German Unions are Working with UAW to Organize Auto Industry


Auto factories in the South are facing an onslaught of organizing drives from the desperate United Auto Workers’ labor bosses.  Now their efforts are being boosted by German auto workers, for their own selfish reasons.   Neal E. Boudette has the story in the Wall Street Journal.

In its latest drive to organize foreign-owned auto plants in the South, the United Auto Workers union suddenly is getting help from an unexpected source—German workers concerned about their own jobs.

Daimler AG’s union has joined the UAW’s drive to organize the company’s Mercedes-Benz assembly plant in Mississippi, sending members to urge American workers to push for representation.  Volkswagen AG labor officials also are aiding the UAW’s effort to represent workers at its Tennessee factory.

The Germans believe companies and their workers are better off represented by a trade union. Some also see the nonunion plants as a threat to German jobs and are pushing for Mercedes-Benz workers in the U.S., India and elsewhere to organize.

As Mercedes-Benz decides where to build future vehicles, German workers fear high-cost, union plants in Germany will be bypassed in favor of Vance, Miss., which is one of the newest and most cost-competitive Daimler plants in the world due to the weak dollar and nonunion workforce.

“When there is one plant with no union, the company can do whatever it wants,” said Helmut Lense, a former labor representative on Daimler’s supervisory board, the equivalent of a U.S. board of directors. Mr. Lense now works to foster cooperation between auto unions globally.

In few places are these international ties having a clearer impact than in the U.S., where the UAW says it is close to organizing its first foreign-owned plant in the South because of the extra push from German workers and IG Metall. A breakthrough in Tennessee or Alabama would be a historic turn for the union and manufacturing in the union-averse South.

The southern auto plants are prized because they are expanding, sometimes at the expense of the auto maker’s home-market factories. In Vance, Miss., Mercedes-Benz next year will begin making a redesigned version of Mercedes’ C-Class sedan—a vehicle that up to now has been exported from Germany. When the plan to move C-Class production was announced in 2009, 12,000 Daimler workers protested in Sindelfingen, the main production site of the current version of the car.

The company, he added, is “happy” with the current environment in which workers aren’t unionized. “We have at team oriented workforce in Tuscaloosa. We have open communication and a good culture of collaboration between us and the team workers,” he said.

A key change came in 2009. Daimler then decided to wind down production of its top selling C-Class at its giant Sindelfingen, Germany, plant. A new version of the car, due in 2014, was to be shifted to factories in Mississippi and Bremen, Germany.

Workers walked out of the Sindelfingen plant. One demonstration brought 12,000 workers into the streets, some carrying signs saying “C-Klasse—No No Amerika!” Mr. Lense said the C-Class decision caused Sindelfingen workers to fear for their jobs. Daimler later agreed to forgo involuntary layoffs until at least 2020.

“There are a lot of potential vehicles that could be built over here,” said Charlie Haywood, an Alabama plant worker who is opposed to the union said, “When we got the C-Class, IG Metall was very upset and they don’t want it to happen again. So if we unionize, then [they think] there will be a level playing field.”

In Tennessee, the UAW is benefiting from German union support for its efforts to represent VW workers. VW’s German labor leaders are supporting efforts to bring a works council, a committee of employees who negotiate work rules and conditions with management, to the factory.

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