Tennessee Nissan Workers Vote 2-1 to Stay Out of UAW : Big Blow to Union’s Prestige
Nissan employees rejected United Auto Workers representation by a 2-1 margin today, turning back a drive to make their plant the first fully Japanese-owned auto factory in the United States to unionize.
The National Labor Relations Board said 1,622 votes were cast against joining the UAW, and 711 in favor in balloting that began Wednesday at the plant 30 miles southeast of Nashville.
“They can’t give us anything we don’t already have,” said Dotty Lockhart, a 29-year-old production technician who voted to keep the union out.
The vote was seen as a test of UAW muscle and a challenge to auto makers’ strategy of locating plants in the traditionally anti-union South. The union had charged that the breakneck pace of production at the 6-year-old plant caused a high rate of injury.
“It looks as if the Japanese-owned plants are going to stay non-union,” said David Healey, an auto analyst with Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. “As long as Japanese-owned plants pay the same wages as the unionized plants the workers aren’t going to vote for the union.”
The UAW afterward accused Nissan of misrepresentation and intimidation during the 18-month campaign. The union said company tactics included “captive audience” meetings and a barrage of anti-union videos on the plant TV system in which the auto maker warned that its members would lose benefits if the union won.
“It was like someone was trying to divide our family,” worker Redgie Gentry said of the organizing drive during a news conference this morning. “We’re all a family. . . . We didn’t want that. We wanted to be all one team.”
Jerry Benefield, president of Nissan Motor Manufacturing U.S.A., was elated by the margin of victory.
“I think the results of this election are very strong support for the participatory management philosophy here at the company and we’re very happy we’re going to continue that,” he said.
Benefield denied that the pace of the assembly line had contributed to a high injury rate and said it is slower than in some UAW-organized assembly plants.
In a statement, UAW President Owen Bieber, Vice President Stan Marshall and Regional Director George Smith said, “All this election demonstrates is that when a company is determined to operate without a union and is willing to use threats and misrepresentation to an unlimited extent, that company can delay if not escape its day of reckoning.”
In opposing the UAW’s campaign, Nissan focused on benefits it already offers, such as a reduced-rate car-leasing program and a 401K retirement program, as well as on a team concept in which workers rotate jobs as often as every two hours.
Business experts saw the UAW loss as a crushing blow to the union’s chances for reversing a decade-long decline in strength.
“This suggests to the world that Japanese companies don’t need the UAW. The UAW could lose dominance in the industry,” said Tom Mahoney of Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management.
VOTE MAY LURE FIRMS--Part A, Page 3
