Alabama

The Win For EV Workers In The South You Didn’t Hear About

August 17, 2024 Ella Fanger, Portside. Educate! Alabama, Electric Vehicles, Labor Movement, The South, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Organized labor is in the midst of a fierce campaign to make inroads at auto manufacturers in the South, most recently at the Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama, where on May 17, 56% of workers voted narrowly against joining the United Auto Workers. But a few months before the unsuccessful vote at Mercedes, workers 100 miles away at an EV bus manufacturing plant in Anniston, Alabama, unionized and won a historic contract. In January 2024, the majority of the around 600 workers at a plant run since 2013 by New Flyer, the largest transit bus manufacturer in North America, signed a union card to join the International Union of Electrical Workers-Communications Workers of America (IUE-CWA).

Inmates Challenge Motion To Dismiss In Alabama Forced Labor Federal Lawsuit

June 12, 2024 Alander Rocha, Black Agenda Report. Resist! Alabama, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Forced Labor, Human Rights, Legal System, Prison Labor, Worker Rights

Incarcerated individuals in Alabama have filed a 214-page response opposing a motion to dismiss their lawsuit accusing state prisons of using slave labor. The case involves multiple claims against state officials, private employers and local governments alleging Alabama’s prison labor program system is a form of modern-day slavery. Each defendant filed motions to dismiss the lawsuit, claiming that counsel for plaintiffs did not state a legal claim in the lawsuit. “Despite Defendants’ strenuous efforts to dispute Plaintiffs’ well-founded allegations—a strategy that cannot justify dismissal of Plaintiffs’ claims at this juncture...

How An Alabama Town Staved Off School Resegregation

May 29, 2024 Jennifer Berry Hawes, ProPublica. Educate! Alabama, Education, History, Segregation, Segregation Academies

I recently traveled to rural Wilcox County, in Alabama’s Black Belt, to understand the origins of the local “segregation academy” and how it still divides the broader community. It was the first story in our series about segregation academies, private schools that opened across the Deep South after the U.S Supreme Court released its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. White Southerners opened hundreds — perhaps thousands — of these schools, which allowed white children to flee just as Black children arrived in the public schools. Now, 70 years later, ProPublica has found that hundreds of these academies still operate. Where they do, schools often remain segregated — and as a result, so do entire communities.

UAW Admits Digital Heavy, Organizing Committee Light Approach Failed Them

May 27, 2024 Mike Elk, Payday Report. Organize! Alabama, Mercedes-Benz, The South, union busting, Unions, United Auto Workers (UAW), Worker Rights and Jobs

Rather than using traditional organizing committee structures, the UAW relied heavily on digital meetings, a light staff approach from the international union, and getting workers to sign union cards via QR codes. Given the positive media coverage of the UAW in the “Stand Up Strike,” many UAW leaders were confident they could win using this approach. After filing with 70%, the UAW believed they would maintain their margin and win at similar margins to the 73% victory of UAW workers in Chattanooga. However, the UAW lost 44%-56% in Alabama amid charges that the company used backroom manipulation tactics against workers.

Segregation Academies Still Operate Across The South

May 21, 2024 Jennifer Berry Hawes, ProPublica. Educate! Alabama, Education, Racism, Segregation, The South

A mile of Alabama country road, and a history of racism, separate the two schools. At the stop sign between them, even the road’s name changes. Threadgill Road, christened for a civil rights hero, becomes Whiskey Run. Black students take Threadgill to one campus; white students turn off Whiskey Run toward the other. Both schools are shrinking. Wilcox County, a notch in the swath of old plantation country known as the Black Belt, struggles with declining population — a common scenario across this part of the South. In such places, the existence of two separate school systems can isolate entire communities by race.

What It’s Like Voting Union Inside Alabama Mercedes Plant?

May 16, 2024 Jane Slaughter, Labor Notes. Organize! Alabama, Mercedes-Benz, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

In the election on whether to join the United Auto Workers, being held over five days this week at the Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama, the union negotiated rules to try to minimize management influence. The vote is taking place inside the plant. Workers are allowed to vote on company time, at designated intervals. A golf cart carrying a union observer, a company observer, and a National Labor Relations Board agent tours the 5,200-worker plant. The agent announces through a bullhorn, and by holding up a card, that workers in a certain area are now excused to go vote, if they choose to.

Progressive Organizations Host Pro-UAW Rally In Tuscaloosa

May 6, 2024 Chance Phillips, Alabama Political Reporter. Resist! Alabama, Auto Workers, Mercedes-Benz, Unions, United Auto Workers (UAW), Worker Rights and Jobs

With the union election at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Tuscaloosa set to start next Monday, both Mercedes and the United Auto Workers are redoubling their efforts to sway employees to their sides. On Sunday, progressive advocacy organizations More Perfect Union and the Poor People’s Campaign held a rally at the Christian Community Church of Tuscaloosa, following a Saturday rally at Avondale Brewing Company in Birmingham. The several dozen attendees, including pro-UAW Mercedes employees and their families, were provided free barbecue, buttons, stickers, and t-shirts.

Southern Autoworkers’ Union Drives Can Reverse Decades Of Job Decline

May 1, 2024 Marc Bayard and Dev Wakeley, Inequality.org. Organize! Alabama, Autoworkers, Tennessee, The South, Unions, United Auto Workers (UAW), Worker Rights and Jobs

The United Auto Workers recently scored the largest union victory in decades in the South. Their success at a Tennessee Volkswagen plant could be a turning point for labor in a region long known for governmental hostility to unions. The next test will be a UAW election scheduled for the week of May 13 at a Mercedes-Benz factory in Alabama, a state that has attracted so much auto investment it has earned the nickname “the Detroit of the South.” If the roughly 5,000 Mercedes workers vote to unionize, the ripple effects could empower workers nationwide.

