As [active] union membership at The Big 2.8 continues to dwindle, the UAW is making a full-court press on the transplants. They've already launched an attack on Toyota and now they're targeting Honda, according to The Birmingham News. After an unsuccessful attempt to organize Honda's Marysville, Ohio plant, the UAW's now focusing on the Lincoln, Alabama facility. Union representatives have been meeting with small groups of employees at the plant, which turns out 300k Odyssey minivans, Honda Pilot sport utility vehicles and V-6 engines annually. They've warned workers they can expect the company "to step up a campaign of 'fear and intimidation' against pro-union workers." UAW organizer Frank White told employees, "The company will try to divide you by gender and along racial lines. They will try to divide you on shifts, saying day shift didn't reach quota so you'll have to work harder tonight." Sounds like the union knows a few "fear and intimidation" tactics of their own.
Find Reviews by Make:
“White told Honda employees the union cannot solve all of their problems but can at least ensure they have a voice at the table when it comes to negotiating benefits and addressing concerns about company policies.”
Sign up now and I’ll do my absolute bestest to treat you the same way I treat the rest of our members, and drive Honda out of the US for good!
It is cost effective for Honda to pay workers a premium and avoid the nonsense and featherbedding the union bosses use to justify their own extravagant pay and perks.
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070814/BIZ/708140392
Alabama is a “right to work state“.
“A Right to Work law secures the right of employees to decide for themselves whether or not to join or financially support a union.”
When was it that unions outlived their usefulness?
When was it that unions outlived their usefulness?
That would be when they started becoming part of the problem and not a solution.
I don’t get how this works. If they unionize one plant what bearing would it have on t he other ones?
Kurt B:
August 16th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
I don’t get how this works. If they unionize one plant what bearing would it have on t he other ones?
I would compare it to a cancer
So they uninionize one plant then it gets closed a la Walmart in Jonquire Quebec…
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0511-03.htm “Wal-Mart Crushes Union by Closing Store”…
Well..there’s always more room up here in Alliston, ON
In theaters soon,
The Gotti family starring in “War of Northern Aggression 2”
Looks like a losing battle for the UAW to me.
They’d be better off spending their time and energy trying to build better cars in the plants they’ve already organized. That would ensure work for the rank and file down the road.
Kurt B,
I used to work at F&P down the road from Honda in Tottenham making the subframe for all your modles plus sending off the Van subframes down to these guys. Small enough world.
Honda has been in America since, when, 1982? If the United Against Work, uh, UAW hasn’t been able to convert any Honda plant by now… fat chance. Oh, and I echo the comments about the organizers knowing how to play the Fear factor themselves.
“When was it that unions outlived their usefulness?”
1933.
How does Honda treat its workers?
Both the UAW and the CAW are one of the worst examples of Unionism, I know having been in a better Union. Both of these Giants run from the top down, not a good way for the workers to run a democratic Union, what I mean by the Top down I think guys like Buzz Hargrove of the CAW run the whole show with no input from the rank and file members, its like a dictator ship of the worst kind, the employees of Honda would be better off without these Unions imho.
Cancer is the greatest metaphor for how the UAW attaches itself to the host and slowly reduces its ability to compete until it dies. The UAW then looks for more hosts to prey on.
If I were running Honda and the UAW managed to win a representation vote at a plant I would simply close that factory. End of story.
The workers have no more right to a job at a given factory than does the painter they hire to paint their house have a right to any and all future painting work. Can you imagine if the framing crew who built your house claimed the right to do any and all future carpentry it required? Whoever pays to build the factory gets to make the rules and choose when to expand or close it. Pretty simple, really.
“So they uninionize one plant then it gets closed a la Walmart in Jonquire Quebec…
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0511-03.htm “Wal-Mart Crushes Union by Closing Store”…
Well..there’s always more room up here in Alliston, ON.”
What’s with you guys? It’s as if you’re celebrating the final triumph of giant corporations over workers. Does any of you really think Detroit management is innocent of mismanagement except that it overpaid those darn UAW workers? Do you think working Americans are better off today than they were 30 years ago when several times more of them had the right to bargain collectively?
Look, I’m hypocritical enough to be right in line for my next Asian car, just like most of you. But gloating over this turn of events is, for most Americans, self-delusion of the worst kind. The economic victims of the extermination of unionism aren’t “them.” They’re us. They’re you. UAW workers set a pay/benefits baseline for the industry that benefitted every worker, union or not. In turn, those workers had more money to spend to stimulate everybody else’s business and income. That’s how a national economy works… make that “worked.” If you don’t believe it, then you missed the recent news accounts of how Toyota intends to slash the pay of its U.S. workers by doing a sell job on them that they shouldn’t view themselves in comparison with UAW workers, but rather factory workers in general.
(And by the way, just so you can’t dismiss all this as self-serving rationalization, I’ve had the good fortune of never having to work in a factory in my life.)
Wow, what Wal-Mart did was brilliant. Bully for them. And if workers in the the healthy, growing part of the auto industry — the non-union part — are stupid enough to invite in that industry-killing, consumer-robbing cancer, they’ll deserve what would come to them.
Perhaps they should all be required to take a field trip to the wasteland of Detroit before they hold any votes.
tonycd, how is CLOSING PLANTS and CUTTING JOBS good for the worker? the UAW and CAW believe that their members deserve more money from a company that makes producs that DONT SELL. Wal-Mart is an example of a company that makes billions and pays peanuts. I hate Wal-Mart for more reasons than I care to discuss here and think that they should, in fact, unionize. If Wal-Mart goes belly up because of a union the people who lose their jobs are mostly people who are working part time anyways. I don’t have a reference, but something like 75% of Wal-mart employees are students working part time/after school. Every auto plant that is forced to close or cut back so that the company can afford to meet union demands is taking a job away from someone who is supporting a family, working full time. Those people are being ripped off by the group that is supposed to represent them. I am not anti-union, but the garbage that tries to pass itself off as an Auto Works union angers me to no end.
The problem is the Big 2.8 and the UAW mahongany row do not care about their workers or representatives. Plain and simple their only concern is how much they can pad their own personal wealth.
There is no communciation, trust or ability to work together and they are always at odds with each other. It’s a simple Prisoner’s Dilemma. Rather than work together to foster growth and global competitiveness, both sides wind up being greedy.
Has it not occurred to the UAW that workers at Honda/Toyota view the UAW as there to take their jobs away and give them to laid off GM/Ford/Chrysler workers who have more seniority?
Also, has it ever occurred to the UAW that if the workers at Honda decide that they need a union, that they might start their own?
Wouldn’t that be better than becoming a UAW franchise? Would competition for union membership be better for union members? Why does it have to be UAW or nothing? Does the UAW have a monopoly on unions in the US?