying to hold the line, reportedly through fear and intimidation tactics. There are anit-worker videos and ads on television outlets, radio stations, Facebook, Instagram and newspapers. State and company pressure for a no vote is on.
Former crimson tide and NFL cornerback Antonio Langham was at a rally held at Tuscaloosa’s Christian Community Church and encouraged workers. Langham said NFL players got better health care because of the NFL Players Association fighting for workers against team owners. With the UAW, workers can do the same, he said.
No one that this writer met in a two-day swing through Alabama seemed to know much about Mercedes Benz history. The company has unions in its German factories. Its existence in Alabama seems contingent on keeping an anti-union environment.
The company seems to have decided to go along with the South’s program. Fear in the workplace is an example. The company has a history of going along with the program.
When Hitler rose to power in 1932 Mercedes factories had 6,000 plus employees. As Hitler made war in Europe Germany’s troops captured hundreds of thousands of Jews and others. 60,000 became slaves in Mercedes factories. The auto giant had 68,000 plus workers by the end of WWII. The company apologized in the 1980’s and paid a small $12 million reparations to its victims.
The company did not respond to questions about its WWII history.
*Pat Bryant is a long-time southern poet, community organizer, and journalist reporting and writing about the southern civil rights and human rights movement.
Will UAW win the Alabama Mercedes-Benz union vote? 3 reasons why they might
Updated: May. 08, 2024, , Volkswagen automobile plant employee Kiara Hughes celebrates after employees voted to join the UAW union Friday, April 19, 2024, in Chattanooga, Tenn.
Workers at two Mercedes plants near Tuscaloosa will soon vote for the first time on whether they want to join a union.
Until recently, it would have been safe to presume that a majority of the 5,200 people eligible to participate in this election – scheduled to run May 13-17, 2024 – would reject this opportunity to join the United Auto Workers.
But the third time the UAW tried to organize the VW plant, it prevailed, winning 73% of all ballots cast in an election held there in April.
I conduct research about organized labor in the United States and other countries. My most recent book, “The UAW’s Southern Gamble: Organizing Workers at Foreign-owned Vehicle Plants,” highlights the big challenges workers and the UAW have long faced when trying to organize auto plants in the South. In my view, the union was finally able to succeed in Chattanooga because of its new leadership and closer cooperation with VW workers in Germany.
A successful model
As I explain in my book, one reason it took the UAW so long to score its first plantwide win was that an employer playbook for discouraging unionization had worked according to plan.
The automotive companies operating in the American South had largely located their plants in rural areas with little union membership. They screened out hires who might be sympathetic to unions and divided the workforce by using temp agencies to fill a significant share of positions. They deployed television monitors throughout the plant to run pro-company and anti-union messaging. And they donated lavishly to local churches, charities and politicians to undercut local support for unionization.
At the same time, Southern political and business leaders sought to attract investment – especially from foreign-owned manufacturers – by offering massive subsidies, low taxes, lower labor costs and a largely compliant workforce.
Southern autoworkers get paid less than than their Northern peers and have, until now, had little say over what happens in their workplace.
This model succeeded. Today, roughly 30% of U.S. auto workers are in the South, up from around 15% in 1990.
Whenever the UAW has sought to unionize the industry throughout the region, the Southern political establishment, which the Republican Party dominates, has pushed back.
Most recently, six Southern GOP governors encapsulated that tradition in a joint letter shortly before the VW vote. In it, they denounced the UAW’s organizing drive as “special interests looking to come into our state and threaten our jobs and the values we live by.” Strong leadership
The UAW’s win in Tennessee suggests that this model has begun to break down. Three factors can explain why it may no longer work.
Fain used forceful rhetoric and innovative tactics to score wins at the bargaining table throughout the UAW’s concurrent strikes at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis in the fall of 2023.
The new contracts that followed gave workers substantial pay and benefits increases and restored cost-of-living adjustments. Those deals also eliminated a two-tier wage structure that paid workers hired since 2007 significantly less for doing the same job than colleagues with more seniority.
