TUSCALOOSA, Alabama — A lot of workers at two Mercedes-Benz factories near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, voted on Friday not to join the United Auto Workers. This was a setback for the union’s efforts to organize plants in the South, which has a history of not having unions.
Unofficial results released by the UAW show that 56% of workers voted against the union. The UAW had people watching the vote as it was counted by the National Labor Relations Board.
About 5,200 people who worked at an auto-assembly plant and a battery factory in and around Vance, Alabama, not far from Tuscaloosa, were able to vote.
The loss makes it take longer for the union to organize 150,000 workers at more than a dozen auto factories in the South that are not unionized.
A month ago, the UAW won a big victory at Volkswagen’s VOW, +0.57% VOW3, +0.04% VWAGY, +0.85% VWAPY, +0.15% assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tenn. This time, the votes were held at our two Mercedes factories. In that election, most VW workers chose to join the UAW because they thought they would get much higher pay and other benefits.
Before that, the UAW had a hard time getting workers to join at auto plants in the South that were not unionized. This is because workers in the South have traditionally been less interested in joining unions than workers in Michigan and other industrial Midwest states.
A win at the Mercedes plants would have been a huge win for the union. For a long time, it has been hard for the union to beat the benefits that Southern states have given foreign automakers, like tax breaks, lower labor costs, and workers who are not in the union.
A few governors in the South have said that workers who join unions might lose their jobs over time because auto companies would have to pay more.
But the UAW has been in a better position than it was in the past. After going up against Detroit’s “Big Three” automakers—General Motors (GM), Stellantis (STLA), and Ford F (-0.81%)—last fall, it won a race in Chattanooga and got big new contracts. The workers there got 33% pay raises and signed contracts that will end in 2028.
GM production workers who make about $36 an hour now will make almost $43 an hour by the end of their contract. They will also get checks every year for sharing in the company’s profits. Some workers say that Mercedes raised the pay of its best production workers to $34 an hour to keep the UAW from coming in.
Soon after the Detroit contract was approved by workers, UAW President Shawn Fain announced a plan to organize around 150,000 workers at more than a dozen nonunion plants. Most of these plants are run by foreign automakers with plants in Southern states. To add to that, the UAW is also after Tesla’s TSLA, +1.50% nonunion U.S. factories.
The union vote at the Mercedes plants was the first one for the UAW there. It turned out that the union had a harder time in Alabama than in Tennessee, where they had lost two votes very close and knew the workers at the factory. As a way to try to scare workers, the UAW says Mercedes uses management and anti-union consultants.
In a statement released Thursday, Mercedes denied getting in the way of workers’ efforts to join a union or retaliating against them. The company said it was looking forward to giving all workers a secret ballot vote on unionization and giving them “access to the information necessary to make an informed choice.”
A professor emeritus at Wayne State University’s business school who has studied the UAW for a long time said that if the union had won, it would have given it a huge boost as it tries to organize more factories.
Masters said in an interview before the results came in that he thought the UAW’s leadership would not be stopped, even if they lost. He said they would likely look into legal options. One way to do this would be to tell the National Labor Relations Board that Mercedes’ actions made it impossible for union members to have a fair election.
Even though the UAW lost, Masters said that it wouldn’t wipe out its efforts to get more members. Masters said that the union needs to figure out why it didn’t get more than 50% of the votes, since it said that a “supermajority” of workers signed cards allowing the election. The UAW wouldn’t say how many or what percentage of workers signed up.
People who don’t work at Mercedes plants might start to wonder why their coworkers voted against the union after this loss. Masters said he doesn’t think it will slow down the UAW, though.
“I think they should put in more effort, think more deeply, and try to figure out what went wrong,” he said.
If the UAW is able to eventually get contracts like the ones it won in Detroit and set up nonunion plants at Hyundai 005380, -1.21%, Kia 000270, -1.74%, Nissan 7201, -0.52% NSANY, -0.31%, Toyota 7203, +2.51% TM, +1.92%, and Honda 7267, +1.08% HMC, +1.28%, more automakers will have to pay the same amount for labor. That might cause automakers to raise the prices of their cars.
Some Mercedes workers say the company was rude to them before the UAW started organizing. After that, they say, the company gave them pay raises, got rid of a lower pay level for new hires, and even fired the plant CEO.
