The United Auto Workers faces a key test in the South with upcoming vote at Alabama Mercedes plant

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — After two decades at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama, Brett Garrard said he will “not fall for the lies” and will vote for a union.

The company has repeatedly promised to improve wages and working conditions, but Garrard said those promises have not materialized.

“Mercedes claims that we are a family, one team, one fight. But over the years I have learned one thing: this is not how I treat my family,” Garrard said.

A month after workers at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee voted overwhelmingly to unionize, the United Auto Workers are aiming for a major victory at Mercedes-Benz in Alabama. More than 5,000 workers at the Vance plant and a nearby battery factory will vote next week on whether to join the union.

A win at Mercedes would be a big prize for the UAW, which is trying to break union resistance in the Deep South, where states have lured foreign automakers with big tax breaks, lower labor costs and a non-union workforce.

Garrard, 50, and other workers who support the union told The Associated Press that their concerns include stagnant wages that have not kept pace with inflation, insurance costs, irregular work shifts and the feeling of being disposable in a factory where they assemble luxury vehicles that can. costs more than $100,000.

“Yes, we’re Southern autoworkers, but we make an autoworker’s wage,” Garrard said.

Mercedes currently advertises a starting hourly wage of $23.50 for full-time production workers, with the salary reaching about $34 over four years, according to a state worker training website. Several workers said the company recently raised wages just to try to stave off pressure from unions.

Jacob Ryan, 34, has worked for Mercedes for ten years. He started as a temp worker at about $17 an hour for “the exact same work” before being hired full-time. Ryan, who says inflation is eroding his employees’ salaries, says he pays nearly $1,200 each month for his son’s child care and his daughter’s after-school care.

“None of it goes to the employees. We’re stuck where we were and paying a lot more for everything,” Ryan said.

Ryan said the union drive is getting more attention this time after the UAW won more generous pay for workers at the three Detroit automakers.

After a bitter series of strikes against Ford, General Motors and Stellantis last fall, UAW members reaped big economic gains under new contracts. For example, top production workers at GM now earn $36 an hour, or about $75,000 a year before overtime, benefits and profit sharing, which surpassed $10,000 this year. By the end of the contract in 2028, top GM employees would earn $42.95 per hour, about $89,000 per year.

Mercedes-Benz US International Inc. said in a statement that the company looks forward to all employees having the opportunity to cast a secret ballot “and having access to the information needed to make an informed choice” about unionization.

The company said it is focused on “providing a safe and supportive work environment” for employees.

“We believe that open and direct communication with our team members is the best path to ensuring continued success,” the statement said.

Employee Melissa Howell, 56, said when she casts her vote next week — voting begins Monday and ends Friday — she will vote against the union.

Howell, a quality team leader who has worked at the Mercedes plant for 19 years, is suspicious of the UAW after a bribery and embezzlement scandal that landed two former union presidents in prison. Growing up in Michigan, she heard family members who worked at automakers speak poorly of the union.

Mercedes, she said, treated workers poorly for a few years, aiding the union’s organizing efforts. But the company began to improve conditions after the UAW began recruiting in recent months, she said. The company abolished a lower wage level for new employees. The plant’s old CEO was replaced by a new one who walks the factory floor and listens to workers, she said.

“I feel like the improvements the company is making are making people think long and hard,” Howell said.

David Johnston, 26, who wore a “Union YES” button at a rally outside a church in Tuscaloosa, said he thinks the momentum is turning in the union’s favor.

“Everyone has confidence in it. Everyone knows we’re going to win,” Johnston said.

Organizing workers at Mercedes will be more difficult than at the Volkswagen plant in Tennessee, largely because the UAW has not previously recruited enough workers to earn a voice at the Mercedes plant, said Art Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University.

But Volkswagen’s landslide victory in the factory’s third vote since 2014 gives the union a major boost heading into next week’s election, Wheaton said. At Volkswagen, the union had experience with factory recruitment and knew workers from previous organizing drives that ended with small losses, he said. A UAW win at Mercedes would be a bigger win than at Volkswagen because it would come on the first try.

Wheaton said he wouldn’t be surprised if the UAW wins at Mercedes, “but it’s harder when you don’t have the same infrastructure.”

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey and five other Southern governors have urged workers to oppose the union, saying it could threaten jobs and the growth of the region’s auto industry to obstruct.

Ivey said in a statement that Mercedes has “positively impacted” tens of thousands of Alabama families since the plant opened in 1993, but the union “ensures that money from hardworking Alabama families ends up in the UAW’s bank account.”

The vote in Alabama follows two high-profile labor battles in the state: an effort to unionize an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer and the end of a nearly two-year strike at Warrior Met Coal, where miners said they were taking pay cuts . and benefits several years ago to keep the mines open, but did not see these benefits restored as the company regained its footing.

Former U.S. Sen. Doug Jones, the last Democrat to hold office in Alabama, said unions have a long history of helping build the state’s middle class.

“This vote could be a turning point for Alabama for organized labor, which is already seeing an increase in membership,” said Jones, the son of a steelworker and grandson of a miner.