The top Mercedes-Benz executive in the U.S. had a not-so-subtle message for workers as they headed to the polls this week to vote in a potentially historic union election.
Federico Kochlowski, the new president and CEO of Mercedes-Benz U.S. International, wrote in a letter to employees at the plant in Vance, Alabama, that the election marked “an important decision about how we work together for years to come.”
“And although I respect everyone’s right to take a position on this matter, I prefer that we work on our future together without anyone else between us,” he wrote, according to a copy obtained by HuffPost.
Kochlowski sounded as though he was pleading with employees near the end of the letter, telling them he was “a person of my word.”
“When I tell you I’m going to do something, you can trust that I will do everything in my power to make it happen,” he wrote. “I hope you’ll give me a chance to do what I came here to do.”
More than 4,000 employees at the plant are voting Monday through Friday this week to determine whether they join the United Auto Workers. The UAW has struggled to unionize manufacturing plants in Alabama, so an election win would mark a major organizing victory.
A Mercedes-Benz spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. The letter viewed by HuffPost had been mailed out to an employee last Thursday.
Rick Webster, an employee at the plant and member of the union’s organizing committee, said workers had been pulled into meetings leading up to the vote to hear talking points against the union.
“It’s been nonstop anti-union. We’ve had to go to meetings every day to watch videos or have them read off a piece of paper,” he said. “They’ve spent all this money on all these commercials and everything else. … They’re just blowing all kinds of money on this thing, and it just hasn’t fazed us.”
The letter from Kochlowski prompted a rebuke from IndustriALL, the global union federation based in Europe that has come out in support of the UAW. The group says the Vance plant is Mercedes’ only non-union plant in the world.
IndustriALL general secretary Atle Høie sent a letter to Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius on Tuesday to say he was “appalled” by the company’s “ongoing and massive violations of the principle of neutrality” in the union election.
“It’s been nonstop anti-union. We’ve had to go to meetings every day to watch videos or have them read off a piece of paper.”
– Rick Webster, Vance plant employee
Høie wrote that Mercedes was not supposed to take a position on the Vance election under the “Principles of Social Responsibility and Human Rights” agreement the company had signed alongside IndustriALL.
The agreement states: “In the event of organization campaigns, the company and its executives shall remain neutral.”
Høie wrote to Källenius, “I expect you to intervene immediately to ensure that neutrality prevails at least for the remaining four days of the vote.”
The news outlet Labor Notes reported earlier this week that Mercedes had enlisted a local pastor to speak to workers and discourage them from unionizing. “Mercedes-Benz has been an uplift for people like me,” Rev. Matthew Wilson said in a video aired at the plant, according to Labor Notes.
The UAW is coming off a landmark election win last month in Tennessee, where it unionized the Volkswagen plant after two previous failed attempts. The union is hoping a win this week in Alabama could turbocharge more organizing at auto plants in the South, despite continued political pressure from figures like Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey, who’s urged workers to vote against the UAW.
Webster predicted the union would prevail regardless.
“We’re gonna win this thing on Friday,” he said.