Tag: labor unions

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — A decisive vote against the United Auto Workers union at two Mercedes factories in Alabama on Friday sidetracked the UAW’s grand plan to sign up workers at nonunion plants mainly in the South.

But newly elected President Shawn Fain said the union will return to Mercedes and will press on with efforts to organize about 150,000 workers at more than a dozen auto factories across the nation.

Employees at Mercedes battery and assembly plants near Tuscaloosa voted 56% against the union in an election run by the National Labor Relations Board.

The vote count handed the union a serious setback a month after the UAW scored a breakthrough victory at Volkswagen’s 4,300-worker assembly factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The NLRB’s final tally showed a vote of 2,642 against the union, with 2,045 in favor. Nearly 93% of workers eligible to vote cast ballots.

Marick Masters, a professor emeritus at Wayne State University’s business school who has long studied the union, said the UAW will have to analyze what went wrong and apply those lessons as it moves to other nonunion factories largely in the South.

“They’re going to have to go back to the drawing board,” said Masters, who added that the union will need to ask itself if it needs to get more workers to sign cards seeking a union election before calling for a vote. The union may also want to respond faster to management opposition, he said.

“Do they need to assess more realistically the actual level of grievances and how passionately workers are to stay committed to a union organizing effort in the face of opposition?” Masters asked.

Fain assured workers that the union will return, telling them the loss was a bump in the road, not failure. He said he told company officials the fight was not over.

“We’ve been here before, and we’re going to continue on and we’re going to win,” he said. “And I think we’ll have a different result down the road, and I look forward to that.”

The NLRB said both sides have five business days to file objections to the election, and the union must wait a year before seeking another vote at Mercedes.

Whether the union challenges the election will be up to its lawyers, said Fain, who accused the company of “egregious illegal behavior.”

The union already has filed unfair labor practice complaints against the company alleging that management and anti-union consultants tried to intimidate workers. Mercedes has denied the allegations.

“Obviously we’re following through on complaints, both here and in Germany” where Mercedes is headquartered, Fain said.

A big difference between the loss at Mercedes and the overwhelming win at Volkswagen, Fain said, was that Mercedes actively fought the union. “Obviously, Volkswagen was more neutral, and that wasn’t the case here,” he said of Mercedes, which he accused of holding captive meetings of workers to campaign against the UAW.

In a statement Friday, Mercedes said it looks forward to “continuing to work directly with our team members so they can build superior vehicles for the world.”

The company said its focus is on providing a safe and supportive work environment.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, who has campaigned against the union, wrote in a post on X that auto manufacturing is one of the state’s crown jewel industries, and the state is committed to keeping it that way.

“Alabama is not Michigan, and we are not the Sweet Home to the UAW,” she wrote. “We urge the UAW to respect the results of this secret ballot election.”

Worker Melissa Howell, who opposed joining the union, said she and other employees realized that the UAW was making lofty promises that it couldn’t put in writing, including pay of $40 per hour, pensions and better benefits.

“They kept repeating over and over, ‘You’re not going to lose anything. We’re going to start with what you have right now,’” Howell said. “That’s when we really started letting people know, ‘Hey, hold up. It’s all negotiable.’”

But Kirk Garner, 60, who works in quality control at the Mercedes assembly plant and supported joining the union, said workers were shown an anti-union video every day ahead of the vote, while union opponents targeted employees who they thought could be persuaded to vote no.

“I’m disappointed in the people that flipped and believed the persuaders,” Garner said.

The UAW won at Volkswagen largely because of the prospect of substantially higher wages and other benefits. Contracts reached with the Detroit Three automakers, General Motors, Stellantis and Ford, brought 33% raises between now and 2028 when the deals expire, giving the union a large recruiting tool.

Before VW, the United Auto Workers had little success at nonunion auto plants in the South, where workers have been much less drawn to organized labor than in the traditional union strongholds of Michigan and other industrial Midwestern states.

A victory at the Mercedes plants would have represented a huge plum for the union, which has long struggled to overcome the enticements that Southern states have bestowed on foreign automakers, including tax breaks, lower labor costs and a nonunion workforce.

It turns out that the union had a tougher time in Alabama than in Tennessee, where the UAW narrowly lost two previous votes and was familiar with workers at the factory.

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A previous version of this story incorrectly referred to Mercedes employee Kirk Garner as Rick Garner.

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Krisher reported from Detroit. AP Business Writer Wyatte Grantham-Philips in New York contributed to this report.

DETROIT — On the eve of a vote on union representation at Volkswagen’s Tennessee factory, Gov. Bill Lee and some other southern governors are telling workers that voting for a union will put jobs in jeopardy.

About 4,300 workers at VW’s plant in Chattanooga will start voting Wednesday on representation by the United Auto Workers union. Vote totals are expected to be tabulated Friday night by the National Labor Relations Board.

The union election is the first test of the UAW’s efforts to organize nonunion auto factories nationwide following its success winning big raises last fall after going on strike against Detroit automakers Ford, General Motors and Jeep maker Stellantis.

The governors said in a statement Tuesday that they have worked to bring good-paying jobs to their states.

“We are seeing in the fallout of the Detroit Three strike with those automakers rethinking investments and cutting jobs,” the statement said. “Putting businesses in our states in that position is the last thing we want to do.”

Lee said in a statement that Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have signed on to the statement. The offices of Ivey and Reeves confirmed their involvement, and McMaster posted the statement on his website. Messages were left Tuesday seeking comment from Kemp and Abbott.

The governors said they want to continue to grow manufacturing in their states, but a successful union drive will “stop this growth in its tracks, to the detriment of American workers.”

The UAW declined comment.

After a series of strikes against Detroit automakers last year, UAW President Shawn Fain said it would simultaneously target more than a dozen nonunion auto plants including those run by Tesla, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, Kia, Toyota, Honda, and others.

The drive covers nearly 150,000 workers at factories largely in the South, where the union thus far has had little success in recruiting new members.

Earlier this month a majority of workers at a Mercedes-Benz plant near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, filed papers with the NLRB to vote on UAW representation.

The UAW pacts with Detroit automakers include 25% pay raises by the time the contracts end in April of 2028. With cost-of-living increases, workers will see about 33% in raises for a top assembly wage of $42 per hour, or more than $87,000 per year, plus thousands in annual profit sharing.

VW said Tuesday that its workers can make over $60,000 per year not including an 8% attendance bonus. The company says it pays above the median household income in the area.

Volkswagen has said it respects the workers’ right to a democratic process and to determine who should represent their interests. “We will fully support an NLRB vote so every team member has a chance to vote in privacy in this important decision,” the company said.

Some workers at the VW plant, who make Atlas SUVs and ID.4 electric vehicles, said they want more of a say in schedules, benefits, pay and more.

The union has come close to representing workers at the VW plant in two previous elections. In 2014 and 2019, workers narrowly rejected a factorywide union under the UAW.