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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 18, 2017)
PAGE 12 | August 18, 2017 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS Workers say no to union at Mississippi Nissan plant Join the conversation … ONLINE After a decade-long campaign by United Auto Workers, work- ers at a Nissan auto plant in Canton, Mississippi rejected unionization in a 2,244 to 1,307 vote Aug. 3-4. Nissan could have recognized the union, because when UAW re- quested the election, it had collected signed union author- ization cards from a majority of the workers who were eligible to unionize. [Not eligible — under U.S. labor law — were thou- sands of lower-paid temporary workers employed by Nissan in- directly through Kelly Serv- ices.] Instead, Nissan waged a vig- orous anti-union campaign, with television ads, workplace anti- union videos, frequent group one-on-one sessions with man- agers … and violations of U.S. labor law. In a July 28 legal complaint, National Labor Re- lations Board (NLRB) said Nis- san managers broke the law multiple times during the cam- paign when they interrogated workers about their union sym- pathies, threatened and intimi- dated pro-union workers, and warned workers that the com- pany would close the plant if the union won. The anti-union campaign was supported by local businesses and by local Republican politi- cians, including Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant. UAW, for its part, also cam- paigned hard, organizing a coalition of student, clergy, community, groups to support the union effort. The campaign also drew support from actor Dannie Glover, and from U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). And local and national civil rights groups urged the largely African-American workforce to vote “Union yes,” as did the district’s demo- cratic Congressman and mayor. The NLRB will continue to pursue legal charges against Nissan for the labor law viola- tions. On the final day of the vote, the union filed additional charges. But even if the govern- ment agency finds Nissan broke the law and orders a re-run elec- tion, that’s unlikely to bring about a different result, given the 63 to 37 percent vote mar- gin. United Auto Workers has shrunk by nearly 300,000 mem- bers since 2001, and today has 415,000 members. Its Canton campaign is part of a sustained effort to unionize foreign- owned automakers in the mid- Atlantic and the South. Nissan’s two plants in the U.S. South are its only nonunion plants world- wide. Workers rejected union- ization at a Nissan plant in Smyrna, Tennessee, in 1998 and 2001. The $3.3 billion Canton plant annually produces about 450,000 vehicles, about 8 per- cent of Nissan’s worldwide pro- duction. Solidarity with our union brothers and sisters on Labor Day and every day!
