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The United Auto Workers union said it has signed up 30% of employees at a Mercedes-Benz Group AG plant in Alabama, a key step for an audacious new organizing campaign that’s targeting over a dozen carmakers at once.
The UAW’s strategy calls for workers leading the organizing to go public with their efforts once the 30% threshold is met. The Mercedes plant is the second to reach this milestone, following a Volkswagen AG site in Tennessee last month.
Fresh off record contracts with Detroit’s three big automakers, UAW President Shawn Fain in November announced a goal to organize nearly 150,000 non-union workers at 13 companies. The campaign is a pivotal test for the union, which today represents less than a third of the number of workers it did in the 1970s. Other carmakers being targeted include Tesla Inc., BMW AG and Nissan Motor Co.
The UAW says it’s signed up more than 1,500 workers at the Mercedes site. If the union signs up 50% of workers at a plant, it will hold a rally there with Fain. At 70%, it will seek formal recognition and collective bargaining.
“In the past, people didn’t know if we had a pathway forward here,” Jeremy Kimbrell, a two-decade Mercedes employee, said in an emailed statement from the UAW. “Now everybody’s coming together and seeing what the pathway is, and it’s through the union.”
Past UAW campaigns at Tesla, Volkswagen and Nissan ended in defeat or failed to bear fruit.
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