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THIS ISN’T THE END FOR MERCEDES WORKERS’ UNION FIGHT  
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Luis Feliz Leon and Jane Slaughter
May 18, 2024
Jacobin
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_ Opposed by management and politicians at every turn, Alabama
Mercedes workers lost their union election yesterday. It’s a real
setback — but the Mercedes workers say they won’t stop organizing
until they get a union. _

UAW autoworkers picket outside a Ford plant in the early morning
hours of October 14, 2023, in Louisville, Kentucky. , Michael Swensen
/ Getty Images

 

A-no-holds-barred campaign by Mercedes management convinced a majority
of workers at its Alabama factory complex to vote against forming a
union.

In addition to anti-union videos and mailings, captive-audience
meetings, firings, and an onslaught of pressure from state politicians
and even a local pastor, the winning move was to fire the company’s
US CEO and replace him with a vice president who promised to care
about the “team members.”

A team leader named Ray Trammell, who voted “no,” said his area
was 100 percent union before the former CEO was removed. “[New CEO]
Federico [Kochlowski] has been a positive influence,” he said. “A
lot of people want to give him a chance. It was all production-driven
before him; he’s more about the team members. He’s willing to
change.

“We have a year. We have that year to see what he does. If he
doesn’t make positive changes, we can bring the union in.” (After
losing an election a union has to wait a year before filing a new
petition for the same group of workers.)

The vote, held May 13–17, was 2,045 in favor of forming a union to
2,642 against. The majority of the workforce is black. There were
fifty-one challenged ballots, and five voided; 5,075 workers, not
including contract workers, were eligible to vote.

“These courageous workers took on this fight because they wanted
justice,” said United Auto Workers (UAW) president Shawn Fain. He
said the federal government and the German government are
investigating the intimidation that Mercedes inflicted on workers,
following the “same playbook” of union busting as other US
employers.

“Ultimately these workers are going to win,” he said. “We have
no regrets in this fight.”

Pro-union fit and finish worker Rick Webster had brought his
fourth-grade son Aaron to the vote count. “I wanted him to witness
history,” he said shortly beforehand. “It’s going to be life
changing. We can’t wait. We will be able to negotiate instead of
being dictated to.”

At Mercedes, previous union efforts had never gotten this far. So this
was the first time workers had experienced a full-on anti-union
campaign — and it worked on some of them. A worker named Keda, for
example, said she wanted to “give Federico a chance.” She pointed
to management’s elimination of two-tier wages as an indication of
good faith.

Others voted “no” more out of fear than out of hope. “If it’s
not broke, don’t rock the boat,” said a worker named Terry. Team
leader Arthur Bates said he didn’t want to see layoffs. “Mercedes
has shareholders and they have to keep the shareholders happy,” he
explained. “If they lose some money somewhere, the company will find
a way to make that money back.”

The workers who have been fighting so hard to organize were surprised
and disappointed at the loss — but they said their resolve wasn’t
shaken. “We’ll try to figure out what we did wrong, where we
missed the mark,” said battery worker Robert Lett. “We’ll try to
figure out how to shore up for the next time, because there will be
another time. We’re not just going to shrug and walk away.

“We know this company; we know their MO. We know the company values
their profits more than they value their employees. As soon as they
feel like it’s advantageous to them, they’re not going to take
workers’ personal lives into account.”

“It’s disappointing that some of our supporters slipped to vote
‘no,’” said Kirk Garner, a quality worker in plant two.
“It’s disappointing that the company put on an anti-union campaign
when it was part of their company policy not to.”

But, he said, “we’ve been trying this for twenty-five years.
We’ll try again next year and every year till we get it. We’ll
wait three or four months and start over.”

One Win, One Loss

The UAW declared last fall after winning landmark contracts at the Big
Three automakers — General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis — that it
would springboard its militant strike into organizing across more than
two dozen nonunion auto plants.

Today’s loss follows a landmark union victory
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April 19 at the Volkswagen (VW) plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where
4,300 workers joined the UAW — the first auto assembly plant
election the union had won in the South since the 1940s.

Workers there had been through two previous narrowly lost union
campaigns, in 2014
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management had promised to “do better,” and workers had been let
down each time. That, combined with the momentum of the UAW’s record
contracts in fall 2023, gave nearly three-quarters of VW workers the
impetus to vote “yes” last month.

The success at Volkswagen boosted organizing at Mercedes, though not
quite enough to put it over the top. “When Volkswagen workers won
their union, when Daimler Truck
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their big raise, we could point to it — this isn’t just a dream
that we’re selling,” said Lett.

