Mercedes Union Vote Count Beginning

The voting is over at the Tuscaloosa County Mercedes Benz Plant. The count of the 5,000 or so ballots cast in the vote on authorizing a union at the current non-union plant is underway.

Weeks of bickering, finger-pointing, charges and counter charges and lobbying of workers at the assembly plant in Vance and the battery plant located in Woodstock are over. How long it will take to count the votes is not certain, but the National Labor Relations Board says the results will be revealed later this afternoon.

Townsquare Media Tuscaloosa has a reporter on the scene and the results will be relayed as soon as they are made available.

The results will have a major impact on the United Auto Workers aggressive $40 million campaign to organize non-union auto plants in Alabama and across the south. The union has already won a union vote at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, TN but Mercedes Benz would be an even bigger and more impactful victory if they were to pull it off. A win by the UAW would speed up the organizing effort across the south and invigorate the pro-union employees at other southern plants. It would also justify UAW President Shawn Fain's renewed effort to enlarge his union's membership which had been in decline.

Employees at the Hyundai plant in Montgomery are already organizing and are watching the outcome of the Mercedes vote closely.

A union victory would also be a shock and a setback to the political leadership of Alabama and other southern states which invested a lot of time, energy and political muscle in fighting the Mercedes union push.

The voting results are expected sometime between 2:00 and 4:00pm this afternoon.