Wheels

By Hariharan Murugesan

Marlon Williams, a 28-year-old blue-collar worker in Benton Harbor, in southwest Michigan, never considers taking a bus to work, even though it would save him a lot of money. There are only two short bus lines in his town, and they don’t come very often. “Sometimes you just wanna go, go, go, instead of wait,” he said.

Residents in Benton Harbor, Detroit, Ann Arbor and other Michigan cities share Williams’s disappointment with the public transit system. 

Research shows that people between 24 and 44 years old view transit convenience as the most important criteria for deciding where to live. Michigan is one of the slowest growing states in the country. And state data shows the trend is likely to continue, and even result in an overall population decline of 1.3 percent between 2022 and 2050.

“Lack of public transportation is one of the reasons people don’t want to live here,” said Assad Turfe, deputy county executive of Wayne County, which includes Detroit.

A study conducted by the University of Michigan found that among Detroiters without a vehicle, four in ten had missed some sort of appointment, work commitment or a simple outing. And that affects a significant percentage of the population. “Thirty-three percent of adult Detroiters don’t have access to a vehicle,” said Antoine Bryant, director of planning and development for the city of Detroit.

Without a train system beyond the 3.3-mile-long streetcar known as the Q Line, Detroit is trying to invest in buses. In 2016, a ballot initiative to create a rapid and reliable regional-transportation system failed to pass, but Turfe said another ballot initiative is being proposed for 2026. It would  improve existing services while attempting to implement other rapid transit corridors to connect Wayne, Washtenaw, Oakland and Macomb counties. “We are going to do this,” said Turfe.

Another challenge has been a shortage of bus drivers. In an effort to hire more drivers, Bryant explained, the city of Detroit just increased the hourly wage for drivers to $22, from $15, and he hopes to have a total of 180 drivers by the summer. He said the goal is to restore faith in buses after many years of neglect, as well as a strike last year that disrupted service.

Detroit also has a bike-sharing program called Detroit’s MoGo, run by a nonprofit. It serves about 100,000 riders a year, but many stations are in need of repair. The bad condition of roads doesn’t make biking easy either. Back in 2018, Governor Gretchen Whitmer campaigned on the slogan “Fix the Damn Roads,” promising to repair the numerous potholes on Michigan streets. 

In March, Whitmer announced 17 villages and cities across the state with a population of less than 10,000 will receive road-funding grants totaling $3.1 million. 

Many fixes are still underway. “We joke that the orange barrel is the state flower now because they are all over,” said Jennifer Conlin, Democratic state representative for District 48, which includes Ann Arbor. “We’re just fixing as much as we can, but we just need more and more and more money.” 

Cities built for cars

The lack of a strong public transit system in Detroit and in other cities in Michigan is a direct result of the fact that the state is home to the Big Three U.S. car manufacturers: Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, which owns Chrysler. Jerry Davis, a professor of business administration and sociology at the University of Michigan, called Michigan “the most car-friendly state of them all.” 

Conlin agreed that Michigan has historically been an automotive place, but she believed things need to change. “Young people don’t want to move here unless they can take public transport,” she said.

Several Republican lawmakers don’t support the idea of more investment in mass transit. Mark Tisdel, the Republican state representative for District 55, which includes the city of Rochester and part of Oakland Township, said Michigan’s cities don’t have the density needed to make public transportation cost effective, he explained, drawing a contrast with places like Manhattan in New York City, where the population triples during the workday. 

Sarah Lightner, the Republican state representative for District 45, which includes many rural areas in Calhoun, Jackson and Kalamazoo counties, said she is hesitant to support public transit because it can’t become self-sufficient. “They always ask for more money, more money, more money,” she said.

In southwest Michigan, the cities of Benton Harbor and St. Joseph are now discussing a regional bus service that would integrate both cities. St. Joe also has been working on a ferry system. 

The nonprofit organization Cornerstone Alliance has been subsidizing a free water taxi program for the last two years, but it’s still unclear if it will be viable. “We couldn’t find people to pay for it,” said Christina Frank, vice president of external affairs at Cornerstone Alliance.

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Melani Bonilla contributed reporting.

By Judah Duke

When layoffs began to threaten her family’s financial prospects during the throes of the Covid-19 pandemic, Chelsea Ray of Detroit decided to quit her job as an engineer and join the family’s start-up chocolate business.

