http://detnews.com/article/20110113/AUTO01/101130397/1148/UAW%E2%80%99s-King-ups-pressure-on-foreign-auto-plants-in-U.S.
UAW's King ups pressure on foreign auto plants in U.S. David Shepardson and Christine Tierney / The Detroit News United Auto Workers President Bob King on Wednesday stepped up his rhetoric demanding that foreign automakers agree to avoid tactics that pressure workers to reject unions. King, who spoke at the Automotive News World Congress in Detroit, threatened to "expose" companies that don't agree to fair bargaining as "human rights violators," but stopped short of calling for a possible boycott. Advertisement 1 Trick of a Tiny BellyCut down a bit of your belly every day using this 1 weird old tip. TODAY: iPads Being Sold for $14.06Detroit: Online auction site to give away 1,000 iPads for $14.06! E-Cigarettes, Hottest New Tech of 2011?We Investigate the Healthier way to Smoke with a Free-to-Try Offer Exposed: $4 Electronic CigarettesOur investigative team uncovered new info on $4 "electronic… Quantcast "I would not want to be a company that was branded as a human rights violator," King said, saying the damage from such a label could total hundreds of millions of dollars. "That would be a bad business decision." The UAW has set aside $60 million from its strike fund to work toward organizing so-called "transplants" — U.S. auto plants owned by foreign automakers — and has vowed to conduct global protests if they don't agree to fair union elections, as defined by the union. The UAW released a set of principles last week calling on companies to allow unions the same access to workers as management, to avoid threats and disavow threats from allies, and to not disparage unions. The UAW demands that employers agree to speedy resolutions of disputes and quickly reach a first contract. "The single dominant factor in a worker's decision is fear," King said. Current labor laws and the process laid out, he said, "is fatally, hopelessly flawed." Foreign-based automakers have said the decision is up to their workers. But they have traditionally opposed the UAW's organizing efforts, which have been unsuccessful. "They spend millions of dollars trying to keep the UAW out of their facilities," King said of the automakers, arguing that it would be cheaper for them to work with the union. "We just have to convince them that we're not the Evil Empire that they think that we were at one point," King said. "The UAW has learned from the past." He said he was having private meetings with foreign automakers to talk about the union's ability to organize workers, but declined to identify them. Honda Motor Co., the first Japanese automaker to build a U.S. assembly plant, responded coolly. "Honda has had no dialogue with the UAW, and has no interest in a discussion with them," the automaker said in a statement Wednesday. One of Toyota Motor Corp's senior U.S. manufacturing executives, Steve St. Angelo, said it wasn't up to the company to decide. "That's up to the workers." But Toyota doesn't see the need for a union as an interlocutor between line workers and management. "We provide competitive wages and benefits, and we have open communications throughout the company," St. Angelo said Monday. He noted that Toyota, unlike other automakers, did not lay off workers — it calls them team members — at its plants during the recent industry downturn. Instead, they were kept on, given training or other work, at a cost of "hundreds of millions of dollars," St. Angelo said. The UAW has not succeeded in organizing an Asian auto plant in the United States, although some factories built and previously run by one of Detroit's automakers, such as the Mazda/Ford Flat Rock joint venture, and the shuttered Toyota-General Motors production venture in Fremont, Calif., have employed union workers. Harley Shaiken, a labor expert and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, called the renewed effort to organize transplants "pivotal to the UAW and central to Bob King's project." "The transplants' share has grown so significant that they're increasingly setting the direction and the wages for the industry," Shaiken said. With the U.S. auto industry shrinking dramatically, UAW membership fell to a new post-World War II low in 2009, dropping by nearly 76,000 to 355,191 members. The union had 1.53 million members at its peak in 1979. Union leaders have been unsuccessful in winning passage of a bill in Congress, the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier to organize. Current rules are "outdated and ineffective," King said. "American labor law today simply does not provide a fair framework for union elections. Companies can intimidate, threaten and coerce employees almost with total immunity." Shaiken said King's preference is to work with the foreign-based automakers. "He's saying, 'Look, let's sit down and talk about it. But if you're not willing to do this, we're not just going to walk away. We'll use every means at our disposal.'"King said foreign automakers could be forced to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to combat global protests by the UAW. "Wouldn't it be a lot more cost-effective to work with the UAW, give workers their democratic right to decide if they want to be in a union?" he asked. King didn't lay out a timetable for when the UAW would start protests if foreign automakers don't agree to fair bargaining. "As long as workers aren't threatened or harassed and they get to make a fair decision, if they vote not to come to the UAW, we're going to shake the employer's hand," King said. He called protests last year at California dealerships selling foreign brands "a minor taste of what we will do if workers' democratic rights are violated." Executives at most of the foreign automakers responded that the decision wasn't theirs to make. "Tennessee is a right-to-work state," said Frank Fischer, the head of Volkswagen AG's new plant in Chattanooga. "Our employees will decide for themselves whether they'd like the union to come in or not." Honda said its U.S. manufacturing operations had performed well for three decades "based on fundamental principles of teamwork, mutual respect and open communication. "This team-oriented approach has produced world-class products of the highest quality for our customers and unprecedented job security for our associates and their families." It said the workers, or associates, had previously "spoken loudly and clearly by choosing to reject UAW outreach efforts." King said the UAW is simply "asking for … a fair democratic process. We're not bad-mouthing corporations. We're saying, 'You can help make this company a better company.' … We want to restart our relationships with these companies." He criticized foreign automakers for having high percentages of temporary workers, saying some foreign companies had 20 percent of workers under that classification. >From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110113/AUTO01/101130397/UAW’s-King-ups-pressure-on-foreign-auto-plants-in-U.S.#ixzz1Avg05yzQ _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
