Slowly across the American South….
Union’s make gains…..
A majority of workers at the largest Mercedes-Benz plant in the U.S. have signed union cards in support of joining the UAW the United Auto Workers (UAW).
The announcement marks another significant milestone by the union in its campaign to organize the auto plants of the traditionally right-to-work Southeast.
“There comes a time when enough is enough,” plant worker Jeremy Kimbrell said in a statement. “Now is that time.”
Workers cited a list of grievances that echoed those from other factories where the UAW has gained a foothold. They said in a statement that their pay had stagnated while the company made record profits, and that management had replaced full-time jobs with temporary workers.
“These same temporary workers then worked for up to eight years before receiving full time jobs, [and] our management gave us a 42 cent raise over a six year period while making record profits,” the plant workers wrote.
“And these same record profits weren’t enough to prevent Mercedes from imposing an unfair two-tier pay scale just as our children were entering the workforce,” they added.
The news that more than half of workers at the plant, located in Vance, Ala., had signed union cards comes just after a similar announcement by workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., earlier this month.
It also follows the public coming-out of the union drive at the Hyundai plant in Montgomery, Ala., where 10,000 autoworkers across 14 other nonunion car companies had signed union cards. And last week, the UAW itself announced it was committing $40 million to organize automobile and battery plant workers….