By the end of 2023, the UAW had shown Southern autoworkers that it could deliver gains that their employers were unlikely to grant on their own. More autoworkers throughout the region became interested in joining the union as a result.
New organizing approach
Second, the UAW revamped its approach to labor organizing.
Out went its top-down approach, led by union staffers who weren’t necessarily the most skilled at organizing. Under Fain’s leadership, the UAW hired Brian Shepherd – a proven organizer from the Service Employees International Union – to take charge.
For example, at the Mercedes plant, committed employees began to distribute union authorization cards far earlier than UAW had previously recommended, and it dispensed with visiting undecided workers at their homes because they thought that tactic would be counterproductive in the South.
Shepherd has hired professional organizers to back up his team, and he’s promoted the creation of much more highly structured networks within plants than the voluntary organizing committees the UAW had traditionally used.
Third, the UAW’s relationship with Volkswagen’s German works council leadership, which represents employees in the workplace, has dramatically improved. A works council is an elected body of employees anchored in German law that represents employee interests at the workplace and company levels. It is distinct from the German metalworkers union, IG Metall, which has always been supportive of unionization at German-owned auto plants in the American South.
This time, the German works council intervened in several instances to soften VW management’s resistance to unionization and to urge Chattanooga employees to vote for the UAW.
Tougher territory
Just because the UAW won by almost a 3-to-1 margin in Chattanooga doesn’t mean that victory at Mercedes in Alabama or elsewhere is a sure thing.
Both the Alabama political establishment and the factory’s management have fought this labor organizing campaign much harder at Mercedes than Volkswagen executives and Tennessee officials did ahead of the vote at the Chattanooga plant.
Forging a close relationship between Mercedes’ German works council and the UAW has proved elusive. On the other hand, a core of Mercedes Alabama employees has proved particularly adept at organizing. They set up a dense network in the plant based on “walkers” – that is, people whose jobs require them to move about the plant.
They have also summarized their circumstances with snappy lines that have gone viral. For example, longtime Mercedes employee Jeremy Kimbrell declared “We are going to end the Alabama discount” – a reference to the lower pay they receive compared to their peers in Michigan and other more established automotive manufacturing hubs.
Mercedes management in Alabama has also made a series of moves that have enraged and emboldened the workers at that plant. It let pay stagnate for many years and instituted a deeply unpopular two-tier wage structure in 2020, which management quickly undid last year after the UAW’s successful strikes.
Mercedes management judged the anti-union campaign to be going so badly that it fired the plant’s chief executive officer, Michael Göbel, and replaced him with the current vice president of operations, Federico Kochlowski, just two weeks before voting was set to begin.
Sacking an unpopular plant manager is a common union-avoidance tactic, much like firing the head coach of a poorly performing sports team to appease fans. VW did it in 2019.
An outcome that’s hard to predict
The outcome of the vote at the Mercedes plant is harder to predict than it was for the Volkswagen factory because Mercedes has never had a union recognition election before. One thing is certain, however: The UAW’s organizing campaign is not ending there.
There are about a dozen more campaigns underway that could follow the vote at Mercedes. At least 30% of the workers at Toyota’s Missouri engine plant and Hyundai’s factory in Alabama have already embraced the UAW – a key first step toward a formal election.
In Labor’s Mission to Organize the South, Another Domino Could Soon Fall
Following the UAW’s successful campaign at Volkswagen’s Tennessee plant, workers at a Mercedes-Benz facility in Alabama will vote this month on whether to join the union. A victory could indicate a sea change for labor’s prospects in the U.S. South.
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain speaks as local organizers raise their fists at a UAW vote watch party on April 19, 2024 in Chattanooga, Tennessee after winning the right to form a union at the plant
.(PHOTO BY ELIJAH NOUVELAGE/GETTY IMAGES)
Late last month, workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee voted overwhelmingly to join the United Auto Workers (UAW). This was the first time workers at a foreign car maker’s plant have unionized in the U.S. South, the least unionized region in the country. The UAW’s win could have major implications for workers across the South, who are governed by labor laws that weaken unions and result in lower wages. Next up, workers at a Mercedes-Benz facility in Vance, Alabama will vote on whether to join the UAW starting May 13, and the outcome could help determine whether the union’s success in Tennessee will have a domino effect on other workplaces in the region.