Ray’s aunt was let go from her job at an auto manufacturing plant and her mother was fired from her job as a financial-aid counselor at Mary Grove College in Detroit; the women were, respectively, three and five years from retirement. Her father, who is also a chaplain with a master’s degree, was laid off from his job as a violence-prevention counselor at a Detroit public school and now works a second job driving for Uber, while Ray’s mother works behind the deli counter at a Kroger supermarket, in addition to creating the chocolates for the family’s Insatiable Turtles brand.

Ray noted that her elders had imagined working the same job until retirement, even if they didn’t care for it. By contrast, Ray said: “I want to do something that I’m really passionate about.”

That passion, coupled with the unpredictable employment landscape around her, prompted Ray to leave her job as a manager at an Amazon facility. Today, she co-owns Insatiable Turtles with her mother and sister, selling pecans wrapped in a layer of caramel and chocolate.

Ray did not want to disclose specific profit and sales figures, beyond noting that her profits were up substantially this year. However, her last year’s earnings from Insatiable Turtles, which sells chocolates in bags of five for $20, totaled a fraction of Ray’s former salary.  

“I wanted to do something that can build legacy, so we can kind of write our own narrative,” she said.

Entrepreneurship has long held the allure of a golden ticket to prosperity for many Americans. As the aftershocks of Detroit’s bankruptcy and the challenges from the pandemic persisted, entrepreneurship has increasingly been held up as a way to narrow the racial wealth gap. Three years ago, the Michigan Black Business Alliance (MBBA) was established, initially, to support Detroit entrepreneurs like Ray and to build a network of 1,000 Black million-dollar businesses in the next decade, according to its 2023 annual report. The organization has since expanded beyond Detroit. In addition, Michigan’s Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist’s team recently called for the creation of 1,000 Black millionaires, according to Brandon Reed, the director of external affairs for the MBBA.

But entrepreneurship is a risky business, especially for Black entrepreneurs, creating an especially precarious path for aspiring business people like Ray. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20 percent of small businesses fail within the first two years, and 65 percent within the first 10.

The uphill struggle is even steeper for Black Americans. Eight of 10 Black-owned businesses fail within the first 18 months, according to a Bloomberg report.

For Black entrepreneurs and minority business owners in general, who are also twice as likely as their white counterparts to report access to capital as a limiting factor to growth, financing is a major problem. Black-owned firms, including ones owned by women, are relatively prevalent in Detroit — a Black-majority city — compared to the national average. And while Black-led startups made up close to one-quarter of all new Wayne County companies, in 2021, they garnered only 1.5 percent of all venture capital that year. In Michigan, organizations are stepping up to provide funding through grants and loans, but many systemic hurdles remain.

 “Detroit was the most red-lined city in the country for a while, and so, there’s just a lot of systemic barriers, even geographic barriers that just make it more difficult,” Reed said.

Ray credits the MBBA with providing the resources she needed to take her business from a private affair, selling chocolates to friends and family at church, to a budding operation with a website and a presence at Detroit food markets. She noted that MBBA workshops helped with her business plan and, in particular, persuaded her to put her family members on the company payroll — rather than pouring all profits back into the business.

The MBBA also partners with other organizations to provide its members with access to capital. One such group is the Michigan Women Forward, which issues microloans, ranging from $2,500 to $50,000, to women-owned businesses.

Michigan Women Forward stands out for its unconventional approach to disbursing loans based on a variety of factors, not just credit scores. (Indeed, poor credit scores are often a barrier to obtaining financing for Black-owned businesses.) The organization holds bi-monthly meetings with a loan committee that plays a significant role in making credit decisions. “Our underwriters are able to tell the entrepreneur’s story about how their credit was affected,” said Tanesia Greer, Michigan Women Forward business development manager. “Just think how much you would lend someone if you really understood their story, and you looked at their financials,” she said.

The vast majority of the businesses the MBBA supports are small, Black-owned firms. Most of its over 1,300 members usually have less than ten employees.

The historic barriers that kept Black Michiganders, many of whom migrated to Detroit from the Jim Crow South, from building generational wealth, is another major hurdle.

State Representative Joey Andrews, whose District 38 includes St. Joseph and Benton Harbor, uses his own family’s experience to illustrate how unequal the playing field is for Black and white entrepreneurs. Andrews’s great grandfather, an autoworker and union man, used his pension and savings to build a business–the Andrews family is white. Each subsequent Andrews generation has had successful business owners.

