Mercedes-Benz workers in Alabama voting on whether to join UAW

Alabama is front and center this week as the United Auto Workers looks to build on recent victories in the South, a region long hostile to organized labor.

More than 5,000 Mercedes-Benz workers began voting Monday at a manufacturing factory in Vance as well as at a battery plant in nearby Woodstock. The balloting, which continues through Friday morning, comes on the heels of an overwhelming win at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee after two failed attempts since 2014.  

"It is potentially a milestone event. What the UAW stands to gain is an acceleration of momentum for organizing the other 11 nonunion automakers," Harley Shaiken, professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, told CBS MoneyWatch.