Today’s sad outcome makes the score so far one win and one loss in
the UAW’s $40 million push to bring 150,000 nonunion autoworkers
into the union, most of them in Southern states — and all of them
facing employers, from Toyota to BMW, who located their plants with an
eye to remaining union-free.

Doling Out Carrots

Mercedes’s union-busting program included doling out carrots. In
February, a month after workers reached 30 percent on union cards, the
company announced it would hike the top pay by $2 and eliminate the
wage tiers, so now everyone would top out at $34 after four years.

Michael Göbel, president and CEO of Mercedes-Benz US International,
stepped down in a video message
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workers were shown in April. Göbel had groused
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a captive-audience meeting about a worker’s claim
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Mercedes had come here for the “Alabama discount”: low wages. The
top pay of $34 may appear high, but not compared to $43 for production
workers at Ford by the contract’s end in 2028.

Though his departure showed the union drive was already getting
results, the firing of Göbel swayed some workers into the “no”
column. Kochlowski circulated a letter the first day of voting
thanking workers for a “warm welcome,” promising vague things like
“to make this a place you’re proud to work,” and imploring them
to give him a chance. He had walked the floor the last two weeks
talking to literally thousands of workers and making promises.

“People bought that bullshit about the new CEO,” said David
Johnston, a battery worker on the organizing committee. “We needed
every vote we could get to win, especially in plant two [the
non–electric vehicle plant]. But unfortunately, workers flipped. The
fight is far from over.”

Sandra, with twenty-one years in, works in quality control. She voted
“no.” “I pray it doesn’t happen,” she said before the vote
count. “I earned a really good living, put two kids in the
University of Alabama without having to take out loans, at $27 an
hour. Now I make $34.

“Is any company perfect? No. The new president is willing to work
with us team members. You still can earn a good living. Some of the
people pushing the union are disgruntled.”

. . . And the Stick

But Mercedes also brought out the stick. It sent a barrage of
anti-union text messages, held captive-audience meetings to grill
union supporters, played anti-union videos at daily team meetings, put
an anti-union banner at the factory entrance, and hired a
union-busting firm, RWP. That’s to be expected in the dictatorships
that are US workplaces.

“The company brought in some anti-union consultants,” Garner said.
“They would bring small groups into a meeting room and show them
videos with half-truths about unions — and apparently that worked on
some people.

“They get paid $3,200 a day apiece and there were three of them, for
three weeks. You can check that out when they file their LM-20 at the
end of the month.”

The company’s official “principles” say executives will remain
neutral in organizing campaigns, but Mercedes has carried on its
anti-union offensive even after the UAW filed charges against it last
month for violating a German supply chain law and after the US
government and the European Commission asked it to respect workers’
right to organize.

The German government is now investigating Mercedes
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illegal union-busting conduct. The Alabama plant is operated by
Mercedes-Benz US International, a subsidiary of Stuttgart-based
Mercedes-Benz Group AG.

“Alabama autoworkers are sick of the interference from Mercedes in
our organization efforts,” said battery plant worker Brett Garrard
ahead of the vote. “This is what we deal with — not to mention the
captive-audience meetings, the mandatory anti-union videos and
propaganda they force-feed us after we are on the clock, in what is
supposed to be our start-up meeting to discuss the daily topics such
as safety, quality, and morale.”

“They were clearly trying to prey on people’s emotions with the
constant barrage from all sides,” Lett said.

The UAW filed six unfair labor practice charges against the company
for firing union supporters, banning union materials, surveilling
employees, holding captive-audience meetings, disciplining employees
for discussing unionization, and implying that union activity is
futile.

“I’ve got no use for it,” said Tim Earnest, a quality worker who
has been here twenty-seven years. “We don’t need them. They are a
divisive force.”

Ciarra Tate, an assembly worker, said she didn’t vote at all because
she was only planning to work here for the short term, planning to
start a career in health care. She has been at Mercedes two years.

Heavy Political Pressure

Alabama governor Kay Ivey and the Business Council of Alabama have
been vociferous in their opposition to the UAW’s new drives. Ivey
said
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unions would attack “the Alabama model for economic success.”

Six Southern governors, including Ivey, signed an April letter urging
workers to reject the UAW lest they undermine the auto industry’s
growth.

As workers began voting this week, Ivey signed legislation on May 13
that would revoke economic incentives for companies that voluntarily
recognize unions. Nathaniel Ledbetter, the Republican speaker of the
Alabama House of Representatives, who pushed the law through, called
the UAW “dangerous leeches
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in an anti-union op-ed.

