By Amos Wolf & Mike Elk

This week, at UAW’s annual conference, members have been raising concerns about whether Fain’s administration will ever be able to make good on its ambitious $40 million plan to organize the entire auto industry, especially the anti-union citadels of the South. Following the 2023 Stand Up Strike, it appeared as if the UAW had massive momentum to get it done, but that momentum has since dissipated.

Set back by an election defeat at Mercedes in Vance in 2024, the UAW was subsequently rocked by a series of high-profile scandals that led to the resignations of Chief of Staff Chris Brooks and Communications Director Jonah Furman. Brooks was forced to resign last December for lying about coordinated secret efforts with Furman to oust elected UAW Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock from her positions overseeing several key UAW departments.

Some say that the turmoil with the UAW has set back organizing, but many rank-and-file workers like Greg Williams, an autoworker at Toyota in Georgetown, Kentucky, and a member of the plant’s Volunteer Organizing Committee (VOC), say they are still enthusiastic and dedicated to organizing with the UAW.

“We’re also kind of in that reformulation phase,” says Williams. “Sowing the seeds for a better future is where we’re at right now.”

Last Friday, as five thousand union activists packed the conference rooms of the Chicago O’Hare Hyatt for Labor Notes 2026, workers from five southern auto plants spoke about their ongoing efforts to unionize their shops and why, despite daunting challenges and maddening setbacks, they remain steadfast, if not hopeful.

Things are looking very different from 2023, when the Stand Up Strike’s success lent energy to certification elections at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Mercedes in Vance (Alabama), and an organizing blitz across the South.

While Chattanooga voted overwhelmingly to unionize with 73% voting in favor in April of 2024, Mercedes workers lost by a margin of 44-56% a month later in May. At BlueOval in Kentucky, UAW won a narrow election by a few dozen votes. This was not the kind of success that UAW leadership predicted when they launched their campaign.

In February of 2024, workers at Hyundai in Montgomery announced that they had reached 30% of the workforce signed up at the plant and were confident they would soon have the support to file for a union election. However, the union decided not to file the petition. Momentum had cratered.

“Say you get in a bad car accident and you’re on the operating table and they’re trying to revive you. We still have a pulse, but it’s not that strong,” remarked Quichelle Liggins, who has been on the VOC at Hyundai’s Montgomery plant since 2016.

Workers at Mercedes in Vance are more optimistic about their prospects of holding another union election in the near future.

“It was the first election that the plant ever had,” said Rob Witt, who has worked at Mercedes in Vance for 11 years. “We lost (by) about 600 votes, which is pretty impressive for a first-time vote with a plant that has 5000 employees, so we feel like it’s just a matter of time till this thing happens.”

Transnational plants moved quickly to head off the momentum with sophisticated union avoidance tactics, including unprecedented raises that reversed nearly a half-decade trend in which southern automakers dragged down northern wages. Now the opposite was happening. Southern auto plants responded to 2023’s Big Three contract with unprecedented raises and bonuses—Hyundai matched the entire contract, with a 25% wage increase by 2028—but the hefty bonuses have withered since.

“We got almost close to $8,000 that year in raises and bonuses,” remembers Liggins. “Now, just this day before yesterday, they announced our summer bonus, and it was $1,000. People are upset, and again we had to remind them that when the ‘union’ word was mentioned, you guys were getting much, much better money.”

Workers at other plants say they have seen a similar pattern, with employers pulling back on increases awarded after the 2023 Stand Up Strike.

“Our bonus has gone down two years in a row now, since then, while they’ve made record profits both years,” said Randall Coggins, an autoworker at Toyota in Huntsville, Alabama. “So you know it was a knee-jerk reaction to try to give us a whole lot of stuff at once, but since then it’s just been taking it all right back.”

Other plants like Subaru in Indiana held back on giving big raises.

“When the strike happened, they waited to see what other plants were going to do, and see how much the raises were going to be. Then Subaru gave us a meager $2 raise,” says Joe Murphy, autoworker at Subaru in Lafayette. “I know it’s like 2% versus, you know, the 15% or more (at other plants). Then, after six months had gone by, that’s when they canceled our health care, which took $4 per hour out of our pocket. So really they took $2 from us.”

Still, despite the waning of organizing momentum, workers say that poor treatment has created ripe conditions for organizing. Ballooning health insurance costs have also been eating into Southern auto workers’ paychecks, even as coverage deteriorates.

“Up until this year, our health care was free,” says Murphy. “Now we have to pay for it. While people are single, it’s still free to them, and that’s 52% of our plant, while if you’re married or with dependents, or both, it’s upwards of over $500 a month for health care. They have raised it $4000 up to $6,000 out-of-pocket before they cover you.”

Rampant concerns about injuries have led many autoworkers to remain dedicated to organizing

“I think the biggest driving force is how many people Toyota maims permanently,” says Williams. “Money is great, but being able to stand up and work for your family is what’s really important.”

Workers at Hyundai in Montgomery, Alabama, are also beset by high injury rates.

“At our plant, they’re always concerned about line speed,” says Robert Kennedy, autoworker at Hyundai. “When it comes down to line speed, it doesn’t matter if it’s unsafe. ‘Long as you can keep that line running at a certain speed, they’ll make team members do the work. They don’t put ergonomics in place.”

Despite lacking union recognition, workers are still taking action to fight back against high injury rates. At Toyota’s plant in Huntsville, the UAW VOC is circulating a petition to get rid of a maddening rotating shift schedule.

“The other Toyota plants do not rotate in that manner,” explains Coggins. “Every two weeks it’s either come into work at 6am, get off at 5pm. Or, come into work at 5pm, get off at 4 in the morning. And this is a two week rotation. It just absolutely destroys everybody’s mental well-being. It makes it impossible for you to develop any kind of schedule to do anything that you want to do outside of work.”

They plan to approach management soon with their petition and demands to switch to a straight-shift schedule.

Despite the turmoil at the top of the UAW, autoworkers say that they are more focused on their power coming from workers on the shop floor.

“At the end of the day, the entire purpose of this entire endeavor is to gain more control,” said Toyota worker Randall Coggins. “We don’t want to just cede control from one boss to another. We want to gain control, so you know, at the end of the day, it all depends on our solidarity, our ability to stand together, and regardless of what international does or international says, we’re going to focus on us, and we’re going to focus on the issues that are important to us.”

Jeremy Kimbrall is a former Mercedes autoworker and organizer who was fired and now works as temporary staff for UAW. Despite his current position, Kimbrall thinks the key is for workers to rely less on staff organizers.

“I’m just like, get it done by sticking together as workers,” said Kimbrall. “All these workers inside their plants, they’re going to grow their unions. Have a leader in every shop and on every shift. Worker to worker. Lean less on the organizers and less on the organization, and they’re gonna get it done in the South.”

Amos Wolf contributed reporting from Chicago.

Photo credit: AP Photo/Kim Chandler

Donate to Help Us Cover Fight to Organize the South

From Payday Report via This RSS Feed.