Interview with Mercedes Rank-and-File Union Organizer

In 2024 the Mercedes autoworkers of Tuscaloosa, Alabama launched a rank-and-file-led union drive for recognition under the United Auto Workers (UAW), receiving 2,045 yes votes in the union recognition process and losing by a small margin.

Charges submitted to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) by the union accuse the company of rampant union busting and law-breaking activities in the 2024 effort. The NLRB hearings ended August 12 and a re-vote will be brought on the table once the rulings come out.

The Worker spoke with a decades-long autoworker and rank-and-file organizing committee member at the Mercedes plant in Tuscaloosa on lessons from the 2024 effort and on the Mercedes workers’ continuing struggle to unionize.

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Where are you at now with the struggle that you have been organizing?

We are trying to grow our numbers, so we’ve got enough people in different areas to combat all the anti-union rhetoric that comes from management and any type of union busting they might try to bring in.

We’ve gotten people to talk to their coworkers all over the shop; that’s going to negate any fear-mongering that management or any union busters try to do when we get another [union recognition] campaign going.

When we don’t have established contacts all throughout the factories, workers may think I don’t know if there’s ever going to be another campaign or if everybody’s just giving up essentially. So we keep people engaged and knowing the fight’s very much still on and that we are trying to get in position to make the next step.

What’s been going on with the labor board and your previous struggle?

They [Mercedes] are accused of bringing in union busters [in the 2024 effort], people like a pastor, to speak badly about our union effort on the production line, trying to tell the workers we didn’t need a union. They would call different kinds of union-busting meetings. Ahead of shifts we were shown anti-union videos. Different ways to manipulate people and fear-monger, framing it like they were actually trying to inform people, but it was very one-sided. They even forced us into a union busting meeting with former Alabama football head coach Nick Saban.

What do you tell a worker who is listening to the union busting in order to convince them?

Since our union movement has grown, the boss’s pitch is essentially not even that unionizing is bad, but that there’s a downside to being part of the UAW and that the company is a lesser of two evils. They don’t want the status quo change, so they’re trying to sell everybody that they’re going to make things better and they’re going to start listening to us. That’s what they were saying right before our last union election, out of fear of our effort, yet none of the senior managers were fired or made to step down to a lower position; some of them even got promoted. Now all the minor changes we started to see all went away. We were starting to see managers on the floor taking feedback from people; in the months afterwards, that has all come to a stop.

Things are where they were before, and in some cases, even worse. We’ve had people fired for family medical leave, or where they didn’t file paperwork properly or something like that. They’ve also been doing a lot of random drug testing in the last six months or so. The bosses have gone back on all the promises they made before the last vote and the lies that they were going to make changes and make us a priority. We’re trying to tell people because we don’t have a contract, that’s how they’re able to do that.

So if we can actually organize, get a contract for all employees, then we actually have a way to where if they do try to go back and try the drug tests and different things that are outside of the purview of what’s written down, we can take them to court for a breach of contract. We have no way to push back on anything out of there. They could lower our wages tomorrow if they wanted to.

That’s really what we try to emphasize with people right now. Unless you have something concrete that there are consequences for them going back on it, then they can just tell you whatever they want to your face, and they can go back later on when they feel like they’re in a better leverage position.

The Nissan plant in La Vergne, TN has been shut down recently, and some workers are only receiving 80% pay. Nissan is saying it’s the supply chain, but it’s the workers that are hurting. Could you share a little about the shutdowns you all have faced before and the one coming up during Christmas time?

We’ve had week-long shutdowns for maintenance issues before that were the same thing; either they were unpaid or you had to use vacation time to cover them. We’ve got one coming up in the summer of 2027 and Christmas of 2027, where the summer one is going to be 3 weeks because they have to remodel different parts of the plant. Then they’ve got another one that Christmas that’s going to be 4 weeks, instead of just doing all the remodeling and renovating at once. In both cases, we’re only going to be paid for half of that time.

If you got to remodel or renovate, that’s fine, but there are resources for us to be compensated for that time and not have to burn vacation time if we’ve got it or simply go with half pay. That’s a real point of tension right now. So I would say to the Nissan workers, we know where you’re coming from. Our plant is doing the exact same thing.

The workers have been talking about this, and people are trying to figure out what they’re going to do right now with their Christmas plans. Obviously, it’s going to impact things like Christmas outside of buying gifts; a lot of people travel and see family during Christmas. You’re not really going to be able to do that.

People are really frustrated and want answers to why they’re having to figure out how they’re going to make everything work two different times next year, when the company’s in a position where they can easily pay us for all the time that they’ve got to have us out for renovations and not even break a sweat.

With the unionization drive at Nissan, some workers feel like the UAW abandoned their effort. Nissan workers weren’t successful back in 2023 or 2001, so the UAW has left them on their own. What would you say to the Nissan workers that feel abandoned without the support of an “official” union?

The biggest change in us attempting to organize from 4 years ago to when we really made our breakthrough in 2024 (receiving over 2,000 votes) was that the workers took the lead, and the organizers were just supporting us when we needed help with different aspects of the campaign.

To the Nissan workers, if you feel like you have a solid plan moving forward, then you just need to go ahead and enact it, and you don’t need organizers to sign cards or anything like that.

If you feel like the passion for change is there, try to get people involved and grow your numbers as much as you can. If you feel like you’ve got enough people to be in that ballpark of filing for an election again, then organizers are either going to come help you out then or they won’t.

For us what really made the difference was taking all the ideas and demands of the rank-and-file and using that as a blueprint going forward. That can make a difference for you too if the Nissan workers decide to use that kind of strategy.

What are other lessons from your struggle that you think would be helpful for other workers to know from all the years you’ve been fighting?

One thing that I will emphasize with workers I don’t know in our workplace: everybody is frustrated; they just didn’t feel like they had a real outlet. A lot of them felt isolated; they were frustrated with the way things were going, but without talking, you won’t know that other parts of the shop or other departments are feeling it too. You’re thinking that you’re the only one dealing with this stuff, and a lot of people were just quitting or looking for other jobs.

In the last few years when we were trying to grow the campaigns, we emphasized to people that the stuff you’re dealing with, like a manager showing favoritism or something of that nature, they’re doing that same thing over in the paint shop or over another line where you might not have ever been, but they’re all dealing with those same problems.

That was one of the biggest turning points of growing our organized movement among the workers.

We needed to get people to first understand that it was this toxic culture that the company had in place that gave people the feeling that we needed to do something about it. That if we just work together, we can make some change.

We had a two-tier pay before our last election, and the company was so scared that we were going to vote yes that one month before the election they put out an announcement that they were going to get rid of two-tiered hiring and that all the Mercedes works from now on would be on the same pay scale with the same insurance. That would be what I would tell somebody else.

Even though we lost our first election, we did make a real change that helped a lot of people. Even if your first attempt fails, you can still make real change and real impact with your workplace and the movement going forward.

Image: The Tuscaloosa, Alabama Mercedes-Benz plant, 2010. Credit: The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

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