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By Bob Hennelly

The UAW’s winning streak, including a lopsided union recognition vote last month at a Volkswagen plant in “right-to-work” state Tennessee, came to an end at a Mercedes plant in Alabama thanks to a flagrantly illegal counter-campaign led by plant management and backed up by a powerful coalition of southern Republican Governors.

Autoworkers at the Tuscaloosa Mercedes plant voted 2,045 in favor of unionization over three days from May 13-17—but 2,642 ‘no’. Close to 5,100 workers were eligible to vote. Last month, by contrast, workers at the Chattanooga VW plant voted 2,628 ‘yes’ to 985 ‘no,’ marking the first successful UAW vote in the south since WWII. 

When asked by reporters what he felt accounted for the different outcomes, UAW President Shawn Fain flagged VW’s largely complying with U.S. labor law—and Mercedes opting to ignore it entirely—something they are currently under investigation for in the U.S. and Germany.

“The difference to me is simply, obviously, Volkswagen was more neutral and that wasn’t the case here,” Fain said. “This company was having captive audience meetings to the last meetings—there’s a lot of power in that when you walk into the room. They fired workers…we can do down the list.”

“It’s a David versus Goliath fight,” the UAW leader said in his prepared remarks. “Sometimes, Goliath wins the battle, but ultimately, David will win the war. These workers will win their fair share. And we’re going to be there every step of the way with them.”

According to the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics “among full-time wage and salary workers, union members had median usual weekly earnings of $1,263 in 2023, while nonunion workers had median usual weekly earnings of $1,090.”

LOW WAGE CARTEL

Gov. Kay Ivey (R-AL), along with the Republican governors of Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, South Carolina and Texas wrote last month in a joint letter that they were “highly concerned about the unionization campaign driven by misinformation and scare tactics that the UAW has brought into our states. As governors, we have a responsibility to our constituents to speak up when we see special interests looking to come into our state and threaten our jobs and the values we live by.” 

The Republican governors heralded what they called the “direct relationship” their autoworkers had with their employers, and posited that the UAW were “democratic socialists….more focused on helping President Biden get reelected….”

Last week, Ivey went even further to make her so-called “right-to-work” state even more union proof by signing legislation that “punishes businesses that choose to voluntarily recognize unions by forbidding them from receiving any grants, loans, or tax credits from state and local governments,” unless they hold a secret ballot first, the Alabama Reporter said. 

Fain noted that even before the actual Mercedes vote, the plant workers pushing for the UAW recognition had won significant gains for the entire plant’s workforce when earlier this year, Mercedes added $2 per hour at the top of the salary range and ended wage tiers. 

That new Mercedes top pay at $34 an hour still lags $9 behind the $43 per hour that Ford workers will earn at the end of their contract in 2028, according to Labor Notes.

The anti-union media campaign at Mercedes included one video ad that depicted Fain surrounded by African-American union members and clips of white Mercedes workers saying “the UAW will throw fairness, merit, and qualifications out the door” and asserting “the only person who can protect my job is me.” 

“With the success we have had, it’s easy to come in and have a press conference when we win everything we do, that’s the easy press conference,” Fain told reporters. “But, let me assure you, this isn’t a failure. This isn’t fatal. This is a bump in the road. We have been here before and we’re going to continue on, and we’re going to win.” 

Fain took issue with Ivey’s assertion that unionization would hurt her state’s economy, which according to the U.S. Census, is one of the poorest in the nation, while also ranking 47th in the labor force participation rate—meaning that “almost half of the state’s working-age individuals are neither employed nor seeking jobs,” according to Gov. Ivey’s office.

POVERTY AS STATE POLICY PREFERENCE

Alabama, along with Tennessee, South Carolina, Louisiana and Mississippi have no state minimum wage. That means the $7.25 federal minimum wage, which hasn’t been raised since 2009 applies, and according to the Economic Policy Institute, is close to $10 less than the $17 per hour is required to survive. 

“Our wages due tend to be lower if you look at us on the national scale,” Jennifer Harris, the senior health policy analyst with Alabama Arise, told Work-Bites. “And there are a lot of other issues just from the landscape of how our state is, in which we have a lot of people in rural communities that do not have access to a lot of services. Especially, medical services because of the distance to get there—Alabama does not have a public transit system that can also help people get to work or to see a doctor.”