Ivey said at a Chamber of Commerce function, “We want to ensure that
Alabama values, not Detroit values, continue to define the future of
this great state.”

“We’re up against our local government,” said Garrard.
“We’re up against the Business Council of Alabama, the corporate
elites, and we’re working-class Americans. So why are you waging war
on us?

“This is not a political fight. We just seem to have a political
enemy. Our fight is for fair treatment, respect, and autoworker
pay.”

Company Pastor

As Mercedes workers began their twelve-hour shifts at 6 a.m. on May
13, their phones buzzed with a company text message
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in Alabama, community is important, and family is everything. We
believe it’s important to keep work separate. But there’s no
denying, a union would have an impact beyond the walls of our
plant.”

For its last-ditch union-busting effort, Mercedes called in divine
intervention in the form of a video message
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Matthew Wilson, a pastor of the Providence Missionary Baptist Church
in Marion, Alabama, and a city councilperson for Tuscaloosa.

In the video, Rev. Wilson implored workers to give Kochlowski a
chance, saying “the legacy of the state of Alabama is counting” on
it. The reverend also walked around the shop floor
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to workers one-on-one.

“This is a strategy as old as unions,” said Kate Bronfenbrenner of
the Cornell University School of Industrial Labor Relations. Indeed,
in the 1930s, Henry Ford recruited black pastors to recommend new
hires and oppose the UAW at his Ford Rouge plant outside Detroit.

“Particularly in towns dominated by a very large corporation,”
Bronfenbrenner said, “companies give enough money to churches to
purchase their long-term loyalty, and rely on the church leaders to
preach an anti-union message.”

“They had everything, except the guys in the mob movies with the
billy clubs doing the union-busting,” said Lett.

Worker-Run Campaign

Previous efforts at Mercedes over the past two decades had always
fizzled before coming to a vote. The most recent, in 2022, stalled at
20 percent on cards.

What was different
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this drive? “First off, the workers were up front leading the
campaign as opposed to the previous one,” Lett said.

And the organizing took place mainly inside the plant, rather than in
house-visit blitzes: “The strategy this time was to focus on the
area that you work in and talk to the people you see literally every
day, because you already have rapport with them.”

Lett said workers took pains not to make it sound like they were
recruiters or selling anything.

Those in different work areas played different roles. “If you’re
someone like me whose position is constrained to one particular spot,
you see the same handful of people all the time. So I’m talking to
them,” he said.

“If you’re a tugger or forklift driver, you’re going all around
the shop grabbing parts, delivering parts. I might not have the same
kind of rapport with people I see. But I can come back, ‘Hey, man,
the people on trim three, they’re not really feeling the union.
Someone should go talk to them.’

“And so you’re able to build a network, able to figure out where
the strengths and weaknesses are. And you can actually strategize
based on what we are doing right and what we are doing wrong to make
these adjustments in real time.”

Grueling Understaffing

The organizing drive was fueled by workers’ anger. Plant conditions
had gotten more and more grueling, due to a combination of high
turnover and understaffing.

At the start of the pandemic, the company shut down from March to May.
When workers returned in May, Mercedes laid off all the temps. “That
was like roughly a third of our workforce — just gone,” said Lett.
“So because of that, Mercedes went from three shifts and combined
them into two. They were assuming that the market demand was going to
be lower.”

That didn’t happen. But instead of hiring more people, Mercedes
tried to wring out more production from its reduced workforce. “They
just tried to get the same output out of two shift people instead of
three,” said Lett. “So you’re going from working roughly eight
hours a day, five days a week — maybe a Saturday here and there —
to working ten-plus hours a day, roughly six days a week on a regular
basis, with one weekend off a month.”

When the company tried to hire more people, they would leave just as
soon as they started the job because of the exhausting demands. “We
went from making maybe 300 cars a shift to making 430,” said Lett.

Supply chain snarls contributed to a chip shortage. But the Alabama
plant was a moneymaker, Lett said, so the company closed other
factories worldwide and had the chips sent to Alabama to keep up with
the high demand.

The Mercedes plant is the most prominent exporter in Alabama’s auto
industry; one hundred or more supplier companies in the area employ
thousands more workers. Its annual economic impact on Alabama was
estimated at $1.5 billion in 2017.

These supply chain investments make anti-union threats of layoffs and
a plant relocation less effective company talking points, because
it’s less plausible
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imagine Mercedes walking away from all this.

