by Samuel Messidor
Mercedes workers in Alabama voted against joining the United Auto Workers last week, with 56% voting against unionization. There was a 90% turn-out across the two Mercedes plants’ 5,075 workers.
The UAW has filed charges against Mercedes with both the US and German governments alleging illegal labor practices, including targeted drug testing and targeted firing of organizers, and allowing anti-union literature but not pro-union literature to be distributed during work hours. The union is asking for the vote to be thrown out as rigged and a new vote to be held.
Some Mercedes workers who initially were supportive of the union drive told monopoly media they voted no because they felt the company was responding to worker demands—Mercedes met the organizing efforts not just with retaliation but also by replacing the CEO with a friendlier-faced corporate exec and with the promise to eliminate the hated 2-tier system. Other workers who voted no did so out of fear of layoffs.
This was the first union recognition vote effort by the UAW at Mercedes’ Alabama plants, whereas at the recently unionized VW in Tennessee, it was the UAW’s third try. This has not stopped monopoly media from declaring this a “big blow” for the workers getting organized both at the Mercedes plant and across the South.
The Tennessee VW workers’ victory last month broke the anti-union seal in the South. At the VW plant, workers cited as conditions for their success the connections made during the previous campaigns, as well as the speed and energy given to the workers by the union bureaucrats largely backing off, leaving the rank-and-file activists to their own initiative.
Autoworkers are still organizing under the UAW across the South, and the union says that they have reached 30% union authorization signatures—enough support to proceed with a recognition vote—at the Hyundai plant in Alabama and the Toyota plant in Missouri.
Southern state governors and legislators have campaigned against the organizing drives of the auto workers in recent months, claiming that the UAW is an alien, Northern force and that unions will drive away the auto corporations exploiting the unorganized Southern workers. The Alabama House of Representatives Speaker called the UAW “dangerous leeches” in an op-ed. “We want to ensure that Alabama values, not Detroit values continue to define the future of this great state” said Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, who recently signed legislation to withhold state bribes in the form of tax breaks from companies that voluntarily recognize unions.
Southern states have wooed and courted auto corporations for decades with pay-offs in the forms of bribes and lower paid, more easily exploited workers with fewer rights—what the UAW activists call the “Alabama Discount”—compared to unionized plants elsewhere in the country.