“What those union jobs enabled them to do was it allowed their families to enter the middle class, and then set them up so that their kids could do non-manual labor work,” said Andrews, who champions the trades, which can garner six-figure wages, as well as pensions and healthcare; he challenges what he refers to as the “myth” that starting a business is the only path to financial security.

“The message we’re trying to bring is that the trades are the way up and out — that enables you to set your kids up for success,” he added. “You’ll have the resources then so that your children can be the business owners and entrepreneurs. You can send your kids to college at that point, because you will have the money and the resources.”

Indeed, Ray also comes from a long line of Detroit auto workers. Her grandparents, aunts and uncles on both sides of her family worked for the Ford Motor Company.

Hampered, perhaps, by red-lining and a lack of credit, only recently has her family begun to think about becoming entrepreneurs.

Today Ray is determined to make a success of Insatiable Turtles. A $5,000 grant she won from an event at MBBA’s Wealth Summit, last year, gave her company a boost. Now she is applying for a $15,000-loan package in the hope of renting a commercial kitchen, improving marketing and rebranding her website.

In the meantime, Ray is looking for a part-time job in business consulting to help support her household so her husband doesn’t have to “take care of all the bills.” Eventually, she said, “I would like to work on the business full time.”

By Jack Van Hecke

The Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicle starts at $27,495. Ford’s electric F-150 is priced at $49,995. The Rivian R1S costs upwards of $78,000. The list of American-made EVs goes on and on, and the prices go up and up.

Meanwhile, foreign automakers are prioritizing building vehicles at a lower price point. The Chinese company BYD, which stands for Build Your Dreams, currently has five models marked lower than $15,000. The Seagull is an astonishing $11,400 — less than electric bicycles by Trek, the high-end American bike manufacturer. BYD’s e2 compact SUV model is priced at around $12,507. The Dolphin costs $14,500.

These vehicles are not yet available in America, primarily because of U.S.-imposed trade barriers. On May 14, President Joe Biden announced that he is quadrupling the tariff on Chinese-made EVs from about 25 percent to 100 percent to protect American-made companies from foreign competition. The U.S. argues that the Chinese government is subsidizing EV production, allowing its manufacturers to dump products in both the U.S. and Europe at prices below what it costs to build them. Between 2009 and 2022, the Chinese government provided an estimated $173 billion in tax breaks and subsidies to companies like BYD, NIO and Wuling. Between 2018 and 2022 alone, BYD received $3.5 billion from the Chinese government.

U.S. tariffs and incentive policies — including a $7,500 tax break for car buyers who purchase U.S.-made EVs — are intended to support American manufacturers. However, the high prices of American-made EVs suggest that automakers could be missing out on what might be, potentially, their largest market: Gen Z car buyers.

The target market for electric vehicles is consumers aged 18 to 29, according to consumer surveys, a generation that is particularly concerned about climate change. Over half of the people in this age range say they are somewhat-to-very likely to go electric, according to Statista. But the current price point of EVs is the greatest factor standing in the way of these wannabe EV buyers. The average income of individuals 20 to 34 hovers around $45,994, according to a Forbes study. The national average estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey puts the number at $41,804 per capita.

That is less than the $50,798 average cost of an American-made EV.

“The rule of thumb in the auto industry is that your annual income should be two times the price of the car,” said Micheline Maynard, author of multiple auto-industry books and a Boston Globe columnist covering the car industry. “So, if you look at two times the price, it means you probably have to earn $125,000 a year” to afford the average price of an American-made EV, she explained.

Take Dody Gonzalez, an 18-year-old factory worker at Amazon. Gonzalez, who makes $18 per hour, or about $20,000 annually after taxes, has been shopping for an EV for months. Gonzalez said he is “searching for any brand that’s just cheap,” but said he can’t afford the cars currently on the market.

The price of BYD EVs would be perfect for Gonzalez, he said. If they were available in the U.S. market he would “jump” at the chance to buy one, said Gonzalez, adding that the car’s design is “actually pretty gorgeous.”

