By Frank Williams
March 18, 2008 -
According to The Financial Post, The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) is accusing Toyota of "unduly influencing employees to vote against a union in a certification vote." In a complaint filed Monday with the Ontario Labour Relations Board, the union says Toyota Canada is distributing anti-union documents to employees and putting "vote no" signs inside the plant where they build the Corolla, Matrix and Lexus RX350. The move is largely seen as saber-rattling ahead of this Thursday's unionization vote. The stakes couldn't be higher. If the IAM gets its foot in the proverbial door, Cambridge will be ToMoCo's first wholly-owned unionized North American plant. Thin end of the wedge? An excuse to slowly shift production out of Canada? Or yet another thwarted attempt to infiltrate the world's largest automaker's NA ops? We should know by week's end. Meanwhile, Automotive News [sub] reports that workers at two Johnson Controls factories (Alabama and Mississippi) rejected the United Auto Workers' [UAW] efforts to unionize the workforce. It's a major defeat for the UAW; Johnson is the fourth largest U.S.-based automotive parts supplier.
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March 18th, 2008 at 10:20 am
The Canadian loonie (dollar) and US dollar are now essentially at par, instead of a 60% savings on the loonie. Toyota and Honda have essentially said they’d stay long-term in Canada, even though it is now the most costly place to manufacture cars in the continent (considering that a huge percentage of the vehicles are exported to the US). Unions can be easily seen to have been the ruination of Detroit’s 2.8.
But Toyota management are not stupid. It’s totally obvious that if the union makes it way in, the factory will be the most expensive of the most expensive in a softening market, and so it will be the first plant to be shuttered once the inevitable downturn gets worse in the USA.
Looking at it realistically, Toyota are trying to keep the plant going by doing what they are doing.
March 18th, 2008 at 10:21 am
This is the tactic they used at Walmart in Windsor, Ont. The Walmart store voted heavily against joining the union and the government people declared the vote invalid and forced the employees to unionize since they were ‘intimidated’ to vote ‘NO’ in the secret ballot. Unions really dislike secret ballot voting..
March 18th, 2008 at 11:36 am
What union did that Wal-mart store’s employees join? It is all unskilled labor. It doesn’t seem like much of a bargaining force to me.
March 18th, 2008 at 11:44 am
UFCW. At one time in Canada the guys stocking grocery store shelves were making more than the CAW guys building cars.
http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2005/03/09/walmart-vote050309.html
March 18th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
bluecon wrote “Unions really dislike secret ballot voting..”
Interestingly enough, fascists and communists also dislike secret ballot voting. Or ballots with more than one choice, for that matter.
After seeing the social and political changes over the past 75 years, one has to start to wonder if unions are relevant any more. There are now laws in place to prevent underpaying people, abusing them at work, etc.
What valid purpose do unions now accomplish for the workers? Increasingly, the workers who actually have some choice in this question are responding with “none” since much of the time, they vote down union representation.
March 18th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
“Interestingly enough, fascists and communists also dislike secret ballot voting. Or ballots with more than one choice, for that matter.”
We have a local autoworker site (autoworker.net) and many of the union posters are unabashadely pro-communist.
March 18th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Fine they vote in the union and Toyota will close the plant sooner rather than later. How obvious does it need to be for the employees? Toyota pays what they pay and they offer the benefits that they do - if a person doesn’t like the money and benefits they ought to go find something else to bring home the paycheck…
You can’t strangle your employer and expect to have a job decade after decade. Let me rephrase that, you can’t do that today with cheaper labor just over the border or across the ocean when transportation costs are still low enough to enable a company to just ship parts around.
Rather than be greedy, work towards long term survival b/c once the Chinese start selling cars in North America, it’s going to really hurt the domestics and the transplants alike.
These folks ought to work with management and management ought to work with their employees to make a better product.
Yes there is greed at the top and the bottom.