Union density in Tennessee hovers around 6% and other states have even lower union density: Virginia’s is slightly over 4%, North Carolina’s is under 3% and South Carolina has the lowest union density in the country, counting just over 2% of workers. All of these states are “right-to-work,” which union members and organizers say is a misnomer. In reality, right-to-work laws — which ban union security agreements (meaning that unionized workplaces are prohibited from requiring all workers to pay union dues) — make unions weaker and smaller.
This new wave of organizing won’t be the first time unions have seriously attempted to organize workers in states unfriendly to labor. In the mid-1940s, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) launched “Operation Dixie” in hopes of unionizing Southern workers, particularly those in the textile industry. Their goal was not just to improve Southern workers’ lives or grow their ranks, but also to maintain union strength in the North, as industries began relocating to the South due to lack of union density. But Operation Dixie failed in large part due to racist Jim Crow laws and other racial conflicts in the region, the legacies of which workers still deal with today.
Leonard Riley, a 48-year member of International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) Local 1422 in Charleston, South Carolina, tells In These Times, “our governor Henry McMaster says, ‘come to South Carolina, we work for less.’ That’s how you market your state?” Riley is referring in part to a joint statement released by the governors of Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, Mississippi, and South Carolina prior to the union election at the Volkswagen plant, which said that “Unionization would certainly put our states’ jobs in jeopardy.”
The lack of union density has created a feedback loop: working people may not know what unions are or may not know any union members, and lack experience with what union organizers call “the union difference,” i.e. the ways unions materially improve people’s lives. (On average, union members make 14% more than nonunion workers. They’re also more likely to have benefits like employer-provided healthcare and a pension.) Riley says, “when you live a certain way for all of your life, you become accustomed to not having things you should have. When you get a victory like the UAW’s in Chattanooga, a win that survived intimidation by the bosses and public pressure, it allows all laboring people to see what they deserve.”
This is not the first time the UAW has tried to organize at Volkswagen. The union ran campaigns in 2014 and 2019, and fell short both times, although both previous elections were close—in 2014, the vote count was 712-626, and in 2019, it was 833-776. But the political terrain has shifted significantly over the last decade, with workers taking action against powerful employers like Starbucks and Amazon; participating in high-profile strikes, like the 75,000 employees at Kaiser Permanente last year; and the fact that unions have their highest approval rating since 1965.
Auto workers specifically have seen new and transformative leadership at the UAW since reformer Shawn Fain took office as president early last year, along with historic victories at the Big Three after the union’s “Stand Up” strike last fall. UAW members at Daimler Truck North America — which manufactures, sells and services several commercial vehicles in North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee — narrowly averted a strike and won a tentative agreement ahead of the contract’s expiration at midnight on Friday, April 26. The agreement includes an end to wage tiers, profit sharing, inflation protection, and record wage increases, and on May 4 workers ratified the agreement. This victory, another in the South, could also help inspire other workers in the region to organize.
Union organizing in the South has increased despite the immense barriers, including anti-labor legal regimes, right-to-work laws, widespread union busting tactics, and deeply anti-union politicians, and each win has improved organizing conditions for workers across the region. Kelly Coward, a Registered Nurse at Mission Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, helped organize her union after HCA Healthcare bought the hospital in 2019. A born-and-raised North Carolinian, Coward didn’t have any personal experience with unions, although she knew nurses in other states were unionized. She had worked for Mission for more than 20 years and was content before its sale to a for-profit company, which is when things began changing.
“That’s when we saw a huge difference. Positions were being cut, we didn’t have the equipment that we needed,” Coward tells In These Times. “We knew we needed to do something.” Her co-workers contacted National Nurses United, and went on to win their union election at Mission by 70% in September 2020, becoming the first private sector hospital to unionize in the state.