When you put Mercedes together with Honda in Talladega County, Hyundai
in Montgomery, and Mazda Toyota Manufacturing, Alabama’s exports hit
$27.4 billion in 2023, according to Made in Alabama
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a pro-business website linked to the union-busting website Alabama
Strong.

Mercedes workers build the luxury SUV models GLE and the $170,000
Maybach GLS, as well as batteries for electric vehicle models EQE and
EQS.

Fluctuating Schedules

The productivity comes at a high cost to workers.

“For a lot of the workers at Mercedes, there isn’t a singular
event that led up to the union campaign,” said Detrick Lewis, an
assembly line worker in the body shop who has been here since 2014.
“It’s kind of like a snowball at the top of the mountain. You
don’t pay any attention to that small ball, but once it’s a giant
boulder coming down, then it’s: How did it get so big?”

When Mercedes moved from three eight-hour shifts to two tens or
twelves, it eliminated the graveyard shift, 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., which
had allowed parents to plan around their children’s school
schedules.

“Now a lot of workers — single mothers and fathers — weren’t
able to find childcare because their schedules revolved around them
working at night,” said Lewis. Parents had depended on the schedule
over the past ten years.

Jacqueline Johnson-Avery, an assembly worker in quality control with
twenty-five years on the job, said she had preferred the overnight
shift as it was better for childcare; it also paid more.

The changes haven’t stopped, and they’ve only grown more frequent
and arbitrary. Workers say management has changed work schedules five
times since the Christmas shutdown. The current schedule is six
ten-hour shifts in a row, two days off, six more days on, then five
days off (excluding Sundays). The result is only one Saturday off per
month; workers used to get two. And most Saturdays will be paid at
straight time; time-and-a-half kicks in only after forty hours per
week.

Aching Bodies

Johnson-Avery said the preferred, lighter jobs aren’t assigned by
seniority. Instead, many go to lower-paid temps who work for
contractors (and weren’t eligible to vote).

In February the Department of Labor recovered $438,625
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wages, unpaid bonuses, and damages for two workers who were fired
after requesting family leave.

Injuries are common. Workers stand on their feet for ten to twelve
hours, without breaks for long stretches of time, while working at a
pace of seventy-two seconds per car.

Garrard was a steelworker before he was hired at Mercedes in 2004.
“I thought I was a pretty tough guy,” he said. “I did hard work.
I came here and started turning little screws—hundreds of thousands
of them a day. My hands have never hurt so bad in my life. I go home:
I’m soaking hands in Epsom salts and hot baths.”

“We’re making high-end vehicles, and the company is pretending
they can’t afford to give us raises and good health insurance,”
said Lett. “The idea they’ll just nickel and dime us because
we’re in a low cost of living area is a slap to the face. You guys
made $18 billion with a ‘b’ in profits last year!”

Favorable Conditions

Nationally, the conditions are ripe for organizing: historically low
unemployment, a tight labor market, high approval ratings for unions,
a National Labor Relations Board that is following the letter of the
law for once, and a reinvigorated labor movement that’s showing what
union power can achieve.

The UAW in particular is riding a wave of momentum
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winning landmark contracts at the Big three automakers last fall. The
UAW spent $152 million on strike benefits
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workers in 2023 — compared to the $116 million the entire labor
movement spent in 2022, according to union researcher Chris Bohner.

Mercedes workers debated on Facebook the UAW’s April contract at
Daimler Truck in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia. Mercedes is
Daimler’s largest shareholder. After coming to the brink of a
strike,​​ Daimler workers won a deal
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ends wage tiers, boosts wages 25 percent over four years, adds a
cost-of-living adjustment based on the formula of the Big Three
contracts, and creates, for the first time, profit sharing.

Mercedes has made $156 billion in profits over the last decade,
according to the UAW.

“You hear about what UPS Teamsters got in their contract, what the
Big Three autoworkers won in their strike, you see what happened with
Volkswagen in Tennessee, and Daimler Truck in North Carolina — these
are all huge wins,” said Lewis.

“And people are seeing this and looking at their workplace. You come
to work at Mercedes and their slogan is, ‘The best or nothing.’
They carry that legacy of the best for everything, except for their
workers.”

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Luis Feliz Leon is a staff writer and organizer with Labor Notes.

Jane Slaughter is a former editor of _Labor Notes_, a coauthor of
_Secrets of a Successful Organizer_, and a member of the Detroit DSA
chapter.

* UAW Loss at Mercedes; Anti-unionism in Alabama; Organizing;
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