The IAM has backed down, at least for now. Reuters reports that the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers withdrew its bid to organize Toyota's Cambridge, Ontario plant after they found out they didn't have enough signatures to force a vote. When the IAM filed for the vote, they said they had "well over" the threshold of 40 percent of the total work force required by Canadian law to hold a vote. But then Toyota filed a modified list of employees showing they have 4,025 workers instead of the 3,100 the union claimed they had. Global Insight analyst Aaron Bragman warned "it would not be in Toyota's interests for the plant to unionize" because it could affect future Canadian investments by Toyota and the other Asian automakers. Regardless, the IAM said they'd continue their efforts to unionize the plant.
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As a Canadian…please IAM…piss off.
Efforts to put a Union in place in Canada depends on 1 The Province where the Plant is located 2 Whether under Federal Law its different all together!
In Ontario the Labour law requires that 40% of new members sign Union Cards, in this case for Toyota, it seems on the surface that Toyota had more employees than the Union thought they had? Its a very strange case really that the Union would make a mistake like that, in some instances Companies have loaded lists, I am not saying this happened at Cambridge but who knows for sure. Maybe time will tell, the Canadian Auto Workers tried several times to organize Toyota, without success so somehow I think that what happened to the CAW, also happened to the IAM
The new Woodstock plant was placed under the same umbrella as the Cambridge plant, and the workers are handpicked to resist unionization. Toyota of course did this deliberately and Buzz is well aware of it. He is know doubt chuckling at the new amateur union in town. The new hires at Woodstock are the reason for the increased membership.
Hey, I’ve got an idea! Let’s unionize the Toyota plant when the exchange rate with the US (Toyota’s primary market for NA vehicles) is already at historic levels!
Do they think they are dealing with GM , Cry-sler or Ford?
…and the workers are handpicked to resist unionization.
@bluecon:
How did they go about doing that? Just asking people on the application “Do you hate unions?”
So the union claimed they had “over 40%” of workers in favour of the vote by using a misleading and false number for the workers at the plant? Shame on them.
CarShark
To be hired by Toyota you go through about a half dozen interviews. They are very thorough.