class struggle

By Zachory Phillips - Construction Dive, May 23, 2024

As summer begins, some states prevent cities from mandating water breaks. Still, there are commonsense practices to protect workers from soaring temperatures.

When the calendar turns to summer’s traditional start on Memorial Day, the longer days can help contractors deliver projects more quickly than during winter months.

At the same time, summer days bring intense heat in many parts of the country — so hot that it risks the health of outdoor workers. The safety of laborers in hot climates has garnered national attention in recent years, especially as research indicates that air temperatures are increasing around the globe and will continue to rise.

In many parts of the world, last summer was the hottest in 2,000 years, according to NASA. Miami broke its record for the city’s hottest July ever recorded. Temperatures hit over 100 degrees 70 times in El Paso, Texas. Phoenix hit 110 degrees 54 times.

For outdoor workers in some states, this summer will also be the first with new rules — and in some cases, new prohibitions against mandates — when it comes to water breaks. Texas and Florida have passed laws to stop municipalities within their borders from requiring employers to provide water breaks to workers.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 433, which will prevent cities and counties in the state from enacting their own heat safety regulations, starting in July.

The Texas law, dubbed “The Death Star Bill” by opponents, is currently in effect, though some cities, such as Houston and San Antonio, have sued over the legislation.

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, May 22, 2024

By Jeremy Kimbrell - Labor Notes, May 21, 2024

I’m still hot as hell three days after losing a union election at the Mercedes factory complex in Alabama. After years of laying a foundation and six months of 100 percent dedication and putting everything on hold, it’s a tough pill to swallow—losing by 597 votes out of 5,000. That’s especially hard when a large majority of workers had committed to vote yes, but some flipped in the closing weeks.

It’ll take time to know everything that went wrong or what exactly led to the loss, but while things are fresh on my mind, I’ll share a few thoughts. I’ve worked at Mercedes for nearly 25 years and have been part of multiple efforts over those years to build a union. This was the first time we got to a National Labor Relations Board-supervised election on whether to unionize.

Until you go to an election, you can’t understand what it entails or what your company will do. We never really knew how many workers we had. We never really knew which workers would be included or excluded, including students, temps, or contractors.

Now we have a list with every employee on it that we never had before. And while these workers will now have to claim some ownership of every decision the company makes that impacts them, should the company end up lying—as I expect it will—we’ll be able to quickly capitalize on it and remind these workers that with a union contract we don’t have to trust in the company. We’ll have it writing.

By Jeremy Kimbrell - Labor Notes, May 21, 2024

I’m still hot as hell three days after losing a union election at the Mercedes factory complex in Alabama. After years of laying a foundation and six months of 100 percent dedication and putting everything on hold, it’s a tough pill to swallow—losing by 597 votes out of 5,000. That’s especially hard when a large majority of workers had committed to vote yes, but some flipped in the closing weeks.

It’ll take time to know everything that went wrong or what exactly led to the loss, but while things are fresh on my mind, I’ll share a few thoughts. I’ve worked at Mercedes for nearly 25 years and have been part of multiple efforts over those years to build a union. This was the first time we got to a National Labor Relations Board-supervised election on whether to unionize.

Until you go to an election, you can’t understand what it entails or what your company will do. We never really knew how many workers we had. We never really knew which workers would be included or excluded, including students, temps, or contractors.

Now we have a list with every employee on it that we never had before. And while these workers will now have to claim some ownership of every decision the company makes that impacts them, should the company end up lying—as I expect it will—we’ll be able to quickly capitalize on it and remind these workers that with a union contract we don’t have to trust in the company. We’ll have it writing.

By Jane McAlevey - The Nation, May 21, 2024

Mercedes put on an “A-level boss fight.” Which was only to be expected. So how can the union win next time?

