Alabama Mercedes Plant Workers Have Sour Greeting for Organizers
By JEFF BALL Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
VANCE, Ala. -- The United Auto Workers union is finding that organizing in the South is an uphill fight -- even on what was supposed to be a level playing field.
This past fall, in contract talks with DaimlerChrysler AG in Detroit, the union won what was hailed as a major victory when the auto maker promised to remain "neutral" as the UAW tried to organize its Mercedes-Benz sport-utility-vehicle factory in rural Alabama. Today, the organizing drive is faltering as the UAW discovers how tough it is to translate its power at a Midwestern bargaining table into results on Southern soil.
The union, which has failed to organize foreign-owned auto plants popping up across the South, saw the Mercedes factory as its best chance to gain a toehold in the region. Gaining that toehold has been a priority for UAW President Stephen Yokich, who has ratcheted up organizing efforts in an attempt to stem a decadeslong decline in membership. So, around the time it signed its contract with DaimlerChrysler, the UAW sent more than a dozen of its troops to Vance, population of about 750, to help the handful of organizers who had been in town for months.
Most have returned home. One of the remaining organizers at the UAW's Vance headquarters, a storefront between an insurance office and a gas station, concedes the union is "slowing down" its Mercedes drive.
The UAW faces two problems as it tries to organize the Mercedes plant as well as several suppliers' factories nearby: contented, well-paid workers and an antiunion campaign organized and bankrolled largely by a local-business community that, unlike DaimlerChrysler, hasn't obligated itself to be neutral.
'Not Here'
Wade Smith and Tim Earnest personify those hurdles. In 1999, Mr. Smith, 32 years old, made $100,000 "plus a little change" working at the Mercedes factory, albeit with plenty of overtime. That is more than enough for him to lease one of the luxury SUVs he builds. "There are places that need a union," he says. "But not here." Mr. Earnest, 40, wanted his Mercedes job so badly that he initially commuted 76 miles each way to the plant and used his paycheck to buy a bigger house closer to Vance. "This is the hottest ticket in the state," he says.
For months, the UAW has been trying to get Mercedes workers to sign cards requesting unionization. Labor leaders in Alabama say they typically try for 65% to ensure they will win a vote even if some workers change their minds. One pamphlet distributed by the UAW says as of late September, 285 Mercedes workers -- about 22% of the 1,300 who would be eligible to join the union -- had pledged support.
It isn't clear how many workers the union has signed up since, and UAW officials in Detroit won't comment on their Alabama drive. The union is "getting a cold response," says Doug Gulock, president of a UAW local that represents employees at a DaimlerChrysler parts plant in Huntsville, Ala. The plant, about 140 miles north of the Mercedes factory, was initially opened by the former Chrysler Corp. Adds Kenneth "Wa Wa" Walters, president of a United Steelworkers of America local that represents workers at a tire plant in Tuscaloosa, Ala., about a dozen miles from Vance: "It's kind of hard to organize a guy driving a Mercedes to work every day."
Gentle Effort
The UAW has worked hard, tailoring its marketing to woo union-wary employees in this right-to-work state. Originally, the UAW announced its presence in Vance with two billboards along the highway in front of the Mercedes plant that featured the face of UAW President Yokich and a toll-free number: (800) 2-GET-UAW. Now it has replaced them with billboards featuring a softer pitch: a color photo of toddlers who attend a child-care center at Mr. Gulock's Huntsville plant, along with this home-spun message: "UAW/DaimlerChrysler: Building a Better Alabama."
The union also has tried the personal approach. Mr. Smith, who like Mr. Earnest is active in a workers' group opposed to the UAW, says union organizers invited him to fly up to Detroit to talk things over with top UAW officials. He declined.
For their part, workers who support the UAW say although they are well paid, they confront favoritism from plant managers that they believe a union contract would stop. "It's almost a good-ol'-boy system" in decisions such as promotions, says one worker who endorses the UAW but doesn't want his name used. "Fair and consistent company policies" is one of the primary benefits a UAW pamphlet argues Mercedes workers would get from unionization. Others, the pamphlet says, include improvements in the plant's quality of vehicles -- a way to protect workers' jobs for the long term -- and a voice in setting production standards that would allow workers to "protect our health and our families' lives."
