(18 May 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tuscaloosa, Alabama – 17 May 2024
1. Union sign on desk reading (English) "We Are Alabama We Are UAW"
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Shawn Fain, United Auto Workers President:
"This isn’t a failure. This isn’t fatal. This is a bump in the road. We’ve been here before, and we’re going to continue on and we’re going to win. And, so, we’ll be back in Vance. So I assured the company that before I walked out the door and shook their hand. And I think we’ll have a different result down the road, and I look forward to that."
3. Sign on the wall reading (English): "Union Yes"
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Rick Webster, Employee:
"You know, it didn’t break the way we wanted it to, but at the end of the day we’ve all got to go back in there, and we got to work together. Hopefully in a year, we’re able to hold another election, and you know, we’ll pass it then."
5. Mid of woman writing on whiteboard at United Auto Workers union office
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Shawn Fain, United Auto Workers President:
"I believe workers everywhere in this nation are waking up. I think going through a recession in (20)08-09. Going through a pandemic in 2020, I believe all these things have made working class people realize that there is better out there for them, and they’re realizing they have no control over their lives at work. And the only way they get control is through a union because without a union, you’re an employee of will, you have no voice and no rights and the boss has all the power."
STORYLINE:
A decisive vote against the United Auto Workers at two Mercedes factories in Alabama sidetracked the union’s grand plan to sign up workers at nonunion plants mainly in the South.
But newly elected President Shawn Fain said the union will return to Mercedes and will press on with efforts to organize about 150,000 workers at more than a dozen auto factories across the nation.
Employees at Mercedes battery and assembly plants near Tuscaloosa voted 56% against the union in an election run by the National Labor Relations Board.
The vote count handed the union a serious setback a month after the UAW scored a breakthrough victory at Volkswagen’s 4,300-worker assembly factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
The NLRB’s final tally showed a vote of 2,642 against the union, with 2,045 in favor. Nearly 93% of workers eligible to vote cast ballots.
Fain assured workers that the union will return, telling them the loss was a bump in the road, not failure. He said he told company officials the fight was not over.
“We’ve been here before, and we’re going to continue on and we’re going to win,” he said. “And I think we’ll have a different result down the road, and I look forward to that.”
The NLRB said both sides have five business days to file objections to the election, and the union must wait a year before seeking another vote at Mercedes.
AP video shot by: Kimberly Chandler
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