BREAKING: Mercedes Workers in Alabama Vote Down a Union

The Mercedes plant near Tuscaloosa rejected a union one month after a historic victory at Volkswagen in Tennessee.

By Paul Blest, More Perfect Union

Workers at the largest Mercedes-Benz plant in the United States rejected a bid to join the United Auto Workers, according to a Friday tally of the votes by the National Labor Relations Board. 

After nearly 4,700 ballots had been counted — a strong turnout of approximately 90 percent — the vote against the union was winning by a 56 percent to 44 percent margin. The vote at the plant near Tuscaloosa follows last month’s vote at a Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, where more than 70 percent of workers voted to unionize.

The loss for the union comes after Mercedes mounted an aggressive counter-campaign against the UAW, including implementing a new profit-sharing model for workers at the plant and abruptly replacing former President Michael Göbel with Federico Kochlowski, who has made overtures to workers and asked for a “chance” to make changes at Mercedes. 

Kirk Garner, who has worked at Mercedes for 25 years, attributed the loss to “anti-union persuaders” — consultants — who targeted undecided voters. “I’m disappointed. Evidently, some of the people who supported us flipped, due to the anti-union campaign,” Garner said. 

Rick Webster, another union supporter, described the company’s anti-union communications as a “barrage, nonstop,” of messages through text, email, and Mercedes’ employee app. In a press conference following the vote, UAW President Shawn Fain said that Volkswagen in Chattanooga was more “neutral” than Mercedes ultimately was in Vance. 

In the wake of last year’s historic strike at the Detroit Three automakers of GM, Ford, and Stellantis, auto companies with non-union plants in the U.S. boosted some wages and benefits in an attempt to stave off the renewed drive to organize the South. Mercedes, which turned a profit of nearly $16 billion last year, has ended two-tier pay, converted temporary employees to permanent status, and implemented a new bonus system; workers received a $700 “performance bonus” last month. (Workers at the plant build SUVs, some of the company’s best-selling vehicles.) 

Donquaries Ragan, who has worked at the plant since 2014, said he was “really surprised” that the vote didn’t go for the UAW.

“They don’t care about our time with our families,” he told More Perfect Union. “I’m not saying they’re a bad company all around because they’re not but certain stuff they do is very questionable…the average apartment around here is $900-$1,200 dollars a month. You got your light bill, water bill, groceries. It’s rough. I feel like they could do a lot better with the wages.”

Others weren’t persuaded by the UAW’s gains with U.S. auto manufacturers and the win at Volkswagen last month. A worker who voted against the union told Birmingham-area TV station WVTM that the UAW were “rainbow sellers” who wouldn’t be able to deliver on promises of better wages and benefits. 

"I feel like I'm being paid enough and fair,” Moe Akl, who has worked at the plant for five years, told WVTM. “If I want to make more money, I can go join some of the education they have to make and advance myself to make more money.” 

Nick Saban, the retired football coach at the University of Alabama and the owner of nine dealerships (including several Mercedes dealerships) in Alabama and elsewhere, also said in a statement over the weekend that he does not “personally endorse the UAW or its campaign.” 

Saban made those remarks after an ad from More Perfect Union Solidarity publicized past Saban comments praising the UAW for its gains for auto workers. (Disclosure: More Perfect Union Solidarity is a 501(c)(5) that is the labor organizing arm of More Perfect Union.)

Asked what the loss means for the UAW’s national organizing campaign, Fain said: “We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing.” 

‘You can run, but you can’t hide’

As in Tennessee, workers in Alabama faced immense political pressure to vote against unionizing. After the UAW launched a $40 million effort to organize non-union auto and electric vehicle plants mostly in the South, Gov. Kay Ivey embarked on an all-out marketing and public relations push decrying the unionization effort as being against “Alabama values.” 

The day voting at the Vance plant began, Ivey signed a new law, based on model legislation from the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council, banning state subsidies for companies that voluntarily recognize unions after a majority of workers sign cards authorizing union representation—instead forcing a drawn-out, costly National Labor Relations Board election. Alabama state and local lawmakers, meanwhile, have given the auto industry at least $1.6 billion in incentives and subsidies since 1993, with few protections for workers.

Mercedes workers who spoke to More Perfect Union in the lead-up to the election said they were motivated to support the union by the prospect of stability and better work-life balance.

"I know my coworkers...they got family waiting at home. They got events they want to go to with their children, but they can't because they're always crammed in there," Austin Brooks, a 20-year-old worker who has been at Mercedes for two years, told More Perfect Union before the vote count Friday.  

"My main thing, I want healthcare,” Brooks said. “Right now, if I give my 20 years [and retire], all I get right now is a pat on the back and a goodbye…I [would] have no insurance, nothing to my name or in my hands.” 

Other workers credited the contract gains at the Big Three with getting workers to this point in the first place. 

"The results [of last year’s strike] are what sold people....there was a fire and [last year’s strikes] just ignited it," Rob Lett, who has worked at Mercedes for nearly a decade, told More Perfect Union before the vote. "This is literally the first vote we've ever gotten to, and it's not because people weren't interested. There was always this doubt, or there was always something holding people back.”

“I think that brought those barriers down and made people say, 'Hey, there's no excuses now, period. We can do this,’” he added. 

Autoworkers in Alabama may not be finished. The UAW said earlier this year that 30 percent of workers at a Hyundai plant in Montgomery had signed cards showing their support for union representation. (Perhaps anticipating a push for the union, the company announced a 25 percent raise for workers at the plant in November.)  

And as for the Mercedes plant, Garner indicated this wasn’t the end of workers fighting for a union. “We’ll probably wait three or four months and then start signing [authorization cards] again,” Garner said. “We’ll keep doing it until we get [the union].”

In the press conference, Fain praised the “courageous” workers who took the campaign to a vote, and said this wasn’t the end of the effort to organize the plant.

“This isn’t failure. This isn’t fatal,” Fain said. “This is a bump in the road. We will be back in Vance, and I think we’ll have a different result down the road.” 

“Like they say, ‘You can run but you can’t hide,’” Garner added. “We’re still going to be here and still gonna be active, and we’re still going to be talking to people. And we’re still going to file next year.”