Former contract workers key in Mississippi Nissan union vote
CANTON, Miss. — A bid by workers at Mississippi’s Nissan Motor Co. plant for United Auto Workers representation could turn on a key voting bloc — 1,500 workers who are Nissan employees today, but were initially hired through contract labor agencies.
Those workers say they make less than longtime Nissan employees and have worse benefits, and UAW supporters say that’s a disparity they’d like to address through contract negotiations.
“I think it’s very unfair because we’re doing the same job,” said Shanta Butler, a union supporter who started as a contract worker at Nissan in April 2014. “I think we should be allowed gradually to make our way up to what they’re making.”
Nissan, for its part, refuses
to discuss specific wage and benefit levels.
“Both Nissan technicians and associates enjoy longterm, stable jobs with some of the most competitive wages and benefits in Mississippi,” spokeswoman Parul Bajaj said
in a statement.
Contract work and workers on second-tier pay scales also have been a major irritant for union supporters at automakers nationwide.
The unionized Detroit Three agreed to gradually end second-tier wage scales in their most recent UAW contracts, and UAW Secretary-Treasurer Gary Casteel said there are limits on contract workers. But Casteel said that “Southern workers and this model of temporary labor” may erode the high wages traditionally paid by automakers.
“They keep lowering the wages and lowering the benefit levels,” Casteel told The Associated Press in a phone interview.
The Center for Automotive Research found in 2015 that Nissan’s pay and benefits cost $42 per hour per worker, much less than the $65-an-hour cost for workers at Daimer AG’s Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama, or the $58-an-hour cost for General Motors workers. Both GM and Nissan have given pay raises since then.
Contract workers are part of what holds the costs down, and also make it harder for the company’s employees to fight back, said Dan Cornfield, a Vanderbilt University sociologist who has studied unions.
“The presence of contract workers reduces the bargaining power of full time workers,” he said.
Between 3,500 and 4,000 of the 6,400 workers at the Nissan complex just north of Jackson are expected to be eligible to vote in the election set for Aug. 3 and Aug. 4.
It’s the first-ever union election at the Canton plant, although the UAW lost two earlier votes at Nissan’s other American assembly plant in Smyrna, Tenn. Union supporters say the UAW could help negotiate better wages, benefits and working conditions at the plant. The company is urging workers to reject the union, saying the UAW would be an economic burden.
The Japanese automaker has employed some contract workers in Canton since the plant opened in 2003. While the company prides itself on never having laid off a direct Nissan worker — though it cut their hours during the recession — contract workers were cut as car sales plummeted. Nissan turned to contract workers in a big way when production began to rebound in 2011.
The practice of adding temporary labor during production increases and new model launches is common practice across the automotive industry, Bajaj wrote.
Today, all new production workers at Nissan’s two assembly plants, plus its engine plant in Decherd, Tenn., are initially hired through contract agencies, Bajaj said. In Canton, Kelly Services wrote in a June employment listing that pay starts at $13.46 an hour, rising as high as $17.30 an hour, with the chance to join Nissan permanently within six months. But workers who make the switch stay on the same wage scale, said Akemptisha Bailey of Canton, who started with Kelly in 2012 and is now a supervisor in the paint shop.