Ben Carroll, the Organizing Coordinator of the Southern Workers Assembly (SWA), says, “the victory by Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga is nothing short of electrifying. It gives confidence and momentum to many workers across the South who themselves are organizing and building power in their own workplaces, and sends a strong message to the rest of the labor movement that the South can and will be organized.”
SWA was founded 12 years ago and works to coordinate worker organizing across the region, helping them engage in collective action. Their goal is to exchange lessons between workers in the region, develop an infrastructure of rank-and-file workers, and support those who are organizing both through the NLRB and outside of it. Carroll tells In These Times, “we hope that the rest of the labor movement will follow the UAW’s inspiring lead and mobilize the resources needed to take advantage of this opening and organize in the South.”
The UAW is continuing to build on the momentum from their victory at the Big Three. In addition to workers at Volkswagen and Mercedes, workers at Hyundai in Alabama have also launched a union organizing campaign, with more than 30% of workers having signed union authorization cards. The UAW has made it clear that it plans to organize all non-union auto plants in the region.
Mercedes worker and member of the volunteer organizing committee, Jeremy Kimbrell, has worked at the Alabama plant for nearly 25 years, and has also been involved in past organizing drives there. Kimbrell tells In These Times that despite living in an anti-union state his entire life, “my [parents] instilled in me you don’t let people treat you just any kind of way. My daddy was in the coal miners’ union, and his granddaddy, back in the ‘30s or ‘40s, shot at a coal truck that was crossing the picket line, so I never doubted the power of a union.”
But as the union election at Mercedes approaches, and after the UAW’s blow-out win at Volkswagen, the bosses and politicians in Alabama are turning their union-busting up a notch. Alabama Governor Kay Ivey posted on X (formerly Twitter), “The UAW is NOT the good guy here,” calling the union “corrupt, shifty and a dangerous leech.” Ivey also wrote an op-ed which reads, in part, “the Alabama model for economic success is under attack. A national labor union, the United Automotive Workers (UAW), is ramping up efforts to target non-union automakers throughout the United States, including ours here in Alabama.” Former Mercedes CEO Michael Göbel, who resigned from his position late last month, also came out against the union, as did special-interest business groups, who have paid for anti-union billboards near the plant and set up anti-union websites.
"Politicians say they represent the people, but then say the workers don't deserve their fair share of the labor. That doesn't work." —UAW President Shawn Fain
Workers at Mercedes aren’t just fighting the boss or contending with the unfriendly political landscape — they’re up against both, and one can’t change without the other. Carroll says that “it’s not difficult to trace the reactionary politics that dominate the region to the lack of working class organization and power.” And it’s difficult to win that kind of power when the political conditions are so fraught. But workers are continuing to fight on, and hope to shut out the noise of right-wing politicians and the Business Council of Alabama, the state’s chamber of commerce, which has penned op-eds against the union and even created a website, “Alabama Strong,” which states that Alabama’s auto industry’s “future is threatened by a UAW attack seeking to impose the union’s way of business on your life.”
UAW President Fain doesn’t mince words when referring to Alabama’s governor and the state’s Business Council: “These people are nothing but puppets for corporate America and for the billionaire class, and they’re the reason why workers aren’t getting their fair share. Politicians say they represent the people, but then say the workers don’t deserve their fair share of the labor. That doesn’t work.”
Isaac Meadows, who has worked at the Chattanooga Volkswagen plant for almost two years and is a member of the organizing committee, says of the union effort in Tennessee, “It was a lot of hard work, but it was worth it. Mercedes is in a tougher fight than we had. Oftentimes you feel like you’re by yourself, out fighting alone, but you’re not. There’s a lot of support, inside and outside, so keep up the fight, keep up the good work, it’s worth it in the end.”
Ahead of the vote, which could end up being another domino in labor’s plan to organize the South, Meadows tells In These Times that he wants Mercedes’ workers to know, “this is not [the politicians’] decision. It’s our decision. They don’t work in these plants. I’ve put the invitation out to any of these governors, come work next to me for a day, see what I do. So far none of them have taken me up on it.”
