Whoops!!! Big Labor just lost another huge one. Workers vote for their future, against Big Labor:
October 4, 2001
UAW Loses Second Bid to Represent
Workers at Nissan Factory in Tennessee
By JEFFREY BALL
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The United Auto Workers, in a significant defeat, lost its bid to represent about 4,800 workers at Nissan Motor Co.'s auto factory in Smyrna, Tenn.
The election marked the second time the UAW held a vote to try to unionize the Nissan plant -- and the second time the union lost by at least a two-to-one margin. Of 4,589 ballots cast, 3,103, or 68%, were against the union, according to a Nissan statement confirmed by union officials.
The vote, which capped a bitter six-week battle between the union and the company, is the latest in a string of failed efforts by the UAW to organize foreign-owned auto plants in the U.S. The Nissan plant would have given the UAW a base from which to renew its efforts to organize other European-owned and Japanese-owned assembly plants, including a DaimlerChrysler AG Mercedes-Benz factory in Vance, Ala., Toyota Motor Corp. plant in Georgetown, Ky., and a Honda Motor Co. factory in Marysville, Ohio.
Vote at Nissan Plant in Tennessee Is Key Test for Auto Workers Union (Sept. 28)
Organizing such plants is crucial to the UAW's effort to stem a decades-long decline in its membership. The UAW had just 733,000 active members at July 31, half the 1.5 million it had in 1970. The decline reflects a shift in the U.S. auto industry's center of growth, from unionized Big Three plants in the Midwest to nonunionized foreign-owned factories, most of them in the South.
Nissan officials expressed satisfaction at the outcome. "The contest has been a long and hard one and it's been disruptive, but our employees have made their choice clear. We hope now that the UAW will respect their wishes," Dan Gaudette, the Nissan official in charge of the Smyrna plant, said in a statement.
UAW officials attributed their loss at least in part to a vigorous antiunion campaign by Nissan. In a statement, Bob King, the UAW's vice president for organizing, criticized what he called Nissan's "campaign of fear and intimidation," saying it "offers dramatic proof of the tremendous obstacles workers must overcome in the face of a hostile employer."
Last week, just days before the vote, it made a long-rumored announcement that it will move production of its Maxima sedan from Japan to Smyrna, which probably will bring with it investment of $50 million and as many as 500 new jobs.
interactive.wsj.com
Meanwhile, Ford admits its UAW cars are crappy, flappy:
....Mr. Scheele said details of the company's turnaround plan won't be ready for several weeks. Still, he declined to rule out plant closings. "I'd be kidding you if I said we won't look at it," he said, noting that Ford can't close any U.S. plants before 2003 under the terms of its current contract with the United Auto Workers union.
"For the first time in the U.S., Toyota [Motor Corp.] has a double-digit lead" in quality, Mr. Scheele said. "Ford is, for the first time, significantly worse than GM or Chrysler," referring to Detroit rivals General Motors Corp. and DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group.
"Some of the actions that we've taken in the past few years maybe distracted us and contributed to a deterioration in quality," he said, without elaborating.
Ford has already announced it would write down certain investments in e-commerce and automotive ventures, which will trigger a one-time charge of $200 million in the third quarter.
Still, while Ford has succeeded in cost-cutting for years, Mr. Scheele said, "our costs are [now] going up and going up dramatically," attributable in part to growing expenses for sales incentives and other marketing initiatives. The $1,000 per vehicle added on average over the past five years came at a time when new-vehicle prices were falling in the face of intense competition from import rivals. The squeeze has hurt Ford's profit margins and contributed to a deep slide in market share, which Mr. Scheele called "severe damage."....
interactive.wsj.com
Gee, any way you look at it, seems like less forced money for the Dem's coffers. |
