Workers At Chattanooga Start Anti-UAW Petition

Yes, those stupid Tennessee workers who are too dumb to realize that the non-union factories owned and operated by Honda, Nissan and Toyota in this country are about to become Victorian hellholes straight out of a Dickens novel any day now. Never mind, of course, that those same factories have avoided that fate for three decades.

@geeber Give it time, the slow squeeze continues across the board, Or are you denying that the income gap in this country is not widening at an alarming rate and the middle class is getting squeezed out?

@geeber Kinda makes you wonder if Union supporters have their insurance coverages maxxed out, and extended warranty on their toaster. Or maybe they all just wake up sweating from a nightmare involving a cigar-chomping slavedriver in a bowler hat? Because extorting your employer to death just so you can fill your entitled pockets can't possibly be a motive for such a noble cause.

@APaGttH We're talking about the North American transplant operations of Honda, Nissan and Toyota - factories that employ Americans and Canadians in jobs with decent pay and good benefits. Or are you denying that the non-union workers at the Honda, Nissan and Toyota factories in this country and Canada are paid fairly and treated well? We all know that you have burr under your saddle when it comes to Toyota, but no one has credibly claimed that its North American factories are sweatshops. The percentage of the American private-sector workforce that belongs to a union peaked in 1953 at roughly 34 percent, and has been in a steady decline ever since. That decline took hold long before Toyota, Honda, and Nissan came on the scene. Also note that "middle class" and "unionized" are not synonymous.

@forraymond: Please detail how the non-unionized autoworkers in this country are suffering from employee abuse, unsafe working conditions, environmental harm, deregulation, and no employee rights. Gimme a break from that rhetoric. You know, it's not 1880 any more. The media/internet, along with OSHA and the Department of Labor, will prevent these sorts of abuses - not to mention job mobility and corporate competition for good workers. The silence is deafening.

@geeber And yet, our union employed parents (or grand parents) enjoyed the highest standard of living in the world, put a man on the moon, built the Eisenhower Highway System, won the Cold War, built the TVA, and created the Internet. They enjoyed largely free or low cost college, home ownership programs, pensions, and fully paid benefits. That Communist Harry Truman almost doubled the minimum wage in 1949. I'm so glad I have people to protect me from those horrible years today, yes, those unions ruined everything. And give me a break on the Toyota thing. The Camry is almost 20% fleet! with more cash on the hood than a Fusion, subsidized leases and 0% interest loans plus cash back. The "new" Corolla can be had with a 4-speed. The Tacoma hasn't had a significant update since 2005. Scion is a dead brand walking. Lexus lost its luxury lead to the Germans, and by Lexus' admission, likely will never get it back. The Prius C, FJ, and Yaris are on Consumer Reports list of worst cars from a driving stand point. And Toyota has become the recall King, even past the floor mat issue. Toyota killed NUMMI because a brand new Mississippi factory was sitting completely unused, and the San Antonio plant would be at less than 50% of planned capacity had Toyota not consolidated SUV operations (plant was designed to crank out 250K Tundras a year originally). Oh, and if we're flying the anti-union flag why is it Toyota manufacturing in Japan is - gasp - unionized. So - for Toyota - much that I called them out on is coming into reality. Check out 3 year residuals on a 2014 Corolla. Hint, Toyota is subsidizing.

@SCE to AUX We wouldn't have regulations, OSHA, paid overtime, and basic benefits without unions. The bigger issue is the need has run its course, and the current electorate can't remember a time without. So of course, these benefits will still exist, union or not. Here is an interesting question - if the UAW disappeared tomorrow, and the automakers could negotiate as "take it or leave it," would Honda, Subaru, Toyota, Nissan, et al still offer their basically union grade packages - or would they downgrade to match what, ehem, the market will accept. Let's remember when the economy tanked and buyers rejected the redesigned 2008 Tundra, San Antonio workers were kept on the payroll planting flowers outside and watching PowerPoint decks on Toyota history. That's called a job bank in a union world - Toyota made a no-layoff promise prior to the meltdown, good way to keep a union out. They didn't break that promise either - but if it didn't exist in the first place, would workers get the same deal? I think the answer is pretty obvious, Finally, despite all the great jobs created in the south, there is no clear financial impact on improving the south's poverty level, low education standards, low health standards, or increasing a tax base. In many cases, these factories are in the south because state governments gave away the farm with massive tax shelters for the corporations, passed on to the citizens. It is what it is - the UAW sure aren't sainted - but union bad is a very simplistic view. There is strong evidence all around the world what happens when big business calls the shots with near impunity - it isn't pretty.

