Nissan workers in Tennessee to decide whether to form small union

By Daniel Wiessner

(Reuters) – Technicians at Nissan Motor Co’s Smyrna plant in Tennessee will vote on Thursday whether to join a union, potentially providing a path to unionize thousands more production workers at the facility.

If they vote to become members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, also known as IAM, then the 86 die and tool workers would be the first to unionize at Nissan’s largest assembly plant in North America.

The Democrat-controlled U.S. National Labor Relations Board rebuffed Nissan’s claim that any election should include thousands of workers in the production line, because they work under the same conditions as the technicians. Smyrna has over 7,000 employees.

Lloryn LOVE-Carter, spokesperson Nissan, said that the company believes the workplace is stronger when there are no unions “that have not been involved in our history of quality job creation and do not understand the relationship we have with Nissan teammates.”

IAM didn’t respond to my requests for comment.

For decades, unions have been trying to unionize Smyrna, the Japanese automaker’s factory. It opened in 1983. Smyrna workers voted in overwhelming opposition to joining the United Auto Workers union (UAW) in 1989 and 2001.

Although the union strategy of targeting smaller support workers to gain a foothold at a workplace is not new; however, business groups have become more critical over the past decade. They claim that smaller bargaining units are demeaningly called “micro unions,” Complicating collective bargaining can cause workplace fractures.

UAW won an election to be the representative of 160 skilled trades workers at Volkswagen AG’s Chattanooga plant, Tennessee in 2015. This came one year after UAW had lost a bid to unionize all employees.

Volkswagen challenged the outcome in court. The case was then remanded back to the National Labor Relations Board. Board members appointed by Donald Trump issued a decision in a separate case that made smaller bargaining units more difficult to form. The UAW then withdrew the petition in order to allow for a factory-wide election. The union narrowly lost this election in 2019.

In December, the labor board’s Democratic majority overturned the Trump-era precedent and restored a 2011 test that was deemed favorable to unions.

IAM submitted a petition representing the Nissan technicians to adopt the new test. Therefore, it doesn’t apply to this case. However, the board said last month that the unit was valid under an older standard. This is because tool and Die workers perform a separate trade from production employees.

Nissan could contest Thursday’s results before the labor board, then a federal appels court. This could delay contract negotiations for many years.

Reporting by Daniel Wiessner, Albany, New York. Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi & Mark Potter.

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