Mercedes-Benz Alabama Workers Ask NLRB for Union Vote

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The UAW said today that a super-majority of Mercedes-Benz workers have filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for a vote to join the progressive union help create and sustain the American middle class. With more than 5000 workers at the Mercedes plant outside Tuscaloosa, Alabama, this is the second group of Southern autoworkers to call for a union election. They want it before May or in less than three weeks. Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tenn., filed their election in mid-March and will have their vote to join the UAW April 17-19. Mercedes management is running an aggressive anti-union campaign, the UAW maintains.*

“We are standing up for every worker in Alabama. 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,” said Jeremy Kimbrell, a measurement machine operator at Mercedes.

“We’re going to make Mercedes better with this vote,” said Jacob Ryan, a KVP team member at Mercedes. “Right now, the company keeps losing good people because they force them to work Saturdays at the last second, to take shifts that mess with their family lives. And the only choice people have is to take it or quit. With the union, we’ll have a voice for fair schedules that keep workers at Mercedes.”

Energy appears to be on the side of the union. Alabama has been a so-called “right to work state (for less?) since 2016, meaning that union-membership is not required for employment. By late February, less than two months after Mercedes workers went public with their drive to join the UAW, a majority of them had signed union cards.

The Mercedes workers are part of the growing national movement of non-union autoworkers organizing to join the UAW in the wake of the historic Stand Up Strike victory at the Big Three auto companies last fall. More than 10,000 non-union autoworkers have signed union cards in recent months, with public campaigns launched at Mercedes, Volkswagen, Hyundai in Montgomery, Ala., and Toyota in Troy, Mo. Workers at least two dozen other facilities are also actively organizing. The main event in this fight will likely be at Tesla in AutoInformed’s view with Twitter owner Elon Musk, mustering all the anti-worker tweets he can.

*AutoInformed on

• UAW Files Anti-Labor Charges in Germany Against Mercedes
• VW Chattanooga UAW Vote Set for April 17-19
• Volkswagen Raises Pay of US Plant Workers to Resist UAW
• UAW Freeloaders – Hyundai Ups Wages of US Factory Workers
• UAW Sweep – Stellantis Contract Approved by Members
• Another Tesla Software Recall – Pedestrian Warnings