Blow for UAW as Mercedes workers in Alabama vote against unionization | American unions

The United Auto Workers union failed in its effort to organize workers at two Mercedes-Benz plants in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, dealing a blow to the union’s plans to expand its membership in southern states.

Friday’s defeat comes amid the UAW’s ambitious organizing drive to unionize 150,000 non-union auto workers across the United States.

In April, the UAW won a landslide victory at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where 73 percent of workers voted to unionize.

The final vote was 2,642 against union representation and 2,045 for. Fifty-six percent of workers voted no.

Southern states have successfully fought unionization drives for decades in an effort to keep labor costs low — a practice that critics have called the “Alabama rebate.”

“Mercedes is in a better situation because of this campaign,” Shawn Fain said at a press conference after the results were announced. He cited the end of two-tier wages and the replacement of the general manager among the successes workers had during the organizing drive.

He said: “The federal government and the German government are currently investigating Mercedes for the intimidation and harassment they inflicted on their own workers, and we intend to follow this procedure. »

At Mercedes, the union faced much more aggressive opposition to workers’ organizing efforts than at Volkswagen, including from Republican elected officials and business groups that campaigned against the union vote.

David Johnston, employed at the Mercedes battery plant since August 2022, said he jumped at the chance to work at Mercedes when he learned they were hiring direct.

But promises and claims made to him when he was hired turned out to be false or misleading, he said, such as that workers were never required to work on Sundays, or the two-person wage system. levels and unilateral changes made by the company.

“They have changed their own manual several times since I was initially hired, in just two years. They also changed our schedules. Personally, my schedule has changed about six times since I was hired,” Johnston said.

Those factors and his previous experience working under a collective bargaining agreement influenced him to support unionizing efforts, he said. Johnston said Mercedes-Benz’s attempt to dissuade workers from unionizing only supported workers’ unionizing efforts.

Mercedes-Benz has decided to end the union campaign by eliminating the two-tier wage system in factories. The move came after it was announced that 30% of workers had signed union authorization cards.

“Honestly, it backfired on the company. It really showed the workers that they were listening to us all the time, but they didn’t care about us,” Johnston said. “It was only when we decided to unionize that the company agreed to respond to us.

“It’s not political, no matter what the governor means. This is not something the UAW asked us to join. We asked them to represent us, that we would be allowed to decide how we organize ourselves, and it was 100% worker-driven. The people who are going to unionize are those who live in the South.

Workers will now push for a first collective agreement at Volkswagen as the UAW aims to expand its union gains in the auto industry. The UAW has so far announced it has reached the threshold of 30 percent of workers signing union authorization cards at a Toyota engine plant in Troy, Missouri, in March and at the Hyundai plant in Montgomery, Alabama, in FEBRUARY.

Sharon Block, a law professor at Harvard Law School and former NLRB official, said, “The UAW has legal avenues to challenge the outcome.

“As Mercedes’ anti-union campaign intensified, the UAW filed a number of unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB, alleging that Mercedes crossed the line between brutality and illegal tactics at the factories. Additionally, an investigation is underway to determine whether Mercedes violated German law by waging such an aggressive anti-union campaign in the United States.”

A Mercedes-Benz spokesperson said: “We look forward to continuing to work directly with our team members to ensure MBUSI is not only their employer of choice, but also a place they would recommend to their friends and to their family. »