During a kickoff event for the Alabama Workers’ Week of Action, labor and community organization advocates discussed labor campaigns and events planned across the state.
The livestream, hosted by the Valley Labor Report, highlighted events and labor campaigns put together by organizations participating in the week of action, scheduled around Workers’ Memorial Day on April 28 and May Day, or International Workers Day, on May 1.
The event’s panel was hosted by Jacob Morrison, president of the North Alabama Area Labor Council, a regional council of labor unions and body of the AFL-CIO, and featured representatives of the United Campus Workers of Jacksonville, Jobs to Move America, Alabama Arise, the Southern Workers Assembly, United Auto Workers and Communication Workers of America.
Luis Robledo, coalition manager for the nonprofit Jobs to Move America’s Southern Program, discussed ongoing negotiations to achieve a community benefit agreement between Hyundai-Kia and supply chain workers.
Robledo highlighted that the car manufacturer was recently featured on the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health’s “Dirty Dozen” list of unsafe working environments.
“After several years of research and organizing, we have found out that they are, you know, not being just and not being neighborly to the communities that they’re in, particularly those in the Black Belt,” Robledo said.
Robledo said 12 deaths and almost 1,000 workplace injuries occurred among workers in the car manufacturer’s supply chain from 2015 to 2025.
Robledo also highlighted campaigns JMA has conducted targeting child labor in the state, as well as campaigns to improve conditions for work-release workers.
Adam Keller, Worker Power Campaign director for Alabama Arise, who will host Arise and the League of Women Voters of Alabama’s Commonsense Economics for Alabama at Grace Presbyterian Church in Tuscaloosa, spoke on the week of action’s mission and ultimate goals.
“We hope that, you know, starting this new tradition this year will pick up some steam, and that this is just a start to something, and we do it bigger and better next year,” Keller said.
“The vast majority of us are falling behind. If you look at it, working people have been falling behind for decades now, as union membership has declined, wealth inequality has skyrocketed, and what we need to do is build people power,” he continued. “And labor unions are essential to that kind of people power that we need. Unions by themselves can’t do it alone. But neither can the community. We need both the community and unions working together to build that kind of people power, because it’s always taken people power in this country to make positive progress, right?”
“This week is really an opportunity for us to get the word out to educate our working-class siblings in the community, whether or not they belong to a union yet or not. Because we all deserve better,” Keller added.
The Worker Power Campaign director also pointed to and expressed support for the UAW’s call to set worker contracts to expire on May Day 2028, to develop unified organization in favor of stronger contracts.
Whitney Washington, vice president of the North Alabama Area Labor Council, highlighted recent research the council conducted on the upcoming merger of the Huntsville and Crestwood Hospital systems, resulting in a report released last month.
“We felt that that was something that impacted all of the workers in North Alabama, as that effectively creates a healthcare monopoly, but especially thinking about the healthcare workers in North Alabama, that that has consolidated power into one entity,” she said.
Washington also cited a campaign her organization helped to develop last year against a proposal from the city of Huntsville to put AI cameras on garbage trucks to study light levels in city neighborhoods.
“This would have effectively recorded all of Huntsville’s residents through the garbage trucks, and our members really did not support that,” she said.
Campaigning against the proposed program led to more than 500 individuals writing to the Huntsville City Council in opposition to the proposal, which the council later backed out of.
Washington went on to encourage local residents to attend an all-day event hosted by her organization alongside the North Alabama Democratic Socialists of America and 50501 Huntsville.
The event will take place at Butler Green at Campus 805 in Huntsville. Additional May Day events have been scheduled by labor groups and their allies in Tuscaloosa, Mobile and Dothan.
“This is a great way to get involved. You can pop in and out. You’re going to be right there by, you know, Straight to Ale, and Yellowhammer,” Washington said. “So, you know, grab a beer, listen to some music, talk shop, get plugged in.”
United Campus Workers Jacksonville State University co-chair Maureen McGuire outlined an event UCW Jax State will host on Tuesday honoring 27 undergraduate and graduate student workers with monetary awards.
“We are really thrilled also because Adam Keller will be speaking to our students at that event tomorrow, so, really happy to see him here this evening and excited to see him,” McGuire said.
Eric Hall of the Southern Workers Assembly spoke on his organization’s attempts to organize laborers throughout Alabama.
“We’re building our formations in Huntsville, Montgomery and Birmingham and also have a budding formation in Tuscaloosa,” Hall said.
He went on to point to a demonstration set for May Day in Birmingham by laid-off Central Alabama Waterworks utilities workers.
More than 200 workers have been fired during the shift from the Birmingham Waterworks to Central Alabama Waterworks, which was established by the legislature last year.
“We are organizing those workers and helping to uplift their demands. One, of course, to get their jobs back and be made whole. And two, to get the politics out of our public utilities,” he said. “All of us depend on water, and so we are pushing hard in that campaign to ensure those who are in positions of power understand the seriousness and the concern as relates to the workers’ demands, but more importantly, the community demands.”
Errol Minor of the Communications Workers of America also discussed efforts to organize former Central Alabama Waterworks employees and the importance of advocating for strong and deliberate communication between workers and employers, as well as labor organizers.
“We really, we really need to come together and reach out to those individuals, to those employees that are still there and really want a union formed,” Minor said.
Jeremy Kimbrell of the United Auto Workers spoke regarding conditions for auto workers in Alabama’s Mercedes, Hyundai-Kia, Honda, Toyota, Mazda and Lincoln auto plants.
“One thing that they all have in common is that they have less pay and benefits and worse treatment than auto workers in other states have. And that’s, um, because they’re not organized,” Kimbrell said.
“As a great example, we just had over in what I call the Alabama suburb of Chattanooga, the Volkswagen facility, they just won their first contract,” he added. “When I talk to workers locally, that maybe make a buck or two an hour more than them, what they think of the contract, and I’ve not found anybody that has anything negative to say about it. They’re proud for those workers, and they think those workers deserve the improvements that they got.”
Concluding the event, Morrison cited additional pushes for organization in the state, including a Starbucks workers solidarity pledge issued by Starbucks Workers United alongside the North Alabama Labor Council’s workers solidarity pledge.
Morrison also said the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice and the Alabama Poor People’s Campaign will have new programming and actions coming later in the month.
“We’re going to want to be doing this every year going forward,” Morrison said of the Alabama Workers’ Week of Action. “We, as working people, we generate the wealth of this state. And it’s long past time that we get the respect that we deserve, right? We deserve better in Alabama.”