@Crabspirits I was in a Home Depot and I was asking about their working conditions and mentioned maybe they ought to have a union to voice their concerns. The guy narrowed his eyes at me and looked around and said, and I am not making this up, that any mention of the world "union" and management guys start to follow you around making you feel really uncomfortable. So you see, workers aren't exactly free to express their opinions or desires in front of their everylovin' managers, are they? That doesn't sound very "American" to me. What is it about "the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave?" That is, except at work where your boss rules. Am I wrong?

@mgs3bes Employees who want to organize have to do it on their own time. The NLRB won't protect union organizers who don't follow the rules. Organizing on the clock is a total no-no. That's a good way for workers to screw up an organizing campaign. Even once you're in a union, represented employees can't do union work on company time. If your boss makes you mad and you want to file a grievance, you can't do that while you are clocked in.

@SCE to AUX Oh sure. And everybody is just happy to be there and management in its benevolent despotism always looks out for its employees and it's just one big happy family! Kumbaya! Look, business is about profit and only gives workers what they can get away with and still maximize profit. Workers want higher wages and better benefits. It's adversarial right down the line. One side needs the other, MUST have the other and BOTH sides should have a say. If you trust that management always does the right thing, I give you...the Pontiac Aztek! Did wages and benefits kill Pontiac or did stupid management do it?

@APaGttH You raise some very interesting question APaGtth, well done. I would argue in the case of the San Antonio facility's "jobs bank", its much wiser to pay folks so sit around near idle while you retool then to fire them and hire them back. Toyota has traditionally held a long term view of their business and in the long term I think it makes more sense to keep your workforce happy (and earn their loyalty) when times are tough. When things turn around you'll have higher morale/attitude among your experienced workers then bringing in inexperienced replacements or rehires who may feel resentful toward your company.

@SCE to AUX http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Big_Branch_Mine_disaster Read that and tell me the situation was not messed up and the workers should have had more protections.

@geeber APaGttH: "And yet, our union employed parents (or grand parents) enjoyed the highest standard of living in the world, put a man on the moon, built the Eisenhower Highway System, won the Cold War, built the TVA, and created the Internet. They enjoyed largely free or low cost college, home ownership programs, pensions, and fully paid benefits. That Communist Harry Truman almost doubled the minimum wage in 1949." Unions really didn't have much, if anything, to do with those achievements. The U.S. economy was the only game in town for many years after 1945 because Europe and Japan were rebuilding from the devastation of World War II, while the Soviet Union and China chose to saddle their economies with the inefficient, unworkable communist system. Also note that the Great Depression had depressed this nation's birth rate, while World War II and the Korean War resulted in the deaths of a fair number of wage earners. American companies had little or no foreign competition. The auto, steel, tire and heavy equipment industries were basically organized as unionized oligopolies. Workers did benefit from this lack of competition. The tighter labor supply, which was result of the Great Depression and World War II, also helped. In time, however, consumers didn't benefit as much. The system led to lots of inefficiencies and sloppy practices, resulting in the clunkers that were rolling out of GM, Ford and Chrysler factories by 1974. That is why plenty of Americans in 1980 were happy to swap their junky Chevrolet Chevettes and Plymouth Horizons for Toyota Corollas and Honda Civics. "APaGtth: I’m so glad I have people to protect me from those horrible years today, yes, those unions ruined everything." Unionizing the private-sector workforce won't bring back those years, because unions weren't responsible for them in the first place. You'll have to again reduce Europe and Japan to rubble, and this time make sure you do the same to Mexico, Brazil, China, India and various Asian countries while you're at it. At any rate, I'm still not seeing any proof that Honda, Nissan and Toyota are running sweat shops in this country or Canada. The workers in those facilities seem to be doing fine without union representation. APaGttH: "And give me a break on the Toyota thing. The Camry is almost 20% fleet! with more cash on the hood than a Fusion, subsidized leases and 0% interest loans plus cash back." That's awful...except, of course, that fleet sales still constitute a smaller percentage of total Camry sales than they do Ford Fusion or Chevrolet Malibu sales. Despite this, the Camry retains its best-seller title. The Camry also regularly outscores the much-ballyhooed Malibu in comparison tests. I'm not wild about the Camry, but its main competitor is still the Honda Accord. APaGttH: "The Tacoma hasn’t had a significant update since 2005." And its domestic competition is either dead (Ford Ranger, Dodge Dakota) or even worse (the Chevrolet Colorado). I'm guessing that is one reason why Toyota doesn't feel pressured to bring out an updated version. APaGttH: "Scion is a dead brand walking. Lexus lost its luxury lead to the Germans, and by Lexus’ admission, likely will never get it back." Yet Lexus is still ahead of Cadillac and Lincoln in prestige. APaGttH: "The Prius C, FJ, and Yaris are on Consumer Reports list of worst cars from a driving stand point. And Toyota has become the recall King, even past the floor mat issue." Toyota has had problems. You are correct about that. It still manages to outscore all of the domestics and Europeans in the annual Consumer Reports reliability surveys, along with that publication's overall ranking of companies. APaGttH: "Toyota killed NUMMI because a brand new Mississippi factory was sitting completely unused, and the San Antonio plant would be at less than 50% of planned capacity had Toyota not consolidated SUV operations (plant was designed to crank out 250K Tundras a year originally)." In other words, Toyota management makes sure that the company retains sufficiently flexibility to manage its production footprint, which, in turn, allows it to maximize the efficiency of its production facilities in the United States. This, in turn, keeps the company profitable so that it can continue to develop new products. This is bad in what way...? APaGttH: "Oh, and if we’re flying the anti-union flag why is it Toyota manufacturing in Japan is – gasp – unionized." Japanese autoworker unions are nothing like the UAW. They are basically the Japanese version of "company unions," which were banned by the Wagner Act in this country. The militant faction of the Japanese autoworker union was broken by Nissan in a bitter strike during the early 1950s. This is all detailed very thoroughly in David Halberstam's excellent 1986 book, The Reckoning.

