The UAW Question: Bad for Detroit, Good for Toyota?

[YSSMAN]

Current beliefs throughout the Mid-West peg the UAW as one of the many reasons as to why The Big Three are having so many problems these days. Demands for outrageous wages, protecting poor employees, and inflating legacy costs have all, according to many, created major issues for GM, Ford, and Chrysler.

...But foreign automakers, such as Honda and Toyota, have successfully been able to keep the UAW out of their factories for well over two decades. Competitive pay wages and attractive benefit packages are often cited as good ways to keep employees happy, and thereby, the need for the UAW was thought to be non-existent. That is, until recently...

First, a story from late 2005 on the Georgetown plant issues:

GEORGETOWN, Ky. – “I’m looking at my future is what I’m looking at,” says Karen Toler, a test driver at Toyota’s massive 7.2 million-square-foot factory complex nearby.

“Right now I’m relatively young still at 42. I’m still hirable. But what’s going to happen when I’m 61, and they say, ‘We’re not going to pay for your health insurance anymore’?”

Toler, one of the first Americans to work at a Japanese-owned auto plant in the United States, has worked at Toyota 18 years.

“I started before the first car rolled off the line,” she recalls. “We were building break rooms, doing training, that kind of thing.”

The plant Toler helped get off the ground – Toyota Motor Manufacturing of Kentucky (TMMK) – has been a stunning success. The Japanese carmaker is the world’s seventh-largest corporation, with worldwide revenues of $172 billion and profits of $10.8 billion in 2004.

Kentucky workers have helped boost Toyota’s profits by giving the company a strong foothold in the highly lucrative U.S. vehicle market, turning out more than 6 million vehicles since the facility opened in 1986.

The Camry sedan, TMMK’s signature product, has been the best-selling car in America for the past three years and is the leading seller so far in 2005. In 2006 Georgetown will begin production of a hybrid version of the Camry.

With wages of $25 an hour, a company-paid health plan, a 401(k) package and the steady work that goes with making a top-selling product, why is anyone at TMMK interested in a union?

Because nothing is guaranteed, says Toler. “Will it be there tomorrow? That’s the big question. Toyota has cut back and changed and eliminated an awful lot. If they continue on their downward trend with their benefits and the bonuses, where are we going to be?”

The problem at Toyota isn’t just pay and benefits, says Toler. It’s the daily indignity of working in a factory where managers set the line speed at a breakneck pace – and have no patience for the basic human needs of the people who have to keep it running.

“It’s hard to get off the line for a bathroom break,” said Toler. “They give you a dirty look, or they might give you a smart remark about holding it until break.” But there aren’t enough women’s bathrooms available during break time, she says.

“A union would really improve things,” she says. “You would have a vote in what your package is. You would have a chance to elect a bargaining committee, and then you would vote yes or no, and whatever you agree to is written into that contract.

“A union is going to give us accountability. Right now, Toyota can do whatever they want,” she adds.

Despite a successful relationship with the UAW at the New United Motor Mfg. Inc. (NUMMI) plant in Fremont, Calif., which Toyota jointly owns with General Motors (see Page 19), the Japanese auto giant has taken a tough anti-union stance in Kentucky.

Well over 2,000 of Toler’s co-workers have expressed an interest in forming their own organization for the purpose of collective bargaining – not a majority yet, but an impressive showing at a company that makes an aggressive effort to prevent workers from exercising their rights.

Toyota is two-faced, says L.T. Davis, a 15-year TMMK veteran who is also a UAW supporter. “It’s a public façade. They say, ‘We’re not anti-union; it will be the employee’s choice.’ ”

But inside the plant, says Davis, it’s a different story. “We were paid overtime and required to attend an anti-UAW, anti-union propaganda meeting,” says Davis. “It lasted about an hour.”

Managers also deliver an anti-union message during the last five minutes of break time – time which is set aside by TMMK for safety briefings.

According to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), Toyota has stepped over the line on several occasions with illegal harassment of UAW supporters.

In one case, the NLRB found that the company had illegally disciplined workers who were discussing workplace issues; in another, the UAW won back pay for a worker who was illegally terminated – after it was discovered that the notation “openly supports UAW” had been marked in his personnel file.

Toyota’s tough stance is in contrast to its image as a model employer, which the company works hard to promote. Toyota officials tout, for example, the good pay and benefits at their Kentucky plant, but they don’t say much about their widespread use of temporary workers, who can earn as little as $8.50 an hour, with no insurance or other benefits.

Toyota has stretched the definition of “temporary” beyond all recognition, treating lower-wage workers as second-class citizens for five years or more.

The company won’t release statistics on its use of temps, but TMMK workers estimate there are more than 1,000 temporary workers, out of a total workforce of about 5,500 production and maintenance workers.

