A supermajority of workers at the Mercedes-Benz plant near Tuscaloosa have filed a petition to join the United Auto Workers union, a spokesperson confirmed Friday, with a union election anticipated to be held sometime by early May.
The announcement comes just one day after Gov. Kay Ivey, who has fiercely opposed unionization efforts in the state, called the Detroit-based UAW a “threat,” a comment that elicited a strong response from UAW President Shawn Fain.
Mercedes workers had announced they had amassed 30% support for joining the UAW back in January, and later majority support in February. Now, with more than 70% of Mercedes workers having signed on to join the UAW, a petition has been filed with the National Labor Relations Board to hold a union election.
“We are standing up for every worker in Alabama,” said Jeremy Kimbrell, a measurement machine operator and lead union campaign organizer at Mercedes.
“At Mercedes, at Hyundai and at hundreds of other companies, Alabama workers have made billions of dollars for executives and shareholders, but we haven’t gotten our fair share. We’re going to turn things around with this vote. We’re going to end the Alabama discount.”
Workers at the plant have cited low wages, unpredictable schedules and an overreliance on temporary workers as among their reasons for seeking to join the UAW.
Alabama lawmakers and elected officials have either remained silent on the organizing efforts, or come out strongly against them, as has been the case with Ivey, who warned that the UAW was placing Alabama’s “model for economic success under attack.”
On Thursday, Ivey spoke out again against the UAW in a social media post, calling the UAW a “threat from Detroit,” and argued that the organization “has no interest in seeing the people of Alabama succeed.”
During a rally Tuesday in North Carolina, Fain fired back at Ivey for her push to quash the unionization effort.
“Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey recently dared to say that the economic model of the South is under attack,” Fain said.
“She’s damn right it is! It’s under attack because workers are fed up with getting screwed. The tide is turning, and southern workers are taking back control of our destinies. The low-wage, high-profit model of exploiting southern labor is coming to an end, and it’s about damn time.”
Ivey has argued that a unionized workforce in Alabama could compromise future investment in the state, with companies often drawn to the state for its comparatively cheap labor. Ivey’s opposition to the UAW has been shared by the Business Council of Alabama, as well as by U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, who fired back at Fain for his heated comments.
“I’ve seen what the UAW has done to Detroit, and I don’t want any of what they’re selling,” Rogers wrote in a social media post Thursday.
“Under Gov. Ivey’s leadership, Alabama now leads the nation in car exports. The UAW is attacking her because they would like nothing more than to bring all that growth to a halt.”
Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, recently filed a bill that would disincentivize companies from voluntarily recognizing a union by making them ineligible for state economic incentive money, a bill he told Alabama Daily News was designed to help curb union organizers from exerting pressure on employees to support organizing efforts.
The UAW’s efforts to organize Alabama autoworkers are part of a national campaign to target non-unionized automakers in southern, right-to-work states, a campaign that was launched shortly after the organization’s 46-day strike last year against Ford, General Motors and Stellantis. The strike ended up securing significant wage increases for autoworkers, as well as the elimination of two-tier wage systems.
The union election at Mercedes would be the second such election of southern autoworkers within the past three weeks, with workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, having filed for an election in March.
Workers at the Hyundai Motor Manufacturing plant in Montgomery have also launched a campaign to join the UAW, having reached 30% support in their union drive in February.