The Chevy Bolt is the cheapest American-made EV. And while other foreign-made cars by companies like Volvo, Mini Cooper, Volkswagen and Kia offer cheaper EVs than U.S. manufacturers, their prices begin in the mid-$20,000 to upper-$30,000 range. The Volkswagen ID.4, which is priced at $39,735, qualifies for the $7,500 tax incentive because it is produced in Tennessee. Similarly, the Nissan Leaf qualifies for a $3,750 partial tax incentive because 60 percent of the battery’s components are manufactured or assembled within the U.S. and it has a seven-kilowatt hour capacity. These are requirements under the new Inflation Reduction Act.

Despite high prices, Americans are hungry for EVs. In 2023, Americans — most of them middle-aged white men — bought a record 1.2 million EVs.

But with the number of EVs on U.S. roads expected to surge to 145 million by 2030 — a nearly 15-fold increase over the number of electric vehicles on the road today — U.S. automakers risk losing out on their potentially biggest market: 18-to-29-year-olds, who number 58 million, according to the census.

For one thing, U.S. automakers may not be able to count on trade policies keeping the Chinese cars out for long. BYD already is looking to expand manufacturing into Mexico. “They are hoping that if they can build vehicles there — they’re built in North America — then they can be sold in America” under the United States-Mexico-Canada-Agreement (formerly NAFTA), said Jeff Gilbert, a long-time automotive reporter for Detroit’s news radio station WWJ. Because of USMCA, Chinese companies manufacturing in Mexico could find a loophole around high tariffs.

If Chinese cars enter the U.S. market, American car manufacturers might have to relearn the painful lessons of the 1970s and 1980s. Following the oil shock of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Japanese car makers flooded the U.S. market with inexpensive small cars, even as American automakers stuck to making bigger, more expensive — and less fuel-efficient — models. As the quality of Japanese cars increased, U.S. automakers faced record losses and Chrysler (now Stellantis) came close to bankruptcy — and was bailed out by the federal government. Before long, Toyota had surpassed General Motors with the highest market share in the U.S. (Today Toyota’s market share is a close second to General Motors.)

“I imagine there will be a similar trajectory with Chinese vehicles,” said Jerry Davis, professor of business and sociology at the University of Michigan and author of The Vanishing American Corporation. “They might start just being the low-cost option because you can’t afford other vehicles.”

While Davis is not making any predictions about the long-term prowess of Chinese car manufacturers, he said that American companies should be worried. “If they’re not worried, they’re not paying attention,” he said.

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By Patricia Prado

The goal never was to build cars; the idea hadn’t even crossed her mind. Tiffanie Simmons was set on writing musicals and was pursuing an associate’s degree in theater management. But she started working at a Ford factory to pay for school.

Now at 38, she has been working for the American automaker for the past 17 years, and as a union representative for the United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 900, where she was one of the workers who grabbed headlines during the union’s historic strike last year.

“The union is my stage,” Simmons said. And she wants that stage to get bigger. “I would like to be the first female president of the UAW.”

Simmons first stepped onto the plant floor when she was 21 as a temporary worker, and became a full-time worker five years later. “The auto industry is a family business,” she said. Her Ford family consists of her father and three younger brothers. “We all do it because someone did it before us,” she added.

However, her father, Larry Simmons, was not initially on board with his daughter joining the auto industry. “As a parent, you want your child to become something better than you,” said the 56-year-old auto worker.

But now, having witnessed his daughter’s dedication to the union movement — and her leadership during last year’s historic strike — he said he “couldn’t be prouder.”

Seventeen tattoos

Simmons said one of the things she appreciates about about working at an auto plant is the fact that no one cares about how people look, or where they stand politically. “It’s a take-you-as-you-are facility,” she said.

In her first year on the assembly line, Simmons said she worked next to a man who was tattooed from head to toe, including his ears and lips. He told her you are not “a real auto worker until you’ve got some tattoos,” she said.

Today, Simmons proudly sports 17 tattoos. She has a 14-year-old daughter and works 12-hour night shifts, seven days a week, as an upfitter at the Ford Assembly Plant in Wayne, MI. That was the first Ford plant to go on strike along with the General Motors plant in Missouri and Stellantis plant in Ohio, last fall.

As union members watched the UAW President Shawn Fain’s broadcast, Simmons’s plant was the very first of the three called to walk out.

She said she will never forget that moment.

The Local 900 union hall, originally quiet enough to hear a pin drop, was quickly filled with the sound of auto workers shuffling to leave. “We turned Michigan Avenue red that night,” Simmons said, as those approaching the picket line wore red in solidarity.

