Posts tagged Smyrna
Electric vehicle jobs are booming in the anti-union South. UAW is worried
September 22, 2023 // “The auto industry’s move south hangs over these talks because now only a minority of workers are in unionized assembly plants,” said Stephen Silvia, a professor at American University and author of “The UAW’s Southern Gamble: Organizing Workers at Foreign-Owned Vehicle Plants.” While all of the Big Three’s plants are unionized, not a single plant in the South is unionized. Automakers’ transition to electric vehicles is accelerating these regional trends. Ford and GM are building battery plants below the Mason-Dixon Line, where states have laws that make unionization much harder than in the traditional working-class bastions of the Midwest. UAW leaders and union supporters worry the shift will lower compensation and cut out unions from the auto industry’s future, and they are seeking to address these concerns in talks with the Big Three.
Nissan tool and die workers vote against union at Tennessee plant
March 17, 2023 // By a vote of 62 to 9 with 97% participation, workers at a Nissan manufacturing facility have again voted overwhelmingly against union representation and elected to maintain their direct relationship with the company. Nissan respects this decision, and we remain focused on working with employees to drive our future forward together," she said. Union spokesman DeLane Adams provided a statement, saying the union would continue to support the workers "so we will be prepared for them to join our union when the time is right again." The statement highlighted the length of the campaign, which began in 2021, with the union attempting to create a small group of organized workers within the plant rather than attempting to organize the entire facility.
Union membership grows the fastest of any state in Tennessee over the past two years
January 24, 2023 // The number of Tennessee workers belonging to labor unions has grown over the past two years at the fastest rate of any state in the country. Fueled by a growth in unionized government employees, building trades and autoworkers, union membership in Tennessee jumped by more than 39% from the pandemic low in 2020 to reach 163,000 members last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. For all its gains, however, organized labor still represents only a fraction of workers in Tennessee, especially in the private sector. Last year, 5.5% of all workers across Tennessee were union members, or only about half of the 10.1% share of workers nationwide who belong to a labor union, according to the statistics bureau.