Nissan workers seek fair shake in Mississippi plant
By JANE SLAUGHTER
United Auto Workers (UAW) Presi-
dent Bob King says organizing foreign-
owned auto plants is make-or-break for
the shrinking union, but it’s been 11
years since the UAW got as far as a vote
at a Southern assembly plant.
Last month the union announced its
first public organizing drive since 2001,
returning to Nissan, the same company
that has twice beaten the union 2-1 at its
plant in Smyrna, Tennessee.
This time the drive is at the com-
pany’s nine-year-old plant in Canton,
Mississippi, a half-hour north of Jack-
son. The union held a June 3 rally near
the plant attended by ministers and
politicians as well as workers.
King appears to have given up on
convincing companies to adopt the vol-
untary “Principles for Fair Union Elec-
tions” he put forth in January 2011,
when the UAW announced a $60 mil-
lion campaign to organize in the South.
That would have meant a pledge — by
both sides — to abstain from intimida-
tion, threats, and promises of increased
wages. The union would have had equal
access to the workforce, and neither
side would have disparaged the other.
Not surprisingly, none of the Ger-
man-, Korean-, or Japanese-owned
companies that operate 14 assembly
plants in the United States accepted his
offer.
The union had promised a campaign
to shame the companies as human
rights violators, but for now is slogging
it out the old-fashioned way, with Can-
ton workers subjected to management’s
captive-audience meetings in which
bosses say a union will lead to layoffs.
T EMPS D ON ’ T C OUNT
In Nissan’s “roundtable meetings,”
where workers watch videos that ask
and answer loaded questions about the
UAW, the company is using the tradi-
tional argument: Union plants have
closed while nonunion plants have re-
mained open. (The script doesn’t men-
tion any other differences between the
plants, such as age, product, or relative
management competence.)
Nissan even claims never to have
laid off a worker in the United States.
That’s because more than a quarter of
the workforce is employed by temp
agencies and is laid off at will.
“They always say they never let any-
one go, but they let temps go,” says
Rafael Martinez, who belongs to the
Nissan Workers Committee for a Fair
Election. A Nissan spokesman says its
number of employees “is continually
fluctuating.”
Martinez pooh-poohs the notion that
unionization would threaten jobs, point-
ing to the three new vehicles the Can-
ton plant will start building this year, on
top of the four already in production.
The company has just announced 1,000
new jobs in Canton. Nissan’s stated
goal is to grow from 8.2 percent of the
U.S. market to 10 percent — making a
shutdown unlikely.
The company was lured to Missis-
sippi with $363 million in state subsi-
dies. Martinez thinks the company is
unlikely to give up “easy money.”
Workers who want a union could be
helped by the demographics of the
3,500-worker plant, which organizer
Sanchioni Butler estimates is, like the
town of Canton, 80 percent African
American.
Historically, black workers have
been more likely to vote for unions —
with their contract protections against
favoritism — than white workers. A
2011 national poll showed 62 percent
of African Americans with a favorable
view of unions, compared to 43 percent
of whites.
In 2008, though, the UAW lost a
vote 213-145 at a nearby plant that sup-
plies seats to the Canton factory.
A F AIR D AY ’ S P AY
In a low-wage, right-to-work state,
politicians, management, and the media
are combining to tell workers they’ve
got it lucky and shouldn’t rock the boat.
Martinez drove an armored car be-
fore hiring on at Nissan in 2004, seek-
ing a safer job. He now makes top pay,
$23.22 an hour — nearly $10 more than
the average Mississippi factory worker
outside the auto sector. But he’s stuck:
wages freeze permanently after five
years on the job.
Workers came to Nissan from other
factory jobs, chicken plants, catfish
farms, a Walmart warehouse. They
started at $12 an hour, they say, the
same wage that temp workers make
now.
The UAW is not emphasizing wages
in its organizing, though, because pay
at Ford, GM, and Chrysler is around
$28 for first-tier production workers.
That’s not a big enough differential,
King says.
Michael Carter, who builds truck
beds, says Nissan exploits the fact that
unionized second-tier workers top out
at $19.28 in 2015. “They say, ‘you
make more than a GM worker,’” Carter
said.
Likewise, Big 3 pensions aren’t a
selling point “because we don’t have
good pensions for the new hires in Ford,
GM, and Chrysler,” King says. “What
we say is if we get the whole industry
organized, people can get what they de-
serve.”
Both Big 3 new hires and Nissan
workers have 401(k)s.
King says the percentage of temps is
growing rapidly in the foreign-owned
factories, and notes that Big 3 new hires
have it far better than those workers,
with superior wages and protections
against arbitrary discipline and firing.
Canton workers say the temps tend
to be younger but work alongside them
doing exactly the same jobs. The UAW
points to public documents that Nissan
files with the state, showing 3,439 di-
rect hires and 941 contract employees
as of July 2010. The company has told
workers that all 1,000 new jobs this year
will be temporary. Nissan workers say
in eight years they have never seen a
temp promoted to regular.
The UAW is not trying to organize
the Canton temps in this drive, however,
as they work for different employers.
W HY N OT A G ERMAN P LANT ?
The UAW had long declined to say
which of the many targets in the South
it would try to organize first. Reports
surfaced in March of cards circulating
(Turn to Page 24)
Wishing all Union
Members a restful
and hard-earned
Labor Day
Weekend.
IBEW Local 280
32969 Highway 99E, Tangent, OR
541-812-1771
AUGUST 17, 2012
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
PAGE 19