As secretary of community service for the UAW, Simmons was one of the committee members facilitating the strike and providing hot meals to union workers. Every night of the strike, Simmons was at the union hall, from midnight to 7 a.m.

The strike lasted 46 days.

On October 30, the Big Three made tentative deals with the UAW that were ratified on November 8 by 64 percent of workers at all three plants. These new contracts were a historic win for the UAW, which included restoring regular cost-of-living wage adjustments to offset inflation and granting union workers an immediate pay increase of 11 percent; union members would see total a pay increase of 25 percent over the course of the four-and-a-half-year deal.

Enter Electric Vehicles

Last December, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer issued an executive directive aiming to convert all state-owned and -operated vehicles to zero-emission vehicles by 2040, a move intended to reduce air and noise pollution in the state. For auto workers, that might mean fewer jobs. EVs require 30-to-40 percent less labor, according to the UAW’s “Taking the High Road: Strategies for a Fair EV Future” report.

That’s why Simmons said she was against EVs. “I can’t in good faith support anything that I think will jeopardize my brothers’ and sisters’ jobs,” she said.

Meanwhile, the UAW’s Fain, who is trying to organize Tesla, a leading EV manufacturer, said he knows EVs are part of the future. “We have to embrace it, we have to endorse it and we have to lead it. We’re going to do whatever we can to make it work for the working-class people,” he told BusinessWeek.

Fain was elected in March of 2023 and he has been credited with turning the union around, and running a successful strike. Simmons said she didn’t vote for him, because he wasn’t well known at that point. “Am I impressed with him? Very,” she said.

Simmons admitted that the pay raise was a major factor in the new contract negotiated by Fain, but the part she’s most proud of is that younger workers can make a livable wage. Those who have been earning below the top hourly wage of $32 will get more than $40 over the next four-and-a-half years.

Indeed, the strike eliminated the tiered wage system that was instituted in the 1970s and 1980s, when the auto industry began struggling against foreign competition; the tiered wages meant that newly hired auto workers received substantially lower pay and fewer benefits than long-time workers.

“To be able to be in a plant and make good money, and actually having a good job is great for me,” said Simmons’s younger brother Rodney Johnson, who is 22.

Johnson said Simmons has been a role model for him. “My sister has always been one to be self-ambitious, always been the one in our family doing the right thing,” he said.

With overtime and night pay, Simmons now makes about $150,000 a year, she said.

As the UAW expands its reach throughout the country, Simmons and her co-workers said they hope she will grow with the movement. “She’s a bright light in the UAW,” said her fellow union representative, Charles Wade.

The UAW has failed to unionize foreign-owned automaker plants before, but that changed in April, as workers at the Volkswagen Chattanooga Assembly Plant in Tennessee overwhelmingly voted to join the union. “A freaking victory,” Simmons said, adding that she believes there will be more.

But, in May, Simmons and her UAW colleagues got a reminder of just how much work lies ahead: workers at two Mercedes-Benz plants in Alabama voted against unionization.

By Regina Martinez

Jeremy Kimbrell was a temporary worker at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, AL, in 2000, when he made a mistake on his time sheet. What seemed to be a small error soon turned into an investigation, and Kimbrell, just 23 at the time with a newborn at home, was fired.

But his coworkers rallied around him. Both pro- and anti-union workers came together to plead his case with the human resources department, and signed petitions for his return. Management caved to the pressure and Kimbrell was not only allowed back the next day, but was promoted to a full-time position. 

“That taught me the power of unity,” said Kimbrell, noting that the experience led him to decide “From this point on I will pay it forward many times over. I’ll pay it forward the rest of my life.”

Today, 24 years later, Kimbrell is still “paying it forward,” leading a majority of workers to sign union cards. And even though his plant voted against unionization 56 percent to 44 percent in mid-May, Kimbrell said the campaign to organize led to many improvements, including a rise in pay and the appointment of a new CEO. “For me, that shows the power workers have when they stick together,” he said. A week after losing that vote, UAW filed a complaint with National Labor Relations Board asking for a new vote, saying Mercedes-Benz violated labor laws.

The loss at Mercedes-Benz might slow the United Auto Workers’ (UAW) momentum. Last year, workers at Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis scored new contracts, and earlier this year Volkswagen workers in Tennessee voted to join the union, a milestone. UAW is committing $40 million to organize auto and battery workers through 2026. 

