Alabama Mercedes Workers Ditched the Old Organizing Playbook
The United Auto Workers have tried and failed to organize Mercedes-Benz’s Alabama plant several times before. With their current union drive, workers have thrown out the old organizing playbook — and their worker-led strategy is showing early signs of success.
The exterior of the Visitors Center at the Mercedes-Benz SUV manufacturing plant in Vance, Alabama. (Jeffrey Greenberg / Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Autoworkers have had several organizing campaigns at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama. They all follow a similar pattern: frustrated workers decide there’s enough energy for change in the plant and start talking about organizing.
We reach out to a union, the United Auto Workers (UAW), and meet with a staff organizer. They lead us through the steps they’ve all been taught for decades — a playbook that hasn’t worked for us at Mercedes.
Over the years we got frustrated — not only with the company, but also with the ways that past organizers told us union campaigns had to operate. We would often say to UAW reps, “We don’t know how to win, but we know how to lose, and you do too.”
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