Workers at two Mercedes plants near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, will soon vote for the primary time on whether to affix a union.
Until recently, it could have been secure to assume that nearly all of 5,200 individuals are eligible to vote on this election — scheduled for May 13-17, 2024 — would reject that chance to affix the United Auto Workers.
The UAW, which has about 150,000 members employed at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, made eight failed attempts to unionize foreign automotive factories within the south over the past 35 years. Two of those actions aimed to prepare all the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
But when the UAW tried to prepare the VW plant for the third time, it prevailedand won 73% of all votes solid in an election held there in April.
I research organized labor within the United States and other countries. My latest book: “The UAW's Southern Gamble: Organizing Workers at Foreign-Owned Vehicle Factories“underscores the foremost challenges that employees and the UAW have long faced in trying to prepare auto factories within the South. In my view, the Chattanooga union has finally succeeded due to its latest leadership and closer collaboration with VW employees in Germany.
A successful model
As I explain in my book, one reason it took the UAW so long to realize its first companywide victory was that an employer's manual for suppressing unionization had worked in response to plan.
The automobile corporations operating within the American South largely had positioned their facilities in rural areas with low union membership. They weeded out employees who may be sympathetic to the unions and divided the workforce by utilizing temporary labor agencies to fill a good portion of positions. She used television monitors throughout the plant to spread pro-business and anti-union messages. And they donated generously to local churches, charities and politicians to undermine local support for union organizing.
At the identical time, political and economic leaders within the South sought to draw investment—particularly from foreign-owned manufacturers—by offering massive subsidies, low taxes, lower labor costs, and a largely compliant workforce.
South Auto employees receives a commission less than their colleagues from the north and have had little influence on what happens of their workplace.
This model was successful. Today, about 30% of U.S. auto employees are within the South, up from about 15% in 1990.
Whenever the UAW has attempted to unionize industry throughout the region, the South's political establishment, dominated by the Republican Party, has pushed back.
Most recently, six GOP governors from the South have rolled this tradition into one Joint letter shortly before the VW vote. In it, they denounced the UAW's organizing efforts as “special interests invading our state and endangering our jobs and the values we live by.”
Strong leadership
The UAW's victory in Tennessee suggests that this model is starting to fail. Three aspects can explain why it might stop working.
First, the election of Shawn Fain as UAW president in March 2023 marked a turning point. The charismatic one Electrician in Kokomo, IndianaMotorTrend recently described it as “Man of the Year“wasted no time attempting to distract the UAW from its previous agreement with automakers.
Fain used powerful rhetoric and progressive tactics to realize victories on the negotiating table in the course of the UAW's simultaneous strikes at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis in the autumn of 2023.
The New contracts followed Employees got significant salary and profit increases and value of living adjustments. These agreements also eliminated a two-tier wage structure that gave employees hired since 2007 significantly less pay for a similar work than colleagues with more seniority.
By the tip of 2023, the UAW had shown autoworkers within the South that it could make gains that their employers were unlikely to supply on their very own. More autoworkers across the region This sparked interest in joining the union.
New organizational approach
Second, the UAW has overhauled its approach to union organizing.
A top-down approach was taken, led by union staff who didn’t necessarily have the most effective organizing skills. Under Fain's leadership, the UAW was hiring Brian Shepherd – a proven organizer with the Service Employees International Union – will take the lead.
Shepherd empowered auto industry employees who supported unionization Customize the organizational motion as they thought best.
For example, committed employees on the Mercedes plant began distributing union identification cards much sooner than the UAW had previously beneficial, and it shunned visiting undecided employees of their homes because they felt the tactic could be counterproductive within the South.
Shepherd hired skilled organizers to support his team and he encouraged the creation of way more structured networks inside plants than the volunteer organizing committees that the UAW had traditionally used.
These changes have paid off. Other employees from the south have signed cards Empowering the UAW as a collective bargaining agent than ever before.
German solidarity
Third, the UAW's relationship with Volkswagen's German works council leadership, which represents employees within the workplace, has improved dramatically. A works Council is an elected worker body anchored in German law that represents the interests of employees at the corporate and company level. It differs from the German Metalworkers' Union, IG Metallwho has at all times supported unionization in German auto plants within the American South.
There were connections between the UAW and the labor council tense in the course of the 2014 and 2019 organizing campaigns. But the The works council leadership modified in 2021.
This time the German works council intervened in several cases to temper VW management's opposition to unionization and urge Chattanooga employees to vote for the UAW.
Harder terrain
Just since the UAW won by a virtually 3-1 margin in Chattanooga doesn't mean a victory at Mercedes in Alabama or elsewhere is a sure thing.
Both the Alabama political establishment and factory management did this fought much harder against this union organizing campaign at Mercedes as Volkswagen executives and Tennessee officials before the vote on the Chattanooga plant.
It has proven difficult to ascertain an in depth relationship between Mercedes' German works council and the UAW. On the opposite hand, a core group of Mercedes Alabama employees has proven to be particularly adept at organizing. They construct a dense network within the factory based on “Wanderers” – i.e. people whose jobs require them to maneuver across the factory.
They also summed up their circumstances in juicy lines which have gone viral. For example, long-time Mercedes worker Jeremy Kimbrell explained: “We will end the Alabama discount“ — a reference to the lower pay they receive in comparison with their counterparts in Michigan and other more established auto manufacturing centers.
Mercedes management in Alabama has also taken plenty of actions which have angered and emboldened employees at that plant. It let the pay stagnate for a few years and resulted in a deeply unpopular Two-tier salary structure in 2020which management solved quickly last 12 months after the UAW's successful strikes.
Mercedes management judged the anti-union campaign to be so bad that they… fired the plant's CEO, Michael Göbeland replaced him with current Vice President of Operations Federico Kochlowski just two weeks before voting began.
Firing an unpopular plant manager is a typical union avoidance tactic, just like firing the top coach of a poorly performing sports team to appease fans. VW did it in 2019.
An final result that’s difficult to predict
The final result of the vote on the Mercedes plant is harder to predict than on the Volkswagen plant because there has never been a union recognition vote at Mercedes before. But one thing is definite: the UAW's organizing campaign isn't over yet.
Fain has repeatedly stated that the UAW intends to do that Get all US auto employees to affix the union – Potentially doubling the variety of its members within the industry.
There are a few dozen other campaigns running that might follow the vote at Mercedes. At least 30% of employees Toyota's engine plant in Missouri And Hyundai's factory in Alabama have already joined the UAW, a vital first step toward a proper election.
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