UAW’s Battle for the South Picks Up Steam
What went right for the union at VW in Chattanooga, and what’s happening now at Mercedes in Alabama.
The vote was expected to be close, but it wasn’t. Last month, manufacturing workers at the Volkswagen Chattanooga Plant in Tennessee said “yes” to joining the United Autoworkers Union. Of the votes cast, 73% were in favor of unionizing. It was an especially satisfying victory for the UAW after two failed union elections at the plant, in 2014 and 2019.
The victory also further lifted the union’s profile and psyche. The UAW had never before succeeded in unionizing a foreign automaker’s U.S. operations. It’s no accident that most of these automakers—VW, BMW, Hyundai, Nissan, Mercedes—located their U.S. headquarters in union-averse southern states. The few unionized automaker plants in the South belong to Ford and General Motors.
The Southern drumbeat began last fall. After the union’s stand-up strike at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis netted wage gains of 33%, eliminated wage tiers and restored cost of living adjustments lost during the Great Recession, UAW President Shawn Fain, a jeans-and-flannel-wearing electrician whose booming speech voice has a machine-tool rattle, declared that foreign automakers in the South were the union’s next target.
In a more complacent time, Fain might have come off as over the top, but with billionaires being made weekly while workers’ wages stagnate, cracks have widened between leadership and workers.
Check out these highlights from IndustryWeek's other recent UAW coverage:
“Multiple governors have come out and said [unionizing] is bad for the South, it’s bad for the auto industry,” says Melissa Atkins, a labor attorney and partner at the law firm Obermayer Rebmann. In 2014, for example, then-Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam threatened to deny tax breaks to VW if workers joined the union. But this go-round, southern governors’ activism “didn’t really have an effect on those individuals who are working out at the car manufacturers.”
The UAW’s next Southern hurdle is in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where workers at the Mercedes plant are gearing up for a vote May 13-17 to decide whether to join the union.
In the past, despite a core group of about 20 Mercedes plant workers invested in union organizing, the UAW failed to generate enough interest to proceed with a union election. But this time, more than half of Mercedes’ Alabama workers at the plant signed cards pledging union support.
The stakes are even higher for the UAW in Alabama than in Tennessee?, said Stephen Silvia, a professor at American University and author of “The UAW’s Southern Gamble,” an examination of the union’s efforts to organize southern workers over time.
“Volkswagen has always been the foreign automaker where the UAW has felt the most confident,” Silvia says. Past elections at the Chattanooga plant have come within a percentage point or two of victory.
With the Mercedes election looming and initiatives growing at other foreign automakers, now is a good time to take stock of what went right for the UAW at Volkswagen. Will that—or other factors—have any bearing on the Mercedes election next week? Some insights areautomaker-specific, yet there are also bigger lessons of value for leaders about treating employees with respect, communicating effectively and compensating them appropriately for their skills.
What Put the UAW Over the Top in Chattanooga
Silvia sees four reasons why the UAW succeeded in Chattanooga where it had failed before.
1. A change in leadership at VW’s joint works council in Germany, which represents workers and has four seats on Volkswagen’s supervisory board.
Different Countries, Different Worker Organizing
German Works Council (Betriebsrat): Employees on a company’s works council are elected to volunteer positions and represent the workforce on issues with management. Works councils operate on a company level, while unions in Germany represent workers at the industry level. Only unions can call strikes and negotiate compensation.
Unions in South Korea: About 14% of South Korea’s workforce is unionized. The nation’s Hyundai Motor Union has about 44,000 members. South Korean unions make the UAW look like the Mercedes works council. They’re militant and tough—old-school Walter Reuther-era UAW types.
Unions in Japan—The relationship between workers unions and company leadership in Japan, like with the workers’ councils in Europe, is more collaborative than adversarial. Although Japanese law permits workers to strike, strikes are very rare.
In 2021, Daniela Cavallo, the daughter of an Italian guest worker and an advocate for parental leave, was named chairperson of the VW works council, replacing Bernd Osterloh, who had publicly said he would not support the UAW’s efforts to organize in Chattanooga. Cavallo “was much more responsive to the UAW when they spoke to her,” says Silvia. “And that resulted in a toning down in Volkswagen’s approach to the whole thing.”
