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UAW Vows to Fight Nissan's Unfair Practices in Court Following Union Vote

#1

UAW Vows to Fight Nissan's Unfair Practices in Court Following Union Vote

Julia Conley, staff writer

Following this week's vote against unionization at a Nissan plant in Mississippi, the United Auto Workers (UAW) are asking the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to proceed with a trial looking into Nissan's unfair treatment of workers, as well as the intimidation tactics it used to discourage employees from unionizing.

More than 60 percent of Nissan workers opposed unionizing at the plant in a vote that took place Thursday and Friday, following years of organizing efforts by the UAW at the plant.

#2

can labor be officially declared dead in the good ole us of a?

workers have no rights at all, at all. you have the right to work until you die and if you’re lucky maybe get a few years of retirement in before you drop. I am so sick of our corporate owned government.

I have to get the hell out of this country. Its all over.

#3

This has been going on around the world since 70’s and now just hitting our shores. Canada will be next and where in the heck is there to go? The corporate dominance thru mergers and acquistions and corruption has prevailed for the now. Have you read Shock Doctrine: Disaster Capitalism?

#4

Everywhere, the fortunes of the working class is in retreat - a consequence of both the bosses and the cowed workers - and have been so for 40 years now! My beliefs that human progress, despite ups and downs, was generally in a forward direction, following some as yet-understood sciological-physical principle, an answer to entropy and decay, are gone-gone-gone. What will replace the cynicism that is the only thing left?

(Yes, the UAW is compromised in many ways - but that is not why the intimidated workers votes as they did)

Is the working class really going to allow itself to descend into 19th century hell and have to, with much bloodshed, re-invent solidarity from scratch all over again? Becasue, there is really no so-called “free market” economic force that I see that will prevent the continuing erosion of the fortunes of the disempowered working class.

Red Rosa proclaimed: “Socialism or barbarism!” well it look like it is going to be barbarism this time…

#5

Actually it started in the USA. Unions are much stronger, for now, in the rest of the world, notably Canada.

#6

In Germany unions have representation in the boards of directors in major companies.
That is one of the reason their industrial relations function as well as they do and last time I looked 400,000 manufacturing jobs went begging and companies had to turn down orders for lack of work force.
That is while we are crying about losing all these jobs to China.

#7

Workers don’t see the use in unions anymore, not like they used to. I organized for one and, as a union supporter, have come to understand why. In my union, the president and her staff gave themselves raises. Afterwards, when it came time for contract negotiations, they called it a “win” when they got us the same deal we’d been offered by management. I got my entire office to join, we petitioned several times, and was actively attending town halls. When the union threatened to call a one day strike, my entire office was onboard and I gathered support signatures.

You know what happened? Well, our union president called off the one day strike and shortly thereafter, posted a big “We won” message on the union webpage. Guess what though? People do math and everyone realized we got the same deal offered in the first place.

To say I had people coming to my desk saying “wtf?” is an understatement. As a result, a ton of people want to leave the union now. At a townhall, I got people clapping when I asked the leadership why they couldn’t be honest, why they couldn’t just say we were going to an impass instead of telling people they won. People would’ve been unhappy no matter what, but not irate. What they did was dishonest and bad for membership, especially with an anti union Supreme Court docket coming. I still don’t get the leadership’s strategy.

I do believe in unions and remain a member after that experience. In fact, I think a lot of unhappy folks are going to be a lot more unhappy in the long run once our country goes right to work now that Gorusch is on the court. But I witnessed first hand why people get disgruntled, especially with dues increasing, etc. If someone tried to tell you that $90 a month would be deducted from your paycheck so you can take the first deal management offers, you’d probably say no. It’s sad really.

#8

The whole friggin’ society is bought, sold and flushed down the drain by big money in this country.

In your case it begs the question of how the union board gets its mandate, if not through election by the membership?

#9

Membership elections, but so many people are tired of the crew at the top, they are just tuning out. Trust me, after that contract debacle, I tried to keep people membered up to vote, but they just don’t want to. And I honestly can’t say some evil outsider did it either. It was the leadership’s dishonesty with its members that did it. It is truly a sad situation because it’s going to hurt us all in the long run.

#10

Canada is on the list, that includes some of the scandanavian countries. Just so disgusted with the left always loosing. Actually there really isn’t a left political party in this country so i should have just expected this outcome.