The union seldom criticizes the company strongly, apparently leery of offending workers happy with the pay they get from DaimlerChrysler and its Alabama subsidiary, Mercedes Benz U.S. International Inc. "We appreciate our company, respect DaimlerChrysler and MBUSI and desire a true partnership with our company," one UAW leaflet stresses.
Conflicts Emerge
On one subject, however, the union's anger emerges: The UAW's belief that Mercedes managers are quietly trying to undermine its organizing effort through the workers' group that includes Messrs. Smith and Earnest. "The truth is, management is afraid to openly debate the union, and instead, is using workers to attack the UAW while professing neutrality," a UAW flier says.
People familiar with the situation say UAW officials also are angry because they believe they had DaimlerChrysler's commitment to accept a "card check," in which the Mercedes plant would become unionized without a formal election if a majority of workers signed cards. However, the company says it wants an official vote. Those people say Mr. Yokich, who sits on DaimlerChrysler's supervisory board, raised his complaints with company representatives at a meeting in Stuttgart, Germany, the company's headquarters, as recently as December, and is likely to do so again next month.
DaimlerChrysler officials continue to insist they are staying out of the fight. So far, the evidence appears to be on their side. In September, after a Mercedes worker who had been fired complained to the National Labor Relations Board that his dismissal was retribution for his involvement in the UAW's organizing campaign, the NLRB rejected his charge.
Although DaimlerChrysler officials aren't fighting the union, it is clear the UAW is facing opposition around Vance from a business community that regards Mercedes as its most treasured member. In August, the Economic Development Partnership of Alabama, a private statewide business group, created a "Right to Work Foundation" which hired Jay Cole, a Chicago consultant with a successful record of helping employers in Alabama and around the country fight unionization efforts.
Partnership officials told him that because of DaimlerChrysler's neutrality pledge, "no one was assisting the folks in the plant who didn't want to be unionized," Mr. Cole says. Mr. Cole flew to Alabama, where, he says, he spent several weeks with the group of workers who oppose the UAW. When the partnership's role in the Right to Work Foundation was publicized, the partnership disbanded the foundation in September, afraid of getting tagged with too nasty an antiunion image. Mr. Cole continued to work with the group of workers. Since then, Mr. Cole says, his bills were paid by the workers' group, which is called the Team Member Information Committee. The committee gets money partly from area business people, members say.
During several visits throughout the fall, Mr. Cole says, he explained to the group how unions typically organize. He also helped the group craft an anti-UAW message, which it publicizes through a newsletter and through weekly meetings in a mobile home in Vance. Part of the message is that, if the Mercedes workers unionize, jobs that come open at the plant could be given to UAW workers from elsewhere -- say, Detroit -- before they are offered to local workers. The UAW, in one of its pamphlets, is ambiguous about whether that could happen. If DaimlerChrysler workers elsewhere were laid off, they couldn't "bump Mercedes workers out of their jobs," but they "would have preferential hiring rights over people off the street," the union says. In any event, the antiunion group has incorporated its concern into a billboard that it has posted not far from the UAW's two highway signs. "NO UAW," it says. "Save our Jobs for Alabamians."
The UAW faces other kinds of opposition around Vance. In June, an NLRB panel upheld the decision of an administrative-law judge that a worker at a plant that supplies parts to the Mercedes factory illegally had been threatened by her boss because she was leading a UAW organizing drive there. The supplier itself wasn't involved in the NLRB dispute; the employee and her boss worked for a separate firm that provides the supplier with contract labor.
Still pending before the labor board are similar unlawful dismissal charges filed by the UAW against another Mercedes supplier, ZF Industries Inc., where the UAW lost a unionization vote in 1999. Officials at ZF, which makes axles for the Mercedes plant, decline to comment. An NLRB decision is expected within a few weeks.