Case in point: In 2019, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee spoke against the union at a mandatory meeting for each shift in the Chattanooga plant, at the plant. This time around, the governor gave a single “Vote no” speech that was not mandatory, and not within the plant. Silvia speculated that the VW worker’s council might have pushed for the muted response.
A day before the union election, however, Lee joined other southern governors in signing a letter saying a “yes” vote compromised jobs and Southern "values."
2. Management’s unwillingness to bend on a vacation policy that workers hated.
The second factor that helped VW unionize “is something that often results in unionization: the way they dealt with paid time off,” says Silvia.
In 2018, Volkswagen Chattanooga implemented a vacation policy that forced workers to take their vacation days during the plant’s annual shutdown, rather than allow them to go with no pay for all or part of the shutdown, and then take vacation days when they wanted.
“That’s what triggered the organizing drives at Volkswagen that happened in 2019,” says Silvia. “And they hadn’t changed that policy.”
“Paid time off was the one that ticked people off the most,” Silvia reiterates. “Back in 2018, when they made the change, 40 people went off the floor in a group and complained. They went up to the personnel manager’s office and said, “Change this policy.”
“The fact that they didn’t fix this, between 2019 and now led people to think, ‘Well, we gave them a chance. They’re not going to change things on their own, so we’ll bring in the UAW.”
3. The UAW shifting from top-down leadership to a decentralized campaign.
Brian Shepherd, the UAW’s new director of organizing, came from the Service Employees International Union. “His experience was organizing in Nevada and in Texas,” says Silvia. “So he’s worked in the South and in the Southwest, and he really has taken a different approach toward organizing than the UAW had previously.”
Shepherd’s approach has been to decentralize the UAW’s organizing power. In the past, says Silvia, “the UAW was pretty top down, and the way they did their organizing drives—they had a model that they stuck to pretty closely. He’s been much more able and willing to go with local people who are the more activists in each place, going with their ideas when they say, ‘We think this would work, or we don’t think this thing that you usually do would work here.’ He’s been pretty flexible around that,” adding that while Shepherd’s plan was in motion at VW, “that’s really paid off the most at the Mercedes plant.” 4. The stand-up strike last fall showed the UAW had real leverage.
“[The strike] showed to workers that the UAW can deliver,” says Silvia. “Before that, when you looked at the UAW, the UAW reps would say our contract is better than what you’re getting paid.”
The old UAW had been focused on giving concessions and settling for lower wage increases in exchange for employment security. New leadership under Fain was different. “In this contract, they could say, we showed that we can get you significantly more than your company is offering you. We did this with the Big Three; we can do this for you. I think that made a huge difference.”
After the Big 3 contracts were set, “the UAW started getting all of these hits of people signing authorization cards, from old organizing drives,” says Silvia. “They had never taken the website down, and all of a sudden they’re getting all these hits from, you know, [Toyota workers in] Georgetown, Kentucky, different places, obviously Mercedes. When they saw that, it was clear that the thinking was, ‘We’ve got a moment here, we’ve got a momentum, so we should act while we have momentum.’”
Why Has Union Support Increased at Mercedes Alabama?
Brett Garrard, a team leader in the battery plant and inbound logistics at Mercedes, Alabama, has worked there 20 years and been involved with union organizing since 2013. “This time we’ve got a little more momentum,” he says. Frustration has been building as Mercedes added wage tiers in 2020, with new hires receiving less, and pay that has not kept up with inflation.
“From a 20-year perspective, the issues are the same,” he says. “We’ve been promised things by the company that haven’t come to fruition. We went nine years at one point with 43 cents total in raises. We weren’t keeping up with the cost of living. Our healthcare benefits have declined over the years—they’re continually getting worse.
“People have heard the same stories year after year, and we just—we’re not drinking the Kool-Aid, so to speak. We’ve seen it before, we’ve heard it before. We’ve decided it’s time to take control of our own destiny and have a voice and the new structure of the UAW is encouraging. And there’s strength in numbers. So we want to be recognized.”
