Mercedes Workers In Alabama Stand Up to Vote on a Union

By Paul Blest - More Perfect Union, April 5, 2024

Workers at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Alabama have officially filed for a National Labor Relations Board election to join the United Auto Workers, the latest plant to do so since the UAW began an unprecedented $40 million drive to organize non-union auto and battery plants.

The more than 5,000 employees who will vote at the company’s only U.S. plant build several models in Mercedes’ SUV line, including its best-selling GLE luxury SUV and the electric EQE SUV. It is the second auto plant in the past month where workers have filed to join the UAW. More than 4,000 employees at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., will hold their union election later this month.

“They had the time to change and do right by us. And now it's gone,” Mercedes-Benz worker Moesha Chandler told More Perfect Union. “We're looking forward to UAW representing us. We don't want anything else from them.”

Under President Shawn Fain, the UAW launched the campaign in November to organize 150,000 non-union workers following historic simultaneous “stand up” strikes at the Detroit Three of Stellantis, GM, and Ford that resulted in record wage gains. Over 10,000 autoworkers have signed cards in recent months, the union said.

The non-union plants are operated by manufacturers based in Europe, Japan, and South Korea and by U.S. electric vehicle manufacturers such as Tesla and Rivian, and the facilities are largely located in states hostile to labor rights, including in the South. (See our new interactive map of the plants.)

In Alabama, the UAW is being opposed by Alabama’s political and business leaders including Gov. Kay Ivey, who has written op-eds denouncing their campaign and calling the union a “looming threat” to the Alabama economy. A report last year by the left-leaning think tank Alabama Arise found that Alabama autoworkers in 2019 were earning on average nearly $8,000 less than they did in 2002, when adjusted for inflation; Mercedes-Benz turned a profit of nearly $16 billion in 2023. 

Read the rest of the article here.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author.