When UAW vice president Nate Gooden promised in July that he would have the Vance, Alabama, DaimlerChrysler AG plant that builds Mercedes SUVS in the union fold within a year, most people thought he was crazy, the Detroit Free Press said.
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But, the paper said, the union – which has never ‘organised’ a foreign-owned plant after production began – has a game plan: the Chrysler Group side of the German car maker wants to close or sell parts and components plants, such as McGraw Glass and Detroit Axle in Detroit and an electronics plant in Huntsville, in northern Alabama.
In exchange for closing or selling those parts plants, Gooden wants to fill the new jobs at Vance with current UAW members, then hold an election so the union can represent all the hourly workers there, people familiar with current contract negotiations, told the Detroit Free Press, and that would break down the walls between the Mercedes and Chrysler Group units of DaimlerChrysler.
If management of the 10-year-old plant stays neutral on the matter, or gives the union its tacit endorsement, the union will win, Frederick Henry, president of UAW Local (branch) 1155, which represents 1,100 aircraft workers in Birmingham, Alabama, told the newspaper.
“If they’d stay really neutral – not throw out there a little something extra, like a few thousand dollars or discounts on some cars – I think it will happen,” he reportedly said.
A plant worker told the Detroit Free Press that the company treats its workers well and, though he had heard that the union has set its sights on the plant, it was not a conversation topic on the plant floor, at least not on the final trim line.
A well-travelled supplier executive, who did not want to be named, told the paper if letting the union into Vance fits into DaimlerChrysler’s larger goals, the union is liable to get the plant whether the well-respected plant manager or a majority of his current workers want it or not.
The executive told the Detroit Free Press there was no groundswell of union activism at DaimlerChrysler’s Freightliner plant in Cleveland, North Carolina, either, but the plant became unionised this year after DaimlerChrysler executives told local management to give the union a card-check election and tacitly endorse it. In a card-check, the union is recognised after a majority of workers sign cards requesting representation, the paper noted.