#11

With a vote 60-40% against the UAW, these ULPs don’t mean jack. The fact is that neither the UAW nor much of the rest of the “labor movement” knows how to organize much of anything, including transplants. The rapid decline U.S. of union membership began in the mid-50s after the merger of the AFL-CIO.

This followed decades of internal purgers of “communists,” socialists, anarchists and democratic militants who were the best, courageous and most disciplined organizers, stewards, leaders and rank-and-file. Ironically, it was the Reuther brothers of the UAW who led the final purges in the late 1940s and early 50s during the McCarthy Era. (Like Bloody Joe needed union help).

So this little bit of Kabuki Theatre by the UAW whining before the NLRB is simply an effort to disguise their own incompetence, corruption and collusion in the neoliberal capitalist system that allows “business unions” to do its dirty work.

#12

I didn’t understand the above discussion: What is it, exactly, that is preventing your membership from replacing its self-serving leadership?

#13

Wages are at all time highs for the average worker. Labor has never been better.

#14

Nobody wants to be in the union is my point. They don’t care about the elections, especially after the last contract negotiations. After getting nearly every non-union person to sign up prior to contract negotiations (we were almost 100%), I couldn’t even get longtime members to stay on. An attempted recall went nowhere because so many people just want out. It’s truly sad.

#15

What you’re saying is a good reason people don’t trust unions. In a lot of places, they’ve become a way to unfairly carry dead weight around the factory. My experience with a union was everything you described as well as members being able to do whatever they wanted as long as they made their dues. We had people lay out of work for upwards of three months with nothing so much as a negative word said to them when they felt like coming back. We had boilermakers who would sit in a chair and instruct untrained new hires who were hired for something else how to do their job for them. In short, the union did nothing but keep dead weight around and eventually two years after unionizing the business was bankrupt. In right to work states, if you contact your labor commissioner, you’ll find out that the state offers just as much as a union does, so, as you say, the deal you get with unions in those states is identical to what the state would allow you get from management anyway. The only deal you get with most unions in most states is that you have to pay them to tell you they may strike at some point, and you end up getting the same as anyone else not in the union. You’ve just lost more money. With this experience taking precedent over positive ones for your average working class human being, unions are going to have to either clean up their act, or just go away, because people are starting to realize that union members get preferential treatment for doing less. It’s a people problem. People allowed to get by doing minimum, will do the minimum. The unions I’ve dealt with are that around here. Sling them some money every month and you can take off and go fishing whenever, go on vacation without notice, etc. You’re protected.

Lol, I will say on the flipside, I worked at a lighting company that made a lot of Honda and Nissan lighting parts and they forbade unions. So what ended up happening is the management would take “under the table” cash for preferential treatment. In that circumstance having a clean, honest, and functioning union would have made a world of difference. So it goes back to union management making a union or breaking it.

#16

Unions once served a necessary purpose. They are largely irrelevant now as smart and talented people realize they only serve to hold them back. THe people who still pay union dues probably don’t understand that they are just feeding a political party.

If the remaining unions were smart they would focus all of their energy on training and educating their workers to keep up with technology so they reduce the risk of becoming redundant once their work can be replaced by automation.

#17

Show me a valid study that confirms your statement. With true inflation running at 6 to 10 percent (using the federal government’s 1990 and 1980 methods of inflation calculation, rather than the current unrealistic method), wages are actually decreasing year on year. See the Primers on Government Economic Reports and the Special Reports at http://www.shadowstats.com/ and, especially, the Alternate Inflation Charts at http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts

#18

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

#19

Unions desperately need to see the return of fire-breathing reds again, but that means getting rid of Taft Hartley, something those darling Democrats have mysteriously failed to do after many years of being in a position to do so. It’s never even brought up by anyone and hasn’t been for years, even though it’s the lynchpin legislation to keeping unions docile.

I was in two unions, and in both cases, I’d always say in open team meetings that I’ll take leadership seriously the day they say they’re going to demand Democrats dump TH. It’s never happened, because the corrupt business collaborators that run unions would hate reds back in unions as much as the capitalists!

#20

This is absolutely incorrect. Work relationships are power relationships, pure and simple. It has nothing to do with skills, talent or anything like that. Militant democratic unions help to balance out the power relationships in the workplace and society. Corrupt business unions (which are the vast majority in the U.S.), house unions, and non-unionized workplaces leave workers at the mercy of their bosses and owners. Only children and the rich don’t understand this most basic power relationship (or poor and working-class adults who think like children and pretend that their skills and hard work will make them rich).