Workers at Mercedes-Benz in Alabama voted against unionizing with the United Auto Workers on Friday. Voter participation was high, with roughly 4,700 votes cast out of 5,075 eligible employees, and 56 percent voted against unionizing.
The New York Times describes the loss as a “stunning blow,” but it shouldn’t be stunning. Despite the nonstop positive coverage it has received, the UAW still lost members last year. Nissan employees in New Jersey voted to decertify the UAW in April, after having been represented by the union for four years. The U.S. total unionization rate fell to a record low in 2023, at only 10 percent of the entire workforce and only 6 percent of the private-sector workforce. If there’s a trend in the U.S. regarding organized labor, it is to leave unions behind, as it has been for decades.
Yet when Volkswagen workers in Tennessee voted to unionize with the UAW in April, media coverage was talking about a surge in unions. This is all part of an organizing campaign by the UAW that involves announcing whenever it gets 30 percent of workers to sign union cards (which does not necessarily mean they support unionization), which the media obediently report as major news.
“The mood at an UAW gathering is moody, somber and largely silent,” reported AL.com as the Mercedes-Benz election results were coming out. “Few workers are present and most of those who are not waiting in silence are the journalists waiting to report on what looks to be the failure to organize Alabama Mercedes workers.”
The Tennessee vote was unusual; the Alabama vote is more of the same. The UAW is a corrupt organization that is still operating under a court-appointed monitor following a yearslong federal investigation that resulted in several top leaders being convicted of fraud in 2020. Most workers want no part of it.
It uses members’ dues for progressive political activism that has nothing to do with autoworkers, such as calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. And many of the students who were occupying college campuses over Gaza are UAW members, since about 100,000 of the UAW’s 370,000 members are in higher education. About the same number of UAW members work for the University of California system as work for General Motors.
Speaking about the Alabama vote, AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler said, “We see it not as a loss, but a temporary setback. Workers will persevere no matter what it takes.” She’s right, they will — without her.