Lee Adler, a labor attorney and lecturer at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR), observed that although employment in automaker plants has historically been touted as “well-paying jobs” in the Deep South, “inflation has nibbled or taken a big chunk out of the advantage of those wages.”
After the stand-up strikes last September, Mercedes announced it was eliminating the wage tiers, but Garrard says the company hasn’t followed through on that promise. Mercedes-Benz U.S. International did not reply to IndustryWeek’s questions about the pay scale, instead responding with a statement:
MBUSI fully respects our Team Members’ choice whether to unionize and we look forward to participating in the election process to ensure every Team Member has a chance to cast their own secret-ballot vote, as well as having access to the information necessary to make an informed choice.
Silvia said that some at the Tuscaloosa plant also remain unhappy that Mercedes did not rehire employees that were laid off during the Great Recession.
“And there are more recent things. It used to be Mercedes paid compensation that was pretty close to the UAW contract. But they’ve let that slide in recent years..” And the two-tier pay structure instituted in 2020 “aggravated a lot of employees.” Mercedes got rid of the tiered wages after the UAW stand-up strike at the Detroit 3 automakers last fall, “but the damage was already done.”
Garrard said the employee-driven campaign this time has made a big difference. “Organizers from the UAW are there to support us, to give us information, give us guidance. But as far as all of the legwork and the faces that our employees and our co-workers see, it’s us. It’s not the UAW. They are supporting agents in helping us to form our union.”
What Is the UAW up against in Alabama?
“The political establishment has come down harder in Alabama than in Tennessee,” says Silvia, yet union representation is actually higher in Alabama—8.6%, compared to Tennessee’s 5.6% and South Carolina’s 3%.
“There’s sort of a continuum when you look at the South,” Silvia adds. “Alabama is farther south. Alabama has a more active political establishment, but on the other hand Alabama does have some tradition of unionization, when steel was strong there in Birmingham. Those plants were unionized. Most of them are gone. But there are pockets of unionization.”
Mercedes, like Volkswagen, has a workers council in Germany, but its council is less empowered than Volkswagen’s. “At VW, the work council, they were influencing things,” Silvia says. “But at Mercedes, if anything the work council’s trying, but management has not been responsive. They’ve taken more of a traditional anti-union campaign set of measures and are coming down harder.
“We’ll see the extent to which that then influences workers,” he adds. “Some people react badly to that; some people go along with management. The one thing that I would say is even more pronounced that would suggest a union success [at Mercedes] would be the number of things that the Mercedes management has done to aggravate employees has been more than Volkwswagen.”
Garrard named a few of those aggravations. (Mercedes was given an opportunity to respond but has not).
When workers distribute union materials on their breaks, management will “come through our break area and snatch them off the tables, wad them up and throw them in the trash.” “We have to sit and watch anti-union campaign videos every day after we clock in. ‘The lesson of the day’ is what my group leader calls it, and it’d be anything from, ‘If you join the union or if a union comes in here, your shop steward will know your health and your medical records’—false things like that. Or, ‘Here’s how much union dues will cost you. Do you really want to pay union dues?’ And at the bottom of every slide of every video, it says, ‘If you don’t want the union, Vote No.’ Morale on the shop floor “is at an all-time low. Everyone is so tired, it’s like banging your head against the wall,” Garrad says. “You want [the meetings] to stop, but you have to sit through it. They’re doing face-to-face captive audience meetings with anti-union propaganda. They’re doing private one-on-ones.”
Garrard said the five-minute pre-shift meeting covering daily activities at the plant that was once conducted by the group leader is now conducted by a higher-level manager. “Management has taken a very aggressive stance, as far as even out on the production floor going from station to station, pulling people off site and asking them, ‘How are you going to vote?’”
The harder the company pushes against the UAW, the more support Garrard senses from his co-workers. “On the 17th, when the votes are tallied, my comment would be, ‘Do you hear us now?’”
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