The Patriot Post® · UAW Beatdown in Alabama
Just last month, a gloating United Auto Workers president, Shawn Fain, predicted a domino effect of expansion across the Deep South after workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga finally voted (the third vote in a decade) in favor of unionization. As Fain boasted that day, “You all moved the mountain.”
Well, that “mountain” — the right of workers to make their own employment decisions without getting marching orders from a union boss — remains unmoved in Alabama. Workers at two Mercedes-Benz plants near Tuscaloosa voted down unionization by a significant margin, 56% to 44%.
The UAW’s landslide victory in Chattanooga now looks more like an anomaly than any unionization groundswell. Of the two Mercedes plants’ 5,100 employees, 4,700 cast ballots, with 2,642 voting against joining the UAW.
Rather than respecting the workers’ will, Fain immediately threw shade on the election outcome, claiming that Mercedes engaged in intimidation and illegal behavior. He further promised that the UAW was not going away. “We’ve been here before,” he stated, “and we’re going to continue on, and we’re going to win. And I think we’ll have a different result down the road, and I look forward to that.”
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
One of the differences between the results in Chattanooga and Tuscaloosa likely concerned the companies themselves. Volkswagen didn’t really raise an objection to unionization, likely indicating that executives saw it as an overall positive for the company. Furthermore, Volkswagen’s plant is heavily invested in building EVs and depends on the continued promotion of Joe Biden’s green economy agenda. Workers were persuaded by the promise of higher wages and what they saw as added protection for their jobs amidst declining EV sales.
To that point, Mercedes-Benz’s Tuscaloosa plants, which manufacture internal combustion engine vehicles, hybrids, and electric vehicles in their SUV line, recently decided to scale back on an all-electric future. Moreover, upwards of two-thirds of the vehicles produced at the plants are exported. So, unlike Volkswagen, Mercedes campaigned against the UAW’s unionization efforts to keep costs down.
Fain also used Mercedes’s efforts to paint the company as infringing on the workers’ will. “Obviously, Volkswagen was more neutral, and that wasn’t the case here,” Fain complained. On the other hand, Mercedes said that the company looks forward to “continuing to work directly with our team members so they can build superior vehicles for the world.”
Alabama Republican Governor Kay Ivey praised the outcome of the vote, saying, “Alabama is not Michigan, and we are not the Sweet Home to the UAW. We urge the UAW to respect the results of this secret ballot election.”
In the South, the biggest obstacle against unionization and the UAW in particular may be the spirit of independence from some large Northern organization, which many Southern workers find troublesome and even offensive. Furthermore, the UAW’s promises of higher wages and better benefits without actually putting those promises down in writing smacked of manipulation, not goodwill.
Finally, there’s the matter of culture. Southern folks who have long been ridiculed as backward and slow by their self-anointed “betters” up North will be disinclined toward Northern values. Culture matters to people, and dismissing it will get one nowhere in a hurry.