While Organizing in Alabama, UAW Practices the Art of the Deal.

Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, August, 2003

By Jamie Butters, Detroit Free Press Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Aug. 28--VANCE, Ala.--Two billboards along Interstate 20-59 stand on the steep hillside across from the exit to Mercedes Drive. The first touts the 10-year relationship between the luxury German brand and this deep South state. The second espouses the more than six decades that the UAW has protected its members' safety, civil rights and standard of living.

But those members do not include the nearly 2,000 hourly workers at Alabama's oldest automotive assembly plant, which is expanding to add another 2,000 jobs.

The UAW never has managed to organize the workforce at a foreign-owned auto plant after production began. So when UAW Vice President Nate Gooden promised...