{"id":1480158,"date":"2024-02-03T12:34:59","date_gmt":"2024-02-03T12:34:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2024\/02\/uaw-hyundai-alabama-union-organizing\/"},"modified":"2024-02-03T12:34:59","modified_gmt":"2024-02-03T12:34:59","slug":"the-uaw-is-trying-to-organize-the-montgomery-hyundai-plant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/02\/03\/the-uaw-is-trying-to-organize-the-montgomery-hyundai-plant\/","title":{"rendered":"The UAW Is Trying to Organize the Montgomery Hyundai Plant"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

This week, the United Auto Workers announced that their union drive at the Hyundai plant in Montgomery, Alabama, had signed up over 30% of the 4,000 workers there. It's the third plant in the UAW\u2019s new organizing drive to go public.<\/h3>\n\n\n
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\n A Hyundai Santa Fe being built at Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama in Montgomery, Alabama, March 12, 2010. (Carol M. Highsmith \/ Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

Autoworkers at Hyundai in Montgomery, Alabama, have signed up more than 30 percent of their nearly four thousand coworkers in an ambitious drive to unionize.<\/p>\n

The United Auto Workers (UAW) announced the organizing breakthrough with a new video<\/a>, \u201cMontgomery Can\u2019t Wait,\u201d where workers link the labor and civil rights movements: \u201cMontgomery, the city where Rosa Parks sat down, and where thousands of Hyundai workers are ready to Stand Up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s something about our fight to unionize being homegrown that makes it just that much sweeter,\u201d said Quichelle Liggins, a twelve-year quality inspector at Hyundai.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll I can tell my people to do is be bold and intentional. Just like the leaders of the civil rights movement, we\u2019re linking together one by one. One person had to say, \u2018Hey, it\u2019s time for us to make a difference!\u2019 And then several other people had to agree, and now we have a group of workers that feel the same way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Workers in this plant assemble the Santa Fe and Tucson SUVs, the Santa Cruz pickup truck, the Genesis GV70 luxury SUV, and the Electrified GV70.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re the third plant to reach the 30 percent milestone in the UAW\u2019s new organizing push, just weeks after workers at a Mercedes-Benz<\/a> plant near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and on the heels of those at Tennessee\u2019s Chattanooga Volkswagen<\/a> plant in December.<\/p>\n

The UAW announced Monday that more than ten thousand workers across thirteen nonunion plants have signed union cards since last November, when the union announced<\/a> an ambitious goal to organize 150,000 autoworkers. That\u2019s roughly the same number as are covered now under the Big Three contracts.<\/p>\n

Once workers reach the threshold of 30 percent on signed union authorization cards, under the UAW\u2019s rubric, they take their organizing public. At the 50 percent mark, they rally with their coworkers, families, neighbors, and community and union leaders, including UAW president Shawn Fain.<\/p>\n

As soon as 70 percent of workers at a given plant sign cards, and their organizing committee has grown to include workers from every shift and job classification, they will demand voluntary recognition of their union. If the company refuses, the workers file for an election with the National Labor Relations Board.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n

Tried Before<\/h2>\n \n

Hyundai workers had tried mounting a union campaign in 2016, but it never garnered much support; plus, management intimidation caught workers unprepared. They didn\u2019t even file unfair labor practice charges after being targeted for organizing. Talk of the union resumed in 2020 at the height of the pandemic after management kept managers on the payroll but forced hourly workers onto the unemployment rolls.<\/p>\n

Liggins compared the long lines to sign up for unemployment to a Michael Jackson concert, with people lining up for hours on end, bringing along folding chairs to sit on. Workers also said that Hyundai management penalized people for being sick. They started chatting on Facebook, initially a small group of no more than three. Liggins had signed a union card in 2016, but she wasn\u2019t involved in that campaign.<\/p>\n

But once the UAW\u2019s Stand-Up Strike<\/a> began grabbing headlines last fall, she and her coworkers started talking in earnest about a union at Hyundai, especially after the union notched a historic victory. \u201cThen the company actually threw money at us,\u201d Liggins said. Hyundai promised to raise wages by 25 percent over four years. \u201cSo, all we\u2019re doing is talking about the union. And we got this little money and began wondering what we could get if we actually tried to form a union. And so here we are today.\u201d<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n

Overworked and Demoralized<\/h2>\n \n

The biggest issues motivating Hyundai workers to unionize are retirement security, favoritism, high rates of injury, and punishing schedules that leave little time for family or even time away from the line to recuperate from an illness or care for a sick child. Workers complain that Hyundai\u2019s six-day workweeks and last-minute schedule changes break up their weekends, leaving them overworked and demoralized. Managers routinely flip their schedules with little notice between days and nights or over holiday breaks.<\/p>\n