“I’ve become friends with a lot of the temporary guys,” says John Hall, who has worked at TMMK 14 years. One employee, he recalls, finally got a chance to apply for a permanent job after five years as a temp. “But when he went to take his physical, they told him he had carpal tunnel and they couldn’t hire him. They used him for five years and kicked him to the curb.”

Carpal tunnel syndrome, caused by repetitive motion, is a common occurrence at Toyota. Part of the problem, says Hall, is workers are discouraged from reporting injuries.

“Many times they’ll blame you if you get hurt. They’ll say you had not stretched enough, or you were not performing the job in the correct postures,” says Hall.

“That’s one of the biggest faults of Toyota. The job is not built around the worker; the worker must adjust to the job, whether it’s safe or not.”

The new TMMK Worker Resource Center, opened by the UAW in May, is giving volunteer organizers such as Hall, Davis and Toler new opportunities to communicate with their co-workers.

Although there is a solid base of support, pro-union workers realize they still have plenty of work to do.

“We’ve got a lot of cards signed,” says Gene Toler, Karen’s husband and a 10-year veteran of the assembly line at TMMK. “But we’re not where we need to be.”

Although labor law allows workers to file for a union representation election with support of as little as 30 percent of workers in a bargaining unit, Gene Toler is convinced TMMK workers need to be much stronger before taking that step – because he knows Toyota will run a harsh “vote no” campaign.

“I want to win,” he says. “I’ve not been doing this for eight years just so we can have an election and lose.”

“To stand up for your rights inside that plant, to go in there every day wearing a UAW shirt – that takes real courage,” says Terry Thurman, director of UAW Region 3, which includes Kentucky and Indiana. “I really admire these workers for what they’re doing at Toyota, and the UAW is going to do all we can to support these workers.

“Our whole union, really, owes them a debt of thanks. If we’re going to keep the auto industry in this country as a strong union industry, these are the workers who are going to have to make it happen. They’re showing the same kind of courage it took to start our union in the first place – and I think one day we’re going to have the same result: a good union contract, a voice on the job and democracy in the workplace.”

- by Roger Kerson

...and from Monday, about the same plant:

GEORGETOWN - Current and former workers at Toyota's Kentucky plant shared stories Sunday about low wages and poor working conditions - rallying points many in the assembly line are hoping will ultimately lead to unionization.

A crowd of about 200 people - many of them workers at the Georgetown plant that produces the Camry - attended the meeting of the Kentucky Workers' Rights Board, a panel of religious and civic leaders pushing for better labor conditions.

Like foreign-owned auto companies across the South, Toyota's plants are nonunion. Many contend that should change.

The leaders on the board sympathize with the workers. "We are people of community, and part of our community has said to us that things are not exactly the way they need to be in the work situation at Toyota," said the Rev. John Rausch, coordinator of peace and justice at the Catholic Diocese in Lexington.

"We are not trying to tear Toyota down. We are trying to make it better and have a better partner in the community."

Two current employees and two fired ones described what they said were extraordinary steps taken by the company to prevent union organization.

The Workers' Rights Board, which includes Democratic state Reps. Reginald Meeks of Louisville and Jim Glenn of Owensboro, has no influence over policy or personnel matters at Toyota. However, after the hearing, it issued several recommendations - including changes in the peer review process and a 90-day probation period for temporary workers, who would become permanent after that time.

Nan Banks, manager of corporate communications for Toyota at Georgetown, said she has not seen the recommendations and would not comment on them without seeing them.

A major focus of the hearing, which lasted more than two hours, was the company's use of temporary workers, who some of the employees said were doing the same amount of work as the full-timers for half the pay.

"They're trying to get a job there," said Cornelia James, who has worked at Toyota for 19 years. "Full-time employment is dangled in front of them like a carrot, and they're told, 'Any missteps and you're out.' "

Noel Riddell, who was fired this year after a decade of service at the plant, said he was disciplined after discussing with co-workers a document he found detailing a plan for wages. He was fired despite being backed by a peer-review process, Riddell said.

"What was my crime? Knowledge," he said. "I will not go quietly."

Others discussed alleged incidents of sexual harassment and workers being discharged after on-the-job injuries.

"Today, U.S. autoworkers are analogous to professional athletes," said William Maloney of the University of Kentucky's Center for Labor Education and Research. "You're trading your body for a paycheck, and it's not right."

The United Auto Workers has launched a new push to organize workers at Toyota's 1,300-acre Georgetown plant. It is the latest effort over more than 20 years to organize the Georgetown plant and its 7,000 workers.

Toyota's only U.S. unionized plant is its New United Motor Manufacturing facility in Fremont, Calif., a venture with General Motors. Out of 20,351 U.S. Toyota employees, only 5,402 are unionized.

"The decision to unionize is entirely up to the employees," said Banks. "We've been here for 20 years.

"I don't think there's a tremendous increase in (unionization) activity," she said. "For 20 years they've chosen not to unionize."

