Day: August 6, 2017

  Since 2012, the UAW has desperately worked to shore up it’s dwindling numbers – as well as gain a semblance of presence in the South – by unionizing the Canton, Mississippi Nissan plant’s over 6,000 workers.  Three weeks ago, union activists passed a significant hurdle when the petition to unionize earned the minimum number of signatures to trigger a vote by employees. The UAW’s pitch was as predictable as it was repetitious, casting Nissan corporation and the Canton plant’s management as abusive, dishonest and racist. “Nissan spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year marketing itself as a socially responsible carmaker, even going so far as to brag about its appeal to African-American car buyers,” Rahmeel Nash, a longtime worker at the plant, said in a UAW statement July 11. “But behind the scenes, the company is violating the labor rights of African-American workers who make those cars.” For three weeks the UAW accelerated its efforts to convince the Mississippi workers to unionize, often relying on civil-right rhetoric and clergy to make the case for them. “Some of the issues I gather in the Nissan plant are similar to the issues in Chattanooga and elsewhere,” said Daniel Cornfield, a labor expert at Vanderbilt University…