Late last Friday afternoon, Shawn Fain, president of the UAW, addressed workers at the Mercedes SUV plant in Vance, Alabama, after the union failed in a representation election (2,054 votes in favor, 2,642 against) many had expected them to win. He told them, “Justice isn’t about one vote or one campaign. It’s about getting a voice, getting your fair share.”

When Fain was sworn in as president on March 26, 2023—after winning the first direct election for the UAW presidency by just 477 votes—the challenges were monumental. He had national negotiations for the Big Three automakers coming up in less than six months and an organization plagued by decades of corruption. The union was burdened with staff used to taking the easy way out, allowing members’ contracts to worsen as its leadership indulged in fancy cigars, fine hotels, and gourmet food.

In the 14 months since his election, Fain has made remarkable headway. He launched a bold strategy in the Big Three negotiations—the stand-up strike—which resulted in significant gains. Next came the North Carolina Daimler truck negotiations for plants in North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee, and the decisive unionization win at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga. His intrepid leadership reaches far beyond the union and has uplifted the entire progressive movement.

Perhaps for that reason, the VW victory raised expectations that the UAW could win in Alabama. But Alabama isn’t Tennessee. Alabama’s top business, political, and community leadership are so hostile to unions that they implemented every nefarious tactic in the 1993 book by the notorious union buster Martin J. Levitt, Confessions of a Union Buster. In it, Levitt outlined a campaign just like the one headed by Alabama Governor Kay Ivey. “The enemy was the collective spirit,” Levitt writes. “I got a hold of that spirit and while it was a seedling; I poisoned it, choked it, bludgeoned it if I had to, anything to be sure it would never blossom into a united workforce.” He forthrightly admitted that anti-union consultants are “terrorists…. as the consultants go about the business of destroying unions, they invade people’s lives, demolish their friendships, crush their will, and shatter families.”

By Luis Leon, Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, May 21, 2024

By Eric Blanc - Labor Polictics, May 20, 2024

There’s no sugarcoating it: Mercedes workers’ loss last week was a punch in the gut. Hopefully we can soon get some sober assessments from worker leaders and staff organizers about what — if anything — they’d try to do differently next time around.

But it’s also necessary to take a step back and acknowledge that any ambitious strategy for unionizing millions will entail lots of losses along the way. There’s an obvious way this is true: labor movements that don’t try to organize the unorganized — or that don’t go on risky strikes — never experience any big losses, they just steadily decline into irrelevance. If you unionize and strike more, your total number of losses will also rise, all other things being equal.

The point I want to make in this article, however, is more specific and less intuitive: ambitious labor movements that try to win widely actually lose a higher percentage of battles than do most unions today. Winning big and winning at scale require taking many more risks and relying less on staff. And this generally entails a higher loss rate. 

As I’ll show below, one of the reasons why labor’s win rate in union elections has been so exceptionally high over the past two decades is that exceptionally few unions are seriously pursuing new organizing. And those that do are often only taking on and sticking with drives that they’re very confident will win. Any chance labor has at making a big breakthrough — any chance at decisively reversing decades of decline — requires being okay with more losses along the way.

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, May 20, 2024

By Dan La Botz - International Viewpoint, May 19, 2024

Mercedes-Benz succeeded in defeating the United Auto Workers (UAW) in an election held in the company’s plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, but UAW President Shawn Fain sees the defeat as a temporary setback in the union’s plan to organize the auto industry in the South.

“We fought the good fight and we’re going to continue forward,” said Fain. “I believe workers want unions, I believe they want justice, and we’re going to continue doing what we can do. Ultimately these workers are going to win.”

The vote held from May 13 to 17, was 2,045 for the union and 2,642 against out of 5,075 workers eligible to vote. In fact, in the South which has few unions, where the politicians are fiercely anti-union, and where Mercedes conducted an intense campaign against the UAW, it is not a bad result.

The UAW had been on a roll, having won the first national strike against all three big U.S. auto makers—GM, Stellantis and Ford—and then a successful organizing drive at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Now they’ve been slowed, but not stopped.

