Three Years After Opening With Non-Union Workers : UAW Calls for Election at Honda Plant
Three years after Honda began building cars in America with non-union workers, the United Auto Workers has finally gained enough support among the Japanese auto maker’s U.S. employees to call for a union election at Honda’s Marysville, Ohio, assembly plant.
UAW leaders said they formally notified the company Thursday of plans to call a union election and offered the auto maker the chance to unilaterally recognize the UAW as the bargaining agent for its Ohio workers.
If Honda doesn’t respond by Monday, the UAW will file a petition with the National Labor Relations Board calling for a union election at the plant, according to Joseph Tomasi, director of the UAW’s Region 2B, which has handled the union’s Honda organizing drive. He said an election could be held 30 to 45 days after the union files a petition with the labor board.
Tomasi refused to say how many workers out of Honda’s 2,900 Marysville employees have signed union cards, but noted that the union must have signed cards from at least 30% of the work force in order to successfully petition the labor board for an election.
He also indicated that the union would not have made its move now if it didn’t think it could win an election. Tomasi added that the union is expanding its organizing staff in Marysville as part of its election campaign.
Susan Insley, vice president for corporate planning for Honda in Marysville, said the company had not yet received the union’s notice, and refused to say how the company will respond.
Even before Honda began producing its Accord models at its Marysville plant in November, 1982, the UAW was trying to organize workers there and at an adjacent motorcycle plant. But until now, it had made little progress in the face of stern opposition from the company and the work force. Honda’s workers in the rural area around Marysville are generally young, most lack previous manufacturing experience, and were initially anti-union. At the same time, Honda has been constantly expanding and hiring new workers, making it difficult for the union to win over the support of the majority of the growing work force.
But Tomasi said employment levels have stabilized at Honda recently. He added that the union decided to push for an election now before more hiring is done next year, when Honda plans to add another assembly line to produce Civic subcompact models.
Tomasi said the UAW has gained support in the last six months, mainly because of mounting complaints among the workers. He said the workers are upset over the increased speed of the assembly line, constant changes in work schedules, harassment by supervisors and safety problems.
