UAW hopes to expand its ranks as Mercedes-Benz staff in Alabama vote on union membership

More than 5,000 staff at two Mercedes-Benz plants in Alabama will begin voting Monday on whether or not to affix the United Auto Workers. The vote, which ends Friday morning, comes lower than a month after staff at a Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tenn., voted overwhelmingly to affix the UAW, ending the union’s decades-long try and unite staff within the U.S -Organize American foreign-owned factories.

David Johnston, a employee on the Mercedes-Benz battery plant in Woodstock, Alabama, has little question that his colleagues there and on the much larger assembly plant in Vance will prove that the UAW’s victory in Tennessee was not an isolated victory.

“I mean, hands down. I think we will win. We will win. Hopefully many times over,” Johnston said in an interview. “It seems like it will be a direct hit, just like Volkswagen. Everyone is excited.”

Austin Brooks can also be excited. A two-year worker on the Woodstock facility, he is worked up to affix the UAW to handle some difficult medical challenges.

“I am always in a medical hospital. I’m always sick. I need better healthcare. Plus, when I retire, I won’t have insurance until Medicare takes effect,” Brooks said in an interview.

According to the National Labor Relations Board, which conducts the vote, about 5,200 staff are eligible to vote Monday through Friday morning at 10:45 a.m. Eastern Time.

UAW President Shawn Fain’s confidence in non-union organizing amongst auto staff increased after he won big pay raises and improved advantages for members on the Detroit Three automakers last fall. He conducted bitter negotiations that included a series of strikes against all three over the course of 46 days.

In announcing the settlements, Fain promised that the UAW would expand beyond General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Stellantis to incorporate foreign and domestic firms in the following round of contract negotiations in 2028 non-union staff Building vehicles within the USA

But even when the UAW scores a second straight victory on the Mercedes-Benz plants, that does not necessarily mean that Fain will march through the South like Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman, winning one victory after one other without suffering at the least a number of Defeats.

“It’s hard for me to imagine them being successful across the board because they’re different companies and there are different levels of union support or hostility elsewhere in the corporate structure,” notes Professor David Jacobs of American University Kogod School of Business in an interview. “The South was a very difficult nut to crack. It was the center of an alternative economy. It is a low-wage economy, a low-regulation economy, the political economy of the South. I call it the neo-Confederate infrastructure.”

Shortly before the Volkswagen vote, six southern governors, including the governor of Alabama, signed a letter opposing the UAW’s representation of staff within the region, claiming that a vote would harm jobs in those states endanger.

This is only one example of the external pressure staff are feeling to vote no.

Johnston and Brooks say they’re definitely aware of that pressure, but don’t expect it to have any impact on the final result.

“Everyone wants to make this a political issue, and this is not a political issue,” Johnston said. “The UAW didn’t come to us, we went to them. It’s about workers fighting back, demanding our rights, collectively, together. We know we can negotiate better working conditions, better wages and better benefits.”

“People are trying to get in, but what I can say is that ultimately they will have no control over when we vote yes,” Brooks added.

While staff like Johnston and Brooks appear confident in a positive vote to affix the UAW, a white paper released last week by the Center for Automotive Research states: “UAW’s Next Frontier: Mercedes-Benz in Alabama,” examines the implications of each possible outcomes.

“A UAW victory would send a signal to all automakers that U.S. auto workers want not only a fair wage, but also a better work-life balance, something many employees in the industry take for granted.” “The company would signal that workers value work culture and the employer-employee relationship and are already comfortable with unionization,” said the report by Yen Chen, chief economist on the Center for Automotive Research and Marick Masters Professor of Business Administration Wayne University State University.

In fact, the paper predicts that regardless of the results, “the results will have lasting impacts on both the UAW and Mercedes-Benz, but will also have broader implications for the U.S. automotive industry.”