UAW Certified for Election at Honda Plants : Workers at 3 Ohio Sites to Vote on Unionization

The United Auto Workers on Friday won the first round in a battle to organize Honda’s non-union American work force when the National Labor Relations Board scheduled a federally supervised union election for Dec. 19 at Honda’s Ohio facilities.

At a hearing Friday, the federal agency certified that the UAW had received signed union cards from at least 30% of Honda’s 2,500 production workers, the minimum required before a union can ask the government to call for an organizing vote.

Employees at Honda’s Ohio automobile and motorcycle plants, both in Marysville, along with those at its new motorcycle engine plant in Anna, will be eligible to vote in the election, union and company officials said.

Predicts Victory

The union must win a simple majority to become the recognized bargaining agent for the work force.

Joseph Tomasi, a UAW regional director who is supervising the organizing effort, refused to say exactly how many Honda workers have signed union cards but predicted that the UAW will win the election.

“We think the momentum is there and that we have the issues in our favor,” Tomasi said. “So we think we can win.” Tomasi said the UAW plans to begin contract negotiations with Honda almost immediately if the union wins the election.

Even before Honda began car production at its Marysville plant in 1982, the UAW was trying to organize Honda’s first workers there and at the older Marysville motorcycle facility. But the union has never before had enough signed cards to call for an election.

Now, however, Tomasi says that more and more Honda workers are coming over to the union side because they are upset because they have trouble keeping up with the high speed of Honda’s auto assembly line and over the absence of any kind of structured grievance process through which workers could get the speed reduced.

Tomasi added that workers have also complained to the union that Honda doesn’t publicly post jobs that are available in the plant and that the auto maker doesn’t consider seniority in determining work assignments.

But Al Kinzer, personnel director at the Marysville plant, countered that the company believes that it will still defeat the union’s bid in the December vote. He added that the company was pleased with the format for the vote, since the firm had pressed to have workers at all three Ohio plants included, rather than just those at the auto assembly facility.

Kinzer also insisted that Honda has no “specific plans” to mount a campaign to persuade its workers to vote against the UAW, but he acknowledged that the firm will “make sure that our workers get the facts” before the election is held.

For instance, he disputed the union’s claim that Honda’s assembly line is running at an abnormally high speed; Kinzer claimed that Honda’s line is slower than those at almost all of General Motors’ domestic assembly plants.

He also said that Honda’s job-posting and seniority procedures are similar to those agreed upon by the UAW at the GM-Toyota joint venture in Fremont, Calif., as well as those provided for under the new labor agreement between the UAW and GM’s proposed Saturn small-car plant.

But, if the UAW does organize Honda, the victory would be a major step in the union’s drive to reestablish its traditional monopoly over labor in the domestic auto industry. Honda shattered that monopoly in 1982 when it became the first Japanese car company to open a non-union American auto plant.