Dismisses Unfair Labor Charges Over Election at Firm’s U.S. Plant : NLRB Backs Honda in Unionization Battle With UAW
The United Auto Workers suffered another defeat Friday in its drive to unionize Honda’s American auto workers when the National Labor Relations Board dismissed unfair labor practice charges against Honda’s management.
The action by the board’s general counsel upheld a lower-level ruling that Honda did not violate U.S. labor laws during the UAW’s organizing campaign at the company’s Ohio assembly complex last December.
Friday’s decision appears to further diminish the UAW’s prospects for unionizing other Japanese auto plants as they start up around the country. Honda was the first test of the union’s ability to win an organizing battle against the Japanese; executives at other Japanese companies that are opening American plants may now conclude that the union can be beaten.
UAW officials, who said they have not seen the decision, refused to comment. But Honda officials were clearly elated.
“We have always believed that the actions by the UAW against Honda were unfounded,” Honda Vice President Al Kinzer said in a statement. “We are pleased that this matter is finally at an end.”
Election Delayed by Inquiry
The UAW filed its charges against Honda in mid-December, just before 2,500 workers at Honda’s plants in Marysville and Anna, Ohio, were scheduled to vote on whether to join the union. The election was delayed while the charges were investigated, prompting Honda officials to insist that the UAW had complained because it feared that it was about to lose.
That argument seemed to gain credence in March, when the UAW withdrew its petition for a federally-supervised election at Honda after its unfair labor charges were first dismissed by the labor board’s regional office in Cleveland.
At the time, the UAW said it was withdrawing its petition because its decision to file unfair labor charges had confused workers and cost it support.
When the union dropped its election bid, it also charged that an anti-union group, formed by Honda employees and allegedly illegally funded by the company, had successfully turned workers against the union. The UAW asked the labor board to investigate the group as part of the review of its unfair labor practice charges, but the government found no evidence that Honda had financed the anti-union organization.
The NLRB also found no grounds to support the UAW’s allegations that Honda had increased benefits simply to ward off the union or that a company-sponsored poll of workers’ attitudes about unions made workers fearful about supporting the UAW. Workers were surveyed anonymously, and Honda made no effort to use the results to coerce workers to vote the company’s way, the board concluded.
Still, the union remains committed to organizing Honda as well as other Japanese auto plants, UAW spokesman Dick Olson said Friday. “We just moved into a bigger headquarters in Marysville, so the drive continues,” Olson said. The UAW currently has a staff of three organizers in Marysville, and it may add more in the near future. But Olson conceded that the union no longer has a timetable in mind for successfully organizing the company.
