Workers in the Mercedes-Benz plant outside of Tuscaloosa are voting on whether to join the U.A.W. Southern politicians, depending on low-wage workers to fill their factory jobs, are in an uproar. Republican governors of six states (Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Tennessee) issued a statement in April criticizing unions as “special interests looking to come into our state and threaten our jobs and the values we live by.”
The values they live by evidently include keeping workers at the mercy of large corporations and forbidding them to bargain as a group. Alabama’s Speaker of the state’s House of Representatives called the U.A.W. “leeches” and pushed through a law that denies funding to any company that voluntary recognizes a union.
Mercedes has already fired workers who supported the union.
Information for this article was taken in part from Jack Ewing, “Turning Point As Auto Union Eyes Alabama, New York Times, (May 17, 2024), pp. A1, A20. Anger and disgust with the South are my own personal views
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