Labor strife in Alabama during the early 20th Century is full of wild tales of shootouts, bloody strikes and the National Guard trying to control the mayhem.

Depression-era coal miners were heavily unionized, at a whopping 90 percent. Their strikes gave way to the 1934 textile mill walkouts nationwide that began with a labor unrest in Huntsville.

Wayne Flynt, a political historian and professor emeritus from Auburn University, notes that Birmingham, as recently as the 1940s, had the highest percentage of union manufacturing employees of any city in the South.

But it's been a long fall for organized labor ever since. Today, fewer than 10 percent of Alabama workers are represented by a union.

"You see people across the country who have seen their rights lost because unions are being taken away," said Bren Riley, president of the Alabama AFL-CIO, which includes 65,000 members. "We lost a lot because of the economic collapse of the Great Recession."

'Coke Lives Matter'

But a recent string of actions has some people taking notice.

In coastal Alabama and Mississippi, for the fifth day on Monday, the 250-member Teamsters Local 991 union protested what it claims are unfair labor practices by Birmingham-based Coca-Cola Bottling Company United Inc.

The scene can seem like a throwback to another era: Picketers holding signs, walking along busy roads, and receiving encouraging honks from passing motorists.

Union walkouts are a rarity not just in Alabama, but almost anywhere in the United States. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were only seven major work stoppages consisting of 1,000 workers or more in 2017, the second-lowest number since 1947.

The strike at four Coca-Cola distribution plants - Robertsdale, LeRoy, Mobile and Ocean Springs, Mississippi - isn't considered a "major" work stoppage. But, according to union officials, it's having an impact inside the company.

"They've brought in a number of (replacement workers) and what they are doing, we are having trouble figuring it out," said Jim Gookins, principle officer with Local 991, and a 38-year member of Local 991.

On Monday, picketers lined up along U.S. 90 at Coca-Cola Road in Tillman's Corner. One sign read, "Coke Lives Matter." Another sign objected to the so-called "scabs" or replacement workers that the union says were brought in from other areas of the state to fill in while the strike was under way.

Linda Sewell, a spokeswoman with Coca-Cola Bottling United, said the company is continuing to negotiate with the union through a mediator.

Gookins said the union presented a counter-proposal to the company's most recent offer on Friday. "They acknowledged a receipt of it on Saturday, but it doesn't seem like (progress has been made)."

The union says that the main problem stems from starting pay. Gookins said that in some cases, new hires could see a pay cut of $5 to $7 an hour.

Said Gookins: "There are some jobs in the $12 to $14 an hour range, and it's just not acceptable to us. They make $19 an hour and the company wants other people starting at $12 an hour. From where I sit, all that will do is create a hostile work environment. The $19 guy is also worried because (Coca-Cola United) will want more $12-an-hour guys here and force them out."

The last time this same Teamsters union went on strike, the walkout lasted three weeks before the group voted 139-65 to accept a contract with Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated. That hang-up, which occurred almost exactly 10 years ago, revolved around a dispute about retirement savings and pension plans.

Coca-Cola United acquired the Mobile production facility and the distribution territories from Coca-Cola Consolidated and The Coca-Cola Company in October 2017. Coca-Cola United announced at the time that it was planned to add employees and make $2 million in facility and infrastructure improvements.

Elizabeth Shermer, an assistant professor of history at Loyola University Chicago, and an author on books about labor relations and politics, said she's hoping that Local 991 is taking a broader approach during the talks with the mediator.

"It's better for the South, it's better for Alabama, if people are making enough money to buy what they are distributing," said Shermer. "That's what unions are there for."

She added, "Wages have stagnated. We used to say that working middle-class wages have stagnated, but they have been declining in the South since the mid-70s. Why not be out on strike for five days? What more do you have to lose?"

'Right to work'

The strike is also occurring during a peculiar time nationally for unions.

In March, a massive teachers' strike in West Virginia,

Unions were delivered a heavy blow in June after the U.S. Supreme Court, in

A little more than a month later, in Missouri,

Alabama is one of the 27 states with a right-to-work law, which allows employees in private-sector unionized workplaces to opt out of a union membership. As a result, they can cease paying union fees.

Critics contend that right-to-work is akin to union busting and a political ploy by Republicans to whittle away at strong Democratic voting base. Proponents say that right-to-work laws help bolster economic development. They also claim that right-to-work doesn't prevent anyone from forming a union.

Alabama became a "right-to-work" state in August 1953, and voters overwhelmingly backed a constitutional amendment solidifying the status in 2016.

The 2016 vote was heavily backed by the Business Council of Alabama, which declined to comment for this story. "This issue at hand is about contract negotiations currently being mediated under the National Labor Relations Act and given this status, we don't have anything to add," said interim president and CEO Mark Colson.

Alabama is the most recent of the nine states to include right-to-work within its state constitution. Since 2012, seven states have approved right-to-work laws.

Andras Danis, an assistant professor at the Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech University, said the recent labor victory in Missouri provides a momentum boost for labor activists and unions to push other red states to become more worker friendly. West Virginia and Missouri are both considered Republican-leaning states.

Recent polling data also suggests improved public opinion about unions. A Gallup poll taken last August shows that labor union approval at 61 percent, its strongest showing since 2003.

A Pew Research Center analysis, conducted in June, showed that 55 percent of Americans held a favorable view about unions. The same poll, citing BLS data, showed that just 10.7 percent of wage and salaries workers in the U.S. were members of labor unions, down from 20.1 percent in 1983.

Danis said it's unlikely Alabama will overturn right-to-work anytime soon. He said he's aware of only two such instances - Missouri this year, and Indiana in 1965 - in which voters overturned the law.

The Pew polling shows a 30-percentage-point gap between Democratic and Republican views of labor unions: 70 percent of Democrats hold a favorable view, compared to 40 percent of Republicans.

In Alabama, a deep red state in which almost all statewide elected offices are occupied by a Republican, 8.1 percent of workers are represented by a union, according to federal data. But while Alabama is below the national average, the state is more unionized than most in the South, including Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Florida, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

"What I think is more likely to happen is that employers will react to the extremely low unemployment rate around the country by raising wages a little bit in order to accommodate workers," said Danis. "Historically, it's very hard to overturn right-to-work."

Shermer, at Loyola Chicago, said she would not be surprised to see more efforts by labor unions to exploit the issue of economic inequality that has become a rallying cry for labor organizations since the Great Recession.

She added, "This goes so much beyond who is in the White House. There is a real impulse in this country that too many people are struggling to get by in one of the world's richest nations and that's not who we are."