The United Auto Workers (UAW) union is setting its sights on its next big union victory in the south, at two Mercedes-Benz plants in Vance and Woodstock, Alabama.
Coming off the historic union election win at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, 5,200 workers are to begin voting in their union election from 13 May to 17 May. The UAW’s recent win at Volkswagen to represent about 4,300 workers was one of the biggest union election wins in manufacturing in the past 16 years.
“It’s just time for a change,” said Kay Finklea, a quality inspector who has worked at the Mercedes-Benz plant for 23 years.
Finklea said that the pay, benefits, and work hours had stagnated or worsened since she started and the balance between work and life had deteriorated.
“They say we’re supposed to work 10 hours a day, but they actually work us 12 hours a day, so by the time you get home, you’re exhausted, beat, and you don’t have time to do anything but get a quick bite, shower and lay down to get ready to wake up and do it all over again,” Finklea added.
“My thing is let’s give ourselves a chance, let’s invest in us, let’s form our union and work to try to make things better for everybody.”
The UAW has aimed its union-organizing effort at eliminating the “Alabama discount”, part of the economic development model in the US south in which wages are kept lower than the rest of the US.
The union has highlighted the differences between the stagnant pay for workers and the immense profits of the automakers and the exorbitant salaries of executives.
Mercedes-Benz has made $156bn in profits over the last decade and profits grew 200% in the past three years, according to the UAW. Top wages at Mercedes, which vary based on seniority and department, currently lag behind the hourly wage gains the UAW won at the big three domestic automakers in late 2023.
The UAW has also noted it would take two years for a production worker at top pay to make what a Mercedes-Benz executive makes in a week. Mercedes-Benz’s management board members gave themselves a 78% pay increase in 2023.
The Mercedes-Benz union election is the UAW’s second big test in the southern US. The union launched an organizing drive aimed at unionizing 150,000 autoworkers at non-union plants in the US after winning historic gains in their contracts at General Motors, Stellantis and Ford last November.
Those gains won after a high-profile “stand-up strike” incited significant support for unionizing among other autoworkers.
Rick Webster, who started working at the plant for a contractor in 2016 but officially began working for Mercedes in October 2022, said: “It’s time for Alabama workers to stand up and unite not just at Mercedes, but at Hyundai, Honda and Toyota. It’s time for everybody to stand up and have a voice and we need to end the Alabama discount.”
Webster said that since the union drive had gone public, Mercedes management had inundated workers with texts, emails, messages and meetings urging workers to vote no in the union election. Local elected officials and business groups, including the Republican governor of Alabama, Kay Ivey, have vehemently opposed the UAW’s organizing efforts.
The UAW has filed several unfair labor practice charges against Mercedes-Benz over the company’s opposition to the union campaign, including filing charges in Germany, where the company is headquartered.
“It is a daily barrage of text messages, emails, and there’s an app we have for work for every kind of announcement you can think of and we’re getting two to three notifications daily. Every day before the shift, we have to sit in the team room and watch anti-union videos,” said Webster. “It’s just been a constant barrage. Everybody is just sick and tired of it.”
Mercedes-Benz has denied allegations of labor law violations but has openly opposed the unionization effort.
“MBUSI [Mercedes-Benz US International] 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,” a Mercedes-Benz spokesperson said in an email.
