Alabama Mercedes workers to file for union election with NLRB

Workers at the Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama, will file this week for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board. 

The employees at the SUV plant are hoping to join the United Auto Workers, which have been aggressively organizing at the Mercedes factory since the start of this year. 

UAW leadership didn’t give a timeline for when an election would take place.

If a union election is successful at the plant, it could add 6,000 workers to UAW membership and formally unionize Mercedes’ only U.S.-based factory. 

The announcement comes weeks after UAW announced that a majority of workers at the Alabama plant had signed union cards, signaling to the union that it was time to file for an election. 

Any union election at the plant will likely come directly after the other UAW election scheduled for this spring at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga, Tennessee plant, where workers filed for a union election last month.

Workers at the VW plant are scheduled to vote for union representation on April 17. 

While the UAW attests that the majority of the workers at Mercedes and VW’s plants want a union, a victory isn’t a sure thing. The union has tried in the past to unionize nonunion shops and failed.

If the UAW is successful this time, unionization efforts could pop up around the country at other non-union factories run by Tesla, Toyota, Hyundai or Nissan.