She said the typical Toyota production worker earns close to $75,000 a year in combined wages and benefits which include health care, pension, 401-K, and on-site day care, pharmacy and exercise facilities.

The last major union push in Georgetown was about two years ago when the UAW distributed pledge cards that indicated at least 40 percent of the employees favored an election that would determine if the plant would become the first wholly owned Toyota plant in the U.S. to unionize.

The pledge card drive, conducted during 2004 and 2005, followed an October 2003 ruling by the federal National Labor Relations Board that required Toyota to post notices throughout that plant that spelled out a long list of rights that employees have if they want to form a union.

But the labor board ruling apparently had a negligible impact on the drive, which never progressed to a point where employees were asked to vote for or against union representation.

I've been against the UAW for as long as I can remember, but whats going on at Toyota (as it sounds) doesn't even seem remotely "right," particularly when Toyota has always said that they run the best automotive plants in America.

...Maybe Toyota needs a shot of UAW in the arm. If they don't address these issues, they're leaving the door wide open for them, and it sounds as though their workers would be happy to have them...

As for Detroit on the other hand, many people have been campaigning to drive the UAW out once and for all. With Chrysler being sold-out to Cerberus, talk has been circulating that they may walk away from the UAW table to cut costs throughout the company, and after the CAW head Buzz Hargrove's statements last week, this have been even more threatening;

"I say to them, you better find a G** damn product for Windsor or we'll take all of the General Motors corporation down in September 2008. General Motors workers have earned the commitment, especially in Windsor."

"If there's a strike, it's the whole GM chain that's out, not just one plant."

Bets, particularly from internet blogger Peter M. DeLorenzo (also known as the Autoextremist) have pegged 2008 to be a deciding year for the UAW/CAW. If Chrysler can push them down, as he often leads, there isn't any reason why GM and Ford (given their financially better situations) do so as well? More so, there are millions of men and women throughout North America, particularly in the industrialized Mid-West that would happily take a job at GM, Ford, or Chrysler with cut wages and reduced benefits. A job is a job, and take it from this Michigan resident, people are becoming desperate. As DeLorenzo often puts it (I'm paraphrasing here), people will be lined up 15 or more deep for every UAW worker they have to replace.

...Its certainly a tale of two completely different situations, and its one in which there really isn't a crystal-clear answer...

Thoughts?

 

[Tornado]

...Maybe Toyota needs a shot of UAW in the arm. If they don't address these issues, they're leaving the door wide open for them, and it sounds as though their workers would be happy to have them...

No company deserves the UAW, period. But if Toyota's workers say "aye" for UAW representation, there will be a shockwave that goes throughout the entire industry and make things harder for the big 2.5 to walk away from the UAW.

As for Detroit on the other hand, many people have been campaigning to drive the UAW out once and for all. With Chrysler being sold-out to Cerberus, talk has been circulating that they may walk away from the UAW table to cut costs throughout the company, and after the CAW head Buzz Hargrove's statements last week, this have been even more threatening;

That is scary. If push comes to shove and Chrysler tells to UAW to screw, it may have the very undesired effect of making it harder for GM and Ford to try to get out of the UAW as well. But, of course, they could just fire the whole plant and hire Joe Schmoes off the street, if things are as you say in Michigan. But that would have pretty drastic consequences as well. A delicate issue, it seems.

 

[YSSMAN]

Well, they've dumped plenty of jobs here in Michigan, and the majority of those former employees have nowhere else to go. All they've done all of their life is work in the factory, many of them not going to college, much less finishing high school. Basically, they were counting on GM/Ford/Chrysler to keep them afloat, but the UAW demanded too much, the Big Three got cocky with their products, and everyone has suffered.

...And even if you don't work directly for the Big Three, you still feel the ripple effect here. Much of Michigans economy depends on these companies, so we have other firms like Delphi, Detroit Diesel (among others) that produce small parts, full pannels, and in some cases outright assemble whole pieces before sending them to their final assembly point.

No money for these people goes a long way. I know in the Greater Grand Rapids area, there has been a lot of talk about all of these automotive jobs going away and what effect it will have on the city, and it isn't good. We have a big GM and I believe a big Ford plant (it may have closed) here in Grand Rapids, not to mention the dozens of parts suppliers like Bosh and Magna Corp.

But, if GM/Ford/Chrysler were to open up their doors for say, $15 an hour with $30 co-pays with Atena (or whatever), people would be lined-up for blocks from all over the state. Anything is better than nothing, even if it is less than what you may have had before. Either way, the average wage with the UAW contracts right now I believe is $22 or $25, compared to the average $27 or so at Toyota and Honda.

We'll see what happens when the contracts go up in the fall...

 

[Joey D]

No company deserves the UAW, period.

[/thread]

I can not stand the UAW and what they have done to the American car companies. They've ruined the quality and the image of the American car and not to mention forced automarkers to go outside the US to find cheaper labour in order to build cars at competitive prices.