Mercedes-Benz workers in Alabama prepare to vote in UAW election

Brett Garrard says he wants to make sure working for Mercedes-Benz in Alabama is a career job for the people who follow him.

Garrard would like to retire in five years from the company that’s been his employer for two decades. He’s worked in most capacities, except the paint shop, and is now assigned to the company’s battery plant in Woodstock.

He and Austin Brooks, who’s been at the plant since 2022, both face health challenges. Brooks is frequently sick, as he’s been since childhood, and Garrard’s wife has cancer.

“I’ve watched our company not keep up with the times,” Garrard said earlier this month, offering his thoughts on why he wants a union. “We pray for fair wages, comparative wages inside the auto industry. Benefits packages have suffered throughout the years. My wife, herself, has stage four cancer. I’d like to see something implemented to maybe help our situation.”

Although they’d both like better health care coverage and pay, they cited several other issues — improved working conditions, more safety training for temporary workers and more stable work schedules — as some of the other things on the list of what’s motivated them to get involved in the union drive that comes to a head beginning Monday.

Mercedes plant vote follows series of UAW wins

That’s when voting starts on whether the UAW will represent an estimated 5,200 full-time and regular part-time production and maintenance workers at the Mercedes-Benz assembly and battery plants in Vance and Woodstock, Alabama, east of Tuscaloosa.

Voting ends Friday, and the results should provide a crucial assessment of the momentum of the UAW’s organizing muscle at non-union auto plants, many of which are in the U.S. South.

The UAW’s prospects in Alabama got a major boost with the successful union vote last month, since certified by the National Labor Relations Board, at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga, Tennessee, facility, as well as ratification on a contract that included wage gains and cost-of-living adjustments at Daimler Truck, which has production plants in several Southern states.

The UAW’s strike last year against Ford Motor Co., General Motors and Stellantis, owner of Jeep, Ram, Chrysler, Dodge and Fiat, and contract deals with the Detroit Three, which were widely seen as union wins, helped set the stage for a surge of auto plant organizing as autoworkers elsewhere watched the results.

Although union critics have pointed to job cuts at some Detroit Three facilities following last year’s bargaining, the union has continued to point out the significant profits enjoyed by U.S. and foreign auto companies in recent years. That includes Mercedes-Benz, which, the UAW, noted “made $156 billion in total profits over the last decade.”

After the VW results were announced, the union noted that public organizing campaigns had been launched not just at Mercedes-Benz, but also Hyundai in Montgomery, Alabama, and Toyota in Troy, Missouri. Workers at more than two dozen other facilities are said to be actively organizing, including at a Mercedes-Benz van plant in North Charleston, South Carolina.

Professor sees a shift in attitude toward unions

Rusty Adair, a professor of practice in management and entrepreneurship at Auburn University in Alabama, said this seems to be a unique moment for the union.

“I don’t believe we’ve seen this level of union activity in the Southeast ever,” Adair said.

Although the union has worked to organize Alabama’s Mercedes-Benz workers in the past and had previous attempts at VW, too, Adair said this time feels different because recent UAW victories have really gotten the attention of workers in the area, and news about union activity nationwide has been increasing.

“It feels like a little bit of a perfect storm brewing,” he said.

While he’s not predicting the scales are tipping in the union’s favor just yet, Adair said there’s no reason to think that the UAW “won’t ride that momentum into Hyundai” if the vote is successful.

Adair, who had a long career at International Paper, including in labor relations for the company, also predicted a shift in how people think about unions if that happens. He stopped short, however, of offering a prediction on the upcoming results.

Although Alabama’s Kay Ivey and other Southern governors have been vocal in their opposition to the union efforts, even releasing a joint letter in opposition, Adair said it’s not clear people on the street, aside from the affected workers, are as focused on the situation.

“It feels very much like a political battle right now. I’m not sure how much of a cultural battle it is,” he said.

Although the South has been seen as a challenge for the UAW, unions aren't unknown in the region or in Alabama, which saw union membership of wage and salary workers tick up slightly from 7.2% in 2022 to 7.5% in 2023 (nationally the rate was 10% in 2023), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And as noted previously, the UAW does represent workers at places like Daimler Truck.

Experts who spoke to the Free Press also pointed to unionization among mineworkers, utility workers and auto suppliers in Alabama to highlight how residents in some areas may already have familiarity with unions. The state also had a surge of organizing starting with the mineworkers in the 1930s before factional issues emerged, according to Rosemary Feurer, associate professor and labor expert at Northern Illinois University, speaking to the Free Press in December.

Michael Innis-Jimenez, a professor and labor expert in the Department of American Studies at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, said he expects the workers will support the Mercedes-Benz campaign. "I'd be stunned if they don’t win the election," he said.

Factors potentially boosting union sentiment, he said, are a tight labor market that has workers feeling more confident and concerns about the company's high use of temporary workers.

The main negative announcement Innis-Jimenez said he’d heard involved the joint statement from the Southern governors. Other entities, including the company and business interests, have been more muted about their reactions, he said.

The union has also taken a decidedly different approach with this organizing campaign, he said.

Union complains of company interference

“This specific campaign started with a grassroots (effort) aided by organizers,” Innis-Jimenez said, noting that previously union organizers did a lot of the work, even leaving a local union office in the area.

However, "that served as a meeting point for early organizers and the employees,” he said, noting that Mercedes-Benz employees were running a fairly quiet card-signing campaign, until more recently.

In fact, the UAW took the approach in its current national organizing effort of setting milestones of union support at local facilities before making campaigns at those locations public or seeking elections.

At Mercedes-Benz, as at other locations where the union is organizing, accusations of interference in the process have been made against the company. The union has even filed charges against Mercedes-Benz in the United States with the National Labor Relations Board and in Germany under a relatively new supply chain law.

Mercedes-Benz U.S. International, the subsidiary responsible for the Alabama facilities, issued a denial of wrongdoing, noting that the company “has not interfered with or retaliated against any team member in their right to pursue union representation. MBUSI does not believe these claims have merit and looks forward to presenting the case to the NLRB.”

As to the union campaign, the company said it “fully respects our team members’ choice whether to unionize and we look forward to participating in the election process to ensure every team member has a chance to cast their own secret-ballot vote, as well as having access to the information necessary to make an informed choice.”

The company noted that it has “a strong record of success over the past 25+ years operating as one team in Alabama. Our primary focus at MBUSI is always to provide a safe and supportive work environment for our team members, so they can continue to build safe and superior vehicles for the world. We believe open and direct communication with our team members is the best path forward to ensure continued success.”

Garrard and Brooks, however, speaking as part of a recent discussion on the German supply chain law that requires companies to respect workers' freedom of association and other rights, said that the company and its managers have been pressuring workers not to support the union.

“When we first started our union drive it was real quiet. I guess they didn’t take us seriously, but lately after we reached the 30% mark, we’ve been forced to go to captive audience meetings where the CEO told us we didn’t need a union. He knows what’s best for us. They force us to watch anti-union videos immediately after we clock in every day,” Garrard said.

All that attention might not be having the intended effect, however, he said.

“I think for the majority of the team members we’ve all decided which way we’re voting. There may be some that are on the fence or indifferent," Garrard said. "Honestly, the rumblings though the plant are all this mandatory anti-union campaign is actually driving our percentages up in favor of unionizing because everyone’s so tired of it."

Contact Eric D. Lawrence: elawrence@freepress.com. Become a subscriber. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Mercedes-Benz workers in Alabama prepare for UAW election