Alabama also has one of the nation’s worst maternal mortality rates in the nation—nearly twice the national rate.

“Declining wages and pay gaps in Alabama’s auto manufacturing industry costs the state hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars in labor income and economic growth each year,” according to  an Alabama Arise report released last year. “Racial, gender and geographic pay disparities also persist even though Alabama automakers have received more than $1.6 billion in public incentives since 1993.”

“The economy Kay Ivey is talking about is the economy that works for the corporate class—the billionaire class where they concentrate all the wealth in their hands and the workers get left behind,” Fain said. “That culture was bred here [in the south] long ago, and people are realizing it.”

Back in February, the UAW announced a two-year, $40 million organizing drive to sign up 150,000 auto and battery plant workers at 14 non-union manufacturers from California to South Carolina. At the post-Mercedes vote press conference, Fain pledged to continue the battle and confront wealth inequality head on.

The UAW leader observed that both the 2008-09 Great Recession and the COVID pandemic helped to spark a 21st century labor revival at a time when wealth concentration meant “three families in America have as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent.”

“I believe all these things have made working class people realize there is better out there for them. And they are realizing they have no control over their lives at work, and the only way they get control is through a union because without a union you are an employee at will,” Fain said. “You have no voice and no rights, and the boss has all the power.”

THE MORAL IMPERATIVE

“Southern labor organizing is the organizing that can transform the labor movement,” said Rev. Dr. William Barber, who came to Montgomery, Alabama to support the UAW vote. “All of these states are so-called ‘right-to-work’ states which is really a right not to organize. They block unions and they keep wages low. A third of all poor people live in the south. A third of all poor white people live in the south, and what the leader of the UAW [Shawn Fain] is doing, which is so right, he’s framing the union movement—and the labor movement—in moral terms.” 

John Samuelsen is the international president of the Transport Workers Union of America [TWU], which represents 150,000 members across the airline, railroad, transit, universities, utilities and service sectors. He told Work-Bites that as a consequence of the Federal Railway Labor Act that covers the rail and airline sectors, his union has a lot of experience in so-called ‘right-to-work’ states in the South. 

“Regardless of where it is in the Deep South, the Federal Railway Labor Act supersedes state law, but the old apparatus of the south is still in place—that culture that unions are the enemy of prosperity,” Samuelsen said. “This apparatus includes the local police, local municipal and state governments, significant institutions, that all facilitate the crushing of union organizing in favor of the longterm profitability of the employer.”

Stuart Applebaum is the president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union [RWDSU] which represents 100,000 workers across the country. The RWDSU has been locked in a multi-year battle to organize Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama warehouse.  

“If you don’t fight, you can never win,” Applebaum wrote Work-Bites. “I have no doubt that it’s only a matter of time before the workers at Mercedes and at Amazon in Alabama will be unionized!”

In RWDSU’s 2021 election, when workers rejected the union drive, it was so rife with labor law violations by Amazon that the National Labor Relations Board [NLRB] ordered a new election in March of 2022. The results of that vote were “too close to call,” according to NPR and are  currently the subject of an ongoing administrative law hearing. 

One outcome could be the ordering of a third election. Amazon has been cited in more than 250 NRLB complaints, according to Common Dreams.  

“In this epochal labor battle, Mercedes relied on blatant fear and intimidation tactics, flying in the face of the rights of workers to unionize,” labor historian Joe Wilson told Work-Bites.

“In the South in particular, this is reminiscent of the house slaves more closely identifying with the slave master, rather than being in solidarity with the field slaves,” Wilson continued. “The southern ‘right-to-work’ legacy, is a euphemism for the right to be exploited and oppressed. In spite of this corporate onslaught, supported by right wing MAGA governors, the UAW nearly won the election with 47% of the vote. The slave mentality endures—but not forever if the UAW has anything to say, and if the NLRB repudiates Mercedes unfair, immoral and illegal union busting tactics.”

LABOR RIGHTS GO THE WAY OF REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS?

Amazon is one of several corporate giants now challenging the constitutionality of The National Labor Relations Board which was established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt under the New Deal. 

“The Supreme Court in its current configuration is more pro-business than it has been in a century,” wrote Kate Andria, a Columbia University law professor. “The justices who make up its conservative majority have shown that they are willing to overrule long-standing labor precedents through decisions that have reduced union funding and restricted workers’ access to unions."