Alabama Governor Kay Ivy had urged workers to vote against the union. “We may soon face another watershed decision when the U-A-W asks nearly 50,000 Alabamians: Do you want continued opportunity and success the Alabama way? Or do want out-of-state special interests telling Alabama how to do business? For me, the choice is clear.”

Federico Kochlowski, who became the president and CEO of Mercedes-Benz U.S. International (MBUSI) on April 30, 2024, led the vicious campaign against the UAW. He oversaw distribution of anti-union videos and mailings and captive-audience meetings where company managers argued workers would be foolish to join the union.

The UAW has filed unfair labor practices charges with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing the company of engaging in coercive statements and coercive rules to prevent workers from exercising their right to a free and open union election. The UAW also accuses Mercedes of laying off and refusing to hire pro-union employees.

The UAW has also filed charges with the German government, alleging that Mercedes violated the country’s Act on Corporate Due Diligence Obligations in Supply Chains. The Biden administration also spoke to the German government about the UAW’s allegations of union-busting.

While the union lost this one, it is expected to fight on. Harley Shaiken, a labor professor at the University of California, Berkeley, explained that the UAW lost twice at the Volkswagen plant in Tennessee, and that in an earlier loss at VW in 2014, 53% voted against the union. But then this year 73% voted for the union. “I have no doubt they will continue organizing and eventually try for another vote,” he said.

One Mercedes worker told Labor Notes, “We’ll try to figure out what we did wrong, where we missed the mark,” said Robert Lett. “We’ll try to figure out how to shore up for the next time. Because there will be another time. We’re not just going to shrug and walk away. We know this company. We know the company values their profits more than they value their employees.”

The UAW has allocated $40 million for organizing and is looking to organize other plants in the South as well. The union must become larger and stronger if it is to confront the industry as it makes the transition to electric vehicles. The union has organizing drives under way at a Hyundai plant in Montgomery, Alabama and Toyota Motor in Troy, Missouri. Republican governors in the South have united in opposition to the union while President Joe Biden has praised the UAW. Presidential candidate Donald Trump has ridiculed UAW president Shawn Fain calling him stupid while insisting that he loves auto workers and that the UAW had better endorse him or it will disappear. A lot of bluster. But, no matter, Shawn Fain says the UAW will not be deterred.

By Sarah Jaffe - In These Times, May 17, 2024

Workers at the Mercedes-Benz U.S. International plant in Vance, Alabama came up short in their first union election on Friday, May 17, with 2,045 votes to join the United Auto Workers and 2,642 against. 

A brief but high-energy campaign that saw real improvements won at the plant and a worker-led effort to organize failed to create a wave after the high-profile Volkswagen workers’ win in April in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

“These courageous workers reached out to us because they wanted justice. They led us. They led this fight. And what happens next is up to them,” UAW President Shawn Fain told reporters shortly after the vote count. ​“Justice isn’t just about one vote or one campaign. It’s about getting a voice and getting your fair share. Workers won serious gains in this campaign. Don’t lose sight of that. The UAW bump, they killed wage tiers. They got rid of a CEO that had no interest in improving. Mercedes is a better place thanks to this campaign and these courageous workers.”

Rob Lett, a worker at the Mercedes-Benz plant, notes that ​“essentially this is a post-Covid world and corporations have to understand that they can’t treat people in any haphazard way and think that they’ll just hold their heads down and say, ​‘No, I can’t do any better.’ People understand now that life’s too short.”

Rick Webster, another member of the organizing committee at Mercedes, told me, ​“The vote shows that we do have a really strong base though, and we just got to continue this fight. Obviously, everybody’s going to be looking at Mercedes to see what they do from here. Are they actually going to try and improve conditions in the workplace to try and sway our base to come to their side? Or are they just going to continue like nothing ever happened?”

“If it had been a landslide for the company,” he continued, ​“yeah, I’d probably feel pretty deflated at that point. But with those numbers, I feel really good about that.”