Immigrants OK Union; Largest Action in Years

In what was seen as a significant test of organized labor’s ability to replenish sagging membership by signing up low-wage immigrant workers, employees of a large automobile wheel manufacturing company south of Compton voted Thursday to affiliate with the International Assn. of Machinists.

The 655-403 vote in favor of union representation at American Racing Equipment Inc. was one of the largest union representation elections held in the United States this year, and one of the biggest in the Los Angeles area in several years, National Labor Relations Board officials said.

It was also the largest manufacturing plant that labor has organized in Los Angeles in more than two decades, according to Dave Sickler, the AFL-CIO’s regional director and one of organized labor’s most fervent advocates of organizing immigrants.

The workers won the right to bargain with their employer on an initial contract--an often contentious process that can take months or years.

American Racing’s employees, most of them Mexican immigrants who make about $7 an hour, staged a wildcat strike last summer to protest what they said were unsafe and uncompensated demands for faster production.

The three-day walkout, which ended when management agreed to a wage increase, virtually shut down the production of aluminum wheels at the company’s main plant.

Longtime observers of organized labor in Southern California said a wildcat strike by a non-union work force at a large plant was highly unusual.

In the wake of the walkout, the machinists union and Sickler’s office assigned an unusually large team of eight full-time organizers to solicit worker interest in a union campaign. Workers petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for an election.

Officials at American Racing Equipment, owned by Toronto-based Noranda Corp., declined several requests for comment during the past week. The company operates three plants in Rancho Dominguez, a small industrial town.

“There are millions of other workers watching what you’ve done today who’ll take strength from this,” Sickler told a gathering of American Racing workers Thursday night in a union hall that machinists organizers established during the organizing campaign. “This is a very historic day.”

Labor officials have spent years talking about the need to recruit immigrant workers to replace the hundreds of thousands of union members who were lost during the 1980s because of plant closures and increased employer hostility to unions. However, relatively few intensive efforts have targeted immigrant workers.

Thursday’s victory was unusual because unions have had particular trouble winning representation elections at large companies.

While unions win representation elections at nearly half of all U.S. companies with fewer than 100 workers, they win only about one-third of the time at companies with 100 to 500 workers. The reason is often that larger companies tend to expend significant resources, hiring anti-union consultants and preparing videotapes for employees to watch before the vote.

The average union representation election involves fewer than 50 workers. Labor has been organizing fewer than 50,000 new workers each year in the private sector, while losing substantially more members because of plant closures and layoffs.