Unions targeting Big Business: Disney, Mercedes-Benz, CVS face organizing campaigns
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Increasingly emboldened workers are demanding union protections at some of some of America's blue-chip companies.
Why it matters: The U.S. worker unionization rate hit a new low in 2023, but public support for unions is near a six-decade high.
Between the lines: Union leaders this week made progress in organizing several major employers:
- The UAW on Thursday secured a federally sanctioned unionization vote for workers at the 6,100-person Mercedes-Benz factory in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama.
- Pharmacists at multiple CVS stores are moving to join a new union as part of a growing backlash to what they say are unsafe work conditions, Axios' Maya Goldman reports.
- The Actors' Equity Association is seeking a vote to organize the 1,700 live performers at Disneyland after more than two-thirds signed union authorization cards.
The big picture: The new unionization efforts follow similar campaigns at a slew of other major employers that had previously not been unionized, including Starbucks and Amazon.
Case in point: The UAW is in the final throes of a vote to organize the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which would become the first non-Detroit Three automotive assembly plant in the U.S. to be unionized.
- Voting continues through Friday evening, when ballots will be tallied.
- UAW advisers Chris Brooks and Benjamin Dictor predicted on X that workers would vote yes.
Reality check: Opponents are lining up.
- Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey — along with the governors of Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas — issued a statement on Tuesday bashing the UAW campaign to organize plants in their states.
- The effort is "driven by misinformation and scare tactics," and "we do not need to pay a third party to tell us who can pick up a box or flip a switch," Ivey said.
What's more, organizing a union chapter doesn't guarantee substantive concessions for the workers.
- "There's currently over 350 unionized Starbucks, and they have exactly zero contracts," said Art Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University. "There is nothing in the U.S. labor law that says they ever have to say yes."
The bottom line: Unions are gaining momentum in their quest to conquer Big Business, but it won't be easy.
