PAGE 12 | August 18, 2017 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
Workers say no to union at
Mississippi Nissan plant
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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!