In the first setback of its ambitious campaign to unionize 150,000 autoworkers, the UAW lost its effort to unionize an Alabama Mercedes-Benz plant on Friday. This was despite two-thirds of workers at the plant signing union cards.
The proximate cause of failure here is obviously union busting. As noted previously, the union campaign here was subject to such significant union busting that both unfair labor practices and a complaint against Mercedes-Benz in Germany were filed by the UAW. These charges are currently in the process of being litigated. But there were other major sources of interference during the campaign, including a letter spearheaded by Alabama governor Kay Ivey (and signed by a number of other Southern Republican governors) that called on workers to reject the UAW. There is also some evidence that the anti-union campaign severely outworked the UAW's on-the-ground campaign in the final weeks and flipped votes in doing so.
But: unionization in the South, partially because of factors like this and partially for other social reasons, has always been incredibly difficult. Even the win at Volkswagen earlier this year was the culmination of a decade of efforts at the plant and required three previous failed votes before breaking through. Previous big unionization efforts in the South have also tended to lose by two-to-one or worse margins, such as a UAW thumping of that margin at Nissan in 2017. All things equal, the 56-44 result here is certainly disappointing—particularly given the amount of support expressed for UAW in terms of union cards—but not unexpected by any means. The UAW certainly is not giving up on its efforts to unionize here, nor on its efforts to continue unionizing other plants. It's also possible (although not immediately likely) that the union busting campaign here actually results in Mercedes being ordered to bargain with the UAW anyways under the Cemex bargaining order standard.
Labor Notes also has a good piece out today with some quick goods and bads of the campaign and what to learn from it; definitely worth a look if you are aspiring to form a union for things to do and things to avoid.