@geeber Only because of the threat of unionization do Japanese car plany workers have it OK. In Japan many of their factories are barely better than Foxconn. http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/06/21/disgruntled-worker-drives-people-mazda-plant-japan-killing-injuring/ inthesetimes.com/article/3796/the_dark_side_of_the_toyota_prius

@Hillman They bought the workers off of unionizing with new cars and cash. Now "black lung" is also coming back. They could tell from the autopsies. http://www.wvgazette.com/News/montcoal/201305170073

@billfrombuckhead A common but incorrect view. The Japanese emphasize worker participation, and expect the worker to contribute ideas to improve the produce and the process. They aren't going to attract workers who can make a positive contribution to the final product by hiring people who will work for the minimum wage. The inthesetimes article may impress the gullible, but the self-appointed "National Labor Committee" relied on second-hand information for its "report," so anything it produces should be taken with a rock-sized grain of salt.

Makes sense to me - and I'll add secret ballots for union votes. Management would need something in place to assure that if an operation is 35% union! they do 35% of the work - to prevent a perception of favoring one group or another.

Those are decent ideas, but the U.S. has two hundred years of law and regulation at the local, state and federal levels that contradict the notion that the problem is simple.

@Silvy_nonsense Simple, all laws prior to X automatically expire on Jan 1 20xx, and those beyond X must be reviewed and renewed in ten years time else they too expire. The idea that any regulation written by man is meant to last "forever" without review is simply ludicrous.

Managment ought to encourage union organization. If the Company is so great, and what they offer is so great, what are they afraid of? The reality is that managment calls the shots and workers can toe the line or quit. Riiiight! In Germany, where VW is from (remember?) every industry is unionized. And look at how we rever the Germans for their engineering and their quality. That's part of the deal and the Germans know it, understand it, work with, and excel. I think management is so used to having it all their own way that they can't bear the idea of having to sit across the table from the WORKERS and have to bargain with them. So let them join. Management ought to get out of the way and let the workers organize and then show everybody how great they really are. Satisfied workers are better workers. Right now, we don't really know, do we? They say they are satisfied, but they are afraid to speak out for fear of losing their jobs.

@mgs3bes Parents ought to encourage crack smoking and truancy too. All we really know is that UAW autoworkers are a burden wherever they've infiltrated.

@CJinSD Nice avatar. I'll bet that car with the tailfins was built by union labor. I guess they did okay for the public back then. Oh, who builds all those Fusions people are buying? Yeah, those UAW goons are a burden all right! And those prices are just way above those VWs they make in Tennessee, right?

@mgs3bes Maybe you should listen to NPR's show about the NUMMI plant. At least then you'd learn something about reality. The 300G was built by union labor, but it wasn't built well by union labor.