Bob King, the UAW's president, says that the union will begin attempting to convince workers at "transplant operations" - foreign-brand plants mostly scattered throughout the South - in January. King hasn't said which plant or plants the UAW will target first, but he did say that the UAW has sent letters to the CEOs of all foreign automakers with plants on U.S. soil.
The campaign will begin with a press conference announcing more details in January, at which time it anticipates organizing plant workers at the ground level. In most states with non-UAW car plants, workers have the right to decide whether they want to be represented by the UAW.
Automakers say that the UAW has never been able to convince a large number of workers to unionize.
"Each time the UAW conducted a campaign that led to a union election at our Smyrna [Tennessee] assembly plant, employees voted overwhelmingly against organizing," Nissan spokeswoman Katherine Zachary told Automotive News.
Zachary told the publication that Nissan's wages are competitive with Detroit 3 plants and that the automaker has never laid off an employee in its 27 years of building cars in the U.S.
"We feel the best way to interact with employees is through direct, two-way communication as opposed to involving a third party," Zachary said. "This approach to employee relations has been very successful resulting in a healthy and positive work environment that encourages the free exchange of ideas."
Watching its ranks shrivel
Under its latest leadership, the UAW has made an even larger push to grow in size. Down to just 120,000 workers thanks to various plant closures by Detroit's Big 3, the UAW is the smallest it has ever been.
It counts among its members only a handful of employees of foreign-brand automakers. Mitsubishi operates a plant in Normal, Illinois, and a Mazda-Ford joint venture in Flat Rock, Michigan, are the only UAW-represented plants that build foreign nameplate vehicles now that a Toyota-GM joint venture in California has closed.
Meanwhile, the UAW says that it will stop demonstrating at Toyota dealerships to protest the automaker's closure of its only UAW-represented plant.
Toyota closed the Fremont, California, plant earlier this year after partner General Motors abruptly pulled out of its side of the deal. Toyota said that it was no longer able to operate the plant profitably and it transferred production to other non-UAW plants in Texas and Indiana.
References
1.'UAW's King says...' view