UAW Wins Organizing Election At Volkswagen Tennessee Plant

April 20, 2024 Luke Ramseth, Portside. Organize! Alabama, Auto Workers, Unions, United Auto Workers (UAW), West Virginia, Worker Rights and Jobs

United Auto Workers achieved a historic organizing victory Friday night at a Volkswagen AG plant in Tennessee plant as workers voted overwhelmingly to join the union following a three-day election. The vote count was 2,628-985, according to unofficial results released by the automaker, the union and a National Labor Relations Board tally posted on X. "Volkswagen Chattanooga workers voted in favor of union representation in their workplace this week," the automaker said in a statement. "The vote was administered through a democratic, secret ballot vote overseen by the National Labor Relations Board. ... We will await certification of the results by the NLRB. Volkswagen thanks its Chattanooga workers for voting in this election."

Lawsuit: Alabama Is Denying Prisoners Parole To Lease Their Labor

April 19, 2024 Kim Kelly, In These Times. Resist! Alabama, Capitalism, Criminal Justice and Prisons, McDonald's, Prison Labor

Working in the freezer at Southeastern Meats, a meatpacking facility based in Birmingham, Ala., “was the worst job I’ve ever had in my entire life,” Lakiera Walker tells In These Times. Her 12-hour shifts were spent inside a refrigerated building as cold as 30 or 40 degrees, and she had to beg or borrow warm clothes from her friends and family because the employer didn’t provide any. She couldn’t even take solace in the idea that she was saving up money for her future, because the prison where she spent the rest of her waking hours was taking a 40% cut on top of various fees.

How Alabama Communists Organized In The Jim Crow South

April 16, 2024 Robin D.G. Kelly and Daniel Denvir, Portside. Organize! Alabama, Communists, History, The South, Worker Rights and Jobs

As the United Auto Workers (UAW) set their sights again on organizing factory workers in the Deep South, they do so keenly aware of the difficulties campaigning in a center of union-busting reaction. In 2019, bosses at a Chattanooga Volkswagen plant led a vicious anti-union campaign, abetted by Donald Trump’s National Labor Relations Board, that defeated an earlier UAW campaign there. When Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama, waged an audacious effort to unionize in 2021, against one of the largest corporations on Earth, they likewise faltered in the face of widespread interference and intimidation.

Mercedes Tries To Punch Down Alabama Union Momentum

April 12, 2024 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. Organize! Alabama, Auto Workers, Mercedes, union busting, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Workers at Mercedes-Benz in Alabama were forced to attend 20-minute anti-union meetings with the company’s top management today. Recordings obtained by Labor Notes show top management dangled carrots and put on a contrite-boss act, promising to do better. Workers filed with the National Labor Relations Board on April 5 for the first-ever election to unionize the 5,200 people who work at the plant. Mercedes claims to be neutral in the election, but it’s also listed as a supporter of the Business Council of Alabama’s anti-union website, Alabama Strong. The Auto Workers (UAW) has filed multiple unfair labor practice charges accusing the company of retaliating against pro-union workers.

Incarcerated Organizers Complete Eight Weeks Of Prison Shutdown

April 3, 2024 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. Resist! Alabama, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Mass Incarceration, Prison abolition

On March 30, for the eighth week in a row, a group of activists gathered outside of St. Clair Correctional Facility, near Birmingham, Alabama, to show solidarity with incarcerated organizers, who have been refusing to engage in prison labor since February 6. Organizers want to sustain the shutdown, which entails a full stoppage of all labor inside the prisons that prisoners are forced to do, for at least 90 days. The organizers, led by the Free Alabama Movement, are living under the boot of the most violent state prison system in the United States—a nation know for having the largest prison population in the world and regularly employing torture and archaic methods of execution against its prisoners.

Waffle House Workers On Day Three Of ‘Meal Credit’ Strike

March 28, 2024 WSB-TV Channel 2 - Atlanta. Resist! Alabama, Waffle House, Wages, Worker Rights

Conyers, Ga. — Striking Georgia Waffle House workers are rallying as the ‘meal credit’ strike reaches its third day. The strike began on Monday as workers are demanding the company to end mandatory ‘meal credit’ paycheck deduction, improve working conditions, wages, safety measures Waffle House workers in Conyers with the Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW) continued their rally on Wednesday to mark the third day of their strike and demand an end to the company’s policy of deducting a ‘meal credit’ of at least $3 from workers’ pay every shift, regardless of whether they eat a meal.

Prisoners, Unions Sue Alabama, Alleging ‘Modern-Day Slavery’

February 27, 2024 Mansa Musa, The Real News Network. Resistance Report #BlackLivesMatter, Alabama, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Criminal Justice and Prisons, Human Rights, Slavery, Unions

A group of current and former prisoners have sued the state of Alabama with the support of two unions who have signed on as co-plaintiffs, the Union of Southern Service Workers, and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. The lawsuit claims that Alabama’s system of prison labor amounts to a “modern-day form of slavery” that generates massive profits for private businesses and revenues for the state by forcing incarcerated people to work for little or no pay. Jacob Morrison and Adam Keller join Rattling the Bars to discuss the lawsuit and the importance of the fight for prisoners’ rights to the overall labor movement.

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