According to the U.S. Department of Treasury, unionized workers typically make 20 percent more than non-union workers. Kimbrell, a coordinate-measurement machine operator, makes $32 an hour. That’s about one-third less than a unionized auto worker in Detroit with his seniority, and half of what a unionized auto worker makes in Germany – where every Mercedes-Benz plant is unionized. 

“If you can come here and not deal with unions, then hey, that’s an added benefit for them to be able to do business here,” said labor-education expert Bob Bussel, regarding foreign auto companies that operate in the U.S. 

Appropriate compensation is important for workers at Alabama plants, but so is job stability. 

Kimbrell explained that, when the 2008 Great Recession hit, hundreds of workers were let go and replaced with temporary workers. He said that, during one recent six-year period, Mercedes gave longtime employees a 42-cent raise while making record profits. 

By global market capitalization, Mercedes-Benz was more profitable than Ford, Stellantis and GM in 2023. Meanwhile, a 2023 study reported that autoworker wages dropped by 11 percent from 2002 to 2019.

For many months leading to the vote, Kimbrell was confident, but he said things changed recently, as the company started implementing some improvements, such as eliminating the two-tier pay system, even as it increased its anti-union campaigning. “Volkswagen didn’t fight like Mercedes-Benz did,” he said. “In our plant, it was brutal, absolutely brutal, especially at the end.”

A long wait for UAW

Kimbrell applied to work for Mercedes-Benz in 1999 because there was a buzz that a union would come in and hire the temporary workers full-time. Two decades later, he has watched multiple attempts by the UAW to unionize Mercedes-Benz U.S. International (MBUSI) employees (in 1999-2000, 2007, 2013-2014) fail. 

After years of frustration, he began to strategize independently — while being under UAW advisement. 

“He made a call to me, said his kids were grown, this was a good cause and he needed to do something about it,” said  Stephen Sims, a friend and coworker of over twenty years. “Now the UAW has let Jeremy kind of run it.”  

Kimbrell has focused on a worker-led strategy. First, he created a “core group” (also known as the Voluntary Organizing Committee, or VOC,) recruiting a small circle of about 20 respected workers, in a plant of over 5,000, willing to lead meetings, hand out union cards and map out a network. 

Since the plant is vast — it is Mercedes’s largest U.S. plant — Kimbrell emphasized that recruiting team leaders, floor walkers, and floor riders was essential. 

Team leaders oversee 50-70 people at a time, floor riders deliver parts across the plant, and floor walkers travel up and down the line. Their mobility allows them to interact with dozens of people during a shift, so if you recruit one to the core group you could recruit many. Kimbrell also highlighted that starting face-to-face conversations and creating personal relationships was crucial, especially since management punished campaigning on company time.  

Mercedes’s Principles of Human Rights and Social Responsibility insists that “the company and its executives shall remain neutral” amidst organizing efforts, but Kimbrell said that management at his Alabama plant continuously pushes anti-union rhetoric, mandates employees to watch anti-union videos, refuses to allow the distribution of union literature in non-work areas and even administers write-ups and probations for campaigning on company time. This has led the UAW to file charges against Mercedes-Benz for a clear human rights violation under the German Act on Corporate Due Diligence Obligations in Supply Chains. 

“Companies have slick anti-union propaganda,” said Bussel, the labor-education expert. “They really do try to make people fearful for their job.”  

Added Jacob Ryan, a member of the organizing committee and founder of Bring the UAW to MBUSI: “What Jeremy has done with this push has been amazing. Despite company push back, he got us to first start meeting again.”

The worker-led strategy has moved fast. In 2013, it took the UAW-led campaign six months to get 30 percent of workers to sign union-authorization cards in a plant of 2,000. In January of 2024, Kimbrell said, it took seven weeks to get signatures from 30 percent of a plant with 5,000 workers; just a month later, he announced, over half had signed. 

With the momentum at their backs, UAW President Shawn Fain visited the plant in late March to meet with Kimbrell and other lead organizers.  

“It’s my honor to be here, to be with so many badass, fed-up auto workers who are ready to stand up,” said Fain as Kimbrell stood in the audience.

Legally, workers at Mercedes-Benz have to wait for at least a year before voting on unionization again. Kimbrell said a vote probably won’t happen next year, but it will happen in less than five years. He believes there’s hope for the UAW in other plants in the south. “Without a union contract, gains can be washed away,” he said. “I would like to encourage those workers to keep pressing forward.”