UAW Targets Honda
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.
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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?