By Tom Brown
DETROIT, Sept 17 (Reuters) - In a move that would mark a major victory for the United Auto Workers union, one of its top officials said on Wednesday that it will win the right to represent workers at a U.S.-based Mercedes-Benz plant.
Until now the UAW, whose membership has declined by about half in the last two decades, has failed to organize the growing number of assembly plants operated by Asian and European automakers in the United States.
But Nate Gooden, who heads the UAW's DaimlerChrysler department, said that was set to change.
"Vance, Alabama, will be a UAW-organized plant in the very near future," Gooden told Reuters.
The plant, which currently employs about 2,000 people but is expected to add 2,000 more, makes Mercedes M-Class sport utility vehicles and is tooling up to produce a new range of sport wagons.
Gooden, who holds a union seat on DaimlerChrysler AG's supervisory board, did not elaborate on the UAW's organizing drive at the plant.
But a union source said it had been discussed as part of negotiations leading up to the new four-year labor contract that Chrysler and the UAW announced this week.
The same source said DaimlerChrysler had agreed to permit so-called "card checks" at all U.S.-based DaimlerChrysler facilities.
Under a card check, which is less rigid than a formal election supervised by federal authorities and less open to company intervention, workers can cast ballots supporting or rejecting unionization from the privacy of their own homes.
A precedent was set for the UAW's organizing drive at Mercedes last winter, when Gooden organized a card check that allowed the union to represent 3,100 workers at two U.S. plants operated by DaimlerChrysler's Freightliner unit.
Freightliner builds heavy trucks, however, and hanging a UAW flag on a Mercedes vehicle plant would mark a much bigger win for one of America's most important trade unions.
A Chrysler source declined to comment on whether the Vance plant had been part of the UAW negotiations, but said the U.S. unit did not set policy for all of DaimlerChrysler.
The UAW's deal with Chrysler also includes provisions for closing two parts plants in Indianapolis and Detroit, and selling plants in Alabama and Indiana. Four other units that Chrysler wanted to close or sell will be given four years to become more competitive, union sources said.