More than 5,000 Mercedes-Benz workers in Alabama are voting this week on whether to join the United Automobile Workers union, a decision that both supporters and opponents say will have consequences far beyond two factories near Tuscaloosa where the German car manufacturer produces luxury sport utility vehicles and batteries for electric cars.
Conservative political leaders have portrayed the union campaign to organize Mercedes workers as an attack by outsiders on the region’s economy and way of life. Voting results are expected to be released by federal officials on Friday.
Six Southern governors, including Kay Ivey, an Alabama Republican, issued a statement last month criticizing unions as “special interests” that are “invading our state and destroying our jobs and the values we live by.” endanger”. Alabama recently passed a law designed to prevent unionization.
For the union, a victory would add momentum to a series of victories in the South, where organized labor has traditionally been weak, and to the UAW’s efforts to win over workers at other non-union automakers such as Hyundai, Toyota, Honda and Tesla to lend.
If the UAW loses, it could severely slow union president Shawn Fain’s campaign to organize auto and battery plants across the country. Those efforts began after the union finalized new contracts last fall with steep wage increases and other benefits for workers at General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis, the parent company of Chrysler, Jeep and Ram.
In Alabama, a hotbed of the civil rights movement, union organizers and supporters viewed the Mercedes campaign as part of a decades-long fight to dismantle an economic system based on the exploitation of poor people.
“You’re not just fighting for a union,” Bishop William Barber II, an activist and professor at Yale Divinity School, told a group of organizers, workers and supporters at a church in Montgomery on Monday. “They fight for justice.”
UAW supporters were optimistic as workers cast their votes at a Mercedes car factory in Vance, Alabama, and at a company-owned factory in nearby Woodstock that assembles battery packs for electric vehicles. The National Labor Relations Board oversees the week-long survey.
“I feel like we have the upper hand right now,” said Sammie Ellis, a union organizer who installs cables in Mercedes vehicles. He spoke to a packed storefront near the Vance factory, where activists strategized on folding chairs amid stacks of posters with slogans like “Mercedes Workers United” and “Stop the Alabama Discount.”
The Alabama discount is a nod to what union activists say is the state’s main attraction for investors: low wages and willing workers. “They’re taking advantage of the fact that workers in Alabama live in worse conditions than workers in other parts of the country,” said Joe Cleveland, a local official with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in Anniston, Alabama.
Mercedes said in a statement that the company “has a proven track record of competitively compensating team members and providing many additional benefits.”
Workers who have been at Mercedes for four years can earn $34 an hour, and some employees say they are grateful for the way the company has treated them.
“Mercedes has done a lot for me,” Yolanda Berry, the automaker’s team leader, said in a video posted on X by Autos Drive America, an industry association that represents Mercedes and other foreign automakers with plants in the United States. Ms. Berry said she earned less than $14 an hour at a previous job.
The UAW is gaining ground in the South after workers at a Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted to be represented by the union in April. Also this month, the union won significant wage increases for Daimler truck workers in North Carolina. A victory at Mercedes, which became a separate company from Daimler Truck in 2021, would give the union a boost in its next campaign, organizing workers at a Hyundai plant in Montgomery, about 100 miles south of Tuscaloosa.
The South Korean company produces SUVs at the Montgomery plant, including the Tucson and Santa Fe models. Union organizers are also targeting a Honda factory in Lincoln, Alabama, where the Japanese company makes SUVs and pickup trucks. But these efforts are still in their early stages.
On Monday, about 50 activists and Hyundai workers gathered at Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Montgomery to sing union fight songs and listen to Bishop Barber’s words.
Following Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. accused Bishop Barber of Southern political leaders of pitting races against one another. They fear that blacks “and poor whites will band together and form a voting bloc that fundamentally reshapes the economic architecture of the country and the state,” he said.
Opposition to the union from Alabama’s Republican political leadership was fierce. After comparing the UAW to “leeches,” Nathaniel Ledbetter, the Republican speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives, helped push through a law that would deny government funding to companies that voluntarily recognize unions.
The law won’t directly impact the Mercedes vote, but it reflects concerns among Republicans closely aligned with business interests and determined to halt unions’ progress. Ms. Ivey signed the bill into law on Monday.
“Unionization would certainly put our states’ jobs at risk,” Ms. Ivey said in a statement addressed to the governors of Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, all Republicans.
Mr. Ledbetter and Ms. Ivey’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
A union drive at the Hyundai plant in Alabama in 2016 failed, but activists say things have changed. “The first time, people were easily intimidated and scared by anti-union tactics,” said Quichelle Liggins, who has worked at the Hyundai plant for 12 years. “This time we’re ready.”
In an apparent attempt to blunt the appeal of a union, Hyundai was one of several automakers to raise workers’ wages after the UAW secured gains for members of Ford, GM and Stellantis. According to the company, the wage increases announced at Hyundai in November amounted to 14 percent compared to the previous year.
But for many autoworkers in Alabama, pay isn’t the only problem. Ms Liggins, a single mother of two, said she hoped a union would protect people like her from long hours and unpredictable work schedules. “A boss told me my job was more important than my family,” she said.
In a statement, Hyundai said: “We are committed to supporting quality jobs that pay competitive salaries and offer industry-leading benefits.”
Mercedes, based in Stuttgart, is used to dealing with unions in its home country, where, by law, half of the company’s supervisory board members represent employees. But in Alabama, the company has resisted the union campaign. The UAW has even accused the company of illegal tactics.
The UAW has filed six unfair labor practice charges against Mercedes with the Labor Relations Board, saying the company punished employees for discussing union organizing in the workplace, prevented organizers from distributing union materials, monitored workers and fired workers who violated the union supported.
Mercedes denies the claims. The company “did not interfere with or retaliate against any team member’s right to union representation,” it said in a statement, adding that it “strongly denies making an adverse hiring decision based on union affiliation.”
Mercedes has also increased wages in recent months and made efforts to provide more information to workers about changes to their work schedules, workers said. But Mr Ellis, the campaigner, said the improvements had only come “due to the union knocking on the door”.
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2024-05-16 13:15:53
www.nytimes.com
