Hot on the heels of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa’s (NUMSA) claim for a 22% pay increase and the union finds itself in the spotlight for the second time in a week with the visit of Hollywood actor, Danny Glover, to Johannesburg.
The American star – Lethal Weapon and The Color Purple number among his many celluloid appearances – was in town to back one of his favourite causes – the fight by Nissan workers at their Mississippi plant to secure what they claim is normal union representation.
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This is one campaign that is not going away. I was at the Detroit auto show earlier this year and Glover was there again with a powerful coterie of Baptist Ministers and civil rights activists, who gave proceedings more than a whiff of the deep American south as they lined up to attack what they believe to be Nissan’s anti-union stance.
Glover could stay in Los Angeles or Beverly Hills or wherever his undoubted wealth would allow him, but he chooses to place himself from time to time in Detroit and Johannesburg, two of the most urbanly-challenged cities in the world and as far removed from tinsel town as it’s possible to be on the planet.
Not that the actor or the UAW – who also made the trip this week to South Africa – has anything against Nissan products. Indeed both acknowledge the quality of the Japanese automaker’s range – after all it provides significant employment in Mississippi.
“It is not an attack on the product itself,” Glover told me from Johannesburg. “We are hoping to gain momentum and gain support of key officials here [South Africa] in terms of pressing the global management of Nissan.”
The trio of Glover, the UAW and NUMSA, are keen to point out what they view as the discrepancy of Nissan apparently recognising unions in South Africa, Japan, Germany and Brazil, but not it seems to the same extent, in Mississippi. I’ve tried to talk to Nissan about the Mississippi situation, but so far I’ve had no response.
When this issue first came to prominence at the auto show in Detroit, the automaker sent me a reply that the union almost wearily quoted back to me verbatim on the phone.
Here it is: “Nissan employees in Canton enjoy jobs that are among the most secure in Mississippi and offer some of the highest manufacturing wages in the state, strong benefits, a working environment that exceeds industry standards and an open dialogue based on transparency and mutual respect.
“Nissan employees have voted overwhelmingly in the past to reject union representation, and just as with past efforts, the UAW’s current campaign in Canton, Mississippi, has received little interest among employees.”
Well, there’s quite a disconnect there between both sides, a yawning chasm that appears no nearer to being resolved, but if Nissan is hoping Glover and his union pals are just going to go away, it seems they are wrong.
The only qualm perhaps about employing NUMSA as advocates would be the South African union’s unabashed support for what seem to be some pretty radical left-wing policies.
Not content with quoting Vietnamese communist leader, Le Duan, NUMSA hailed the UAW sojourn to South Africa as that of its “fraternal and sister union,” Danny Glover as the “leftist actor” and the American delegation as “our comrades.”
US automakers might take one look at that sort of language – an echo of a previous era to many western ears – and draw their own conclusions about granting more union rights.
To fuel that fire, the delegation will travel to Johannesburg, Cape Town and Pretoria to meet NUMSA, ANC officials and Desmond Tutu, as well as other key unions, but maybe the UAW will want to keep any hardline, fiery rhetoric to a minimum in order to try and maintain the peace back home.
The US auto industry is rebounding at considerable pace – albeit from the catastrophe of a few years ago – but is doing pretty nicely thank you. Maybe they regard unionisation as not a top priority, although some are undoubtedly better than others in this regard.
But listen to the UAW – which is mounting its global campaign for Mississippi rights – and which still wields some clout in the US – and you get a different picture.
“American management is so culturally biased against unions,” UAW president, Bob King, told me from South Africa on his trip. “It has a 20-year old paradigm about unions not being flexible and not working together, even though that is not really true.”
Don’t Nissan and the UAW need to sit round a table and thrash this out? Not just communicate by letter or verbally, which appears to have been the case so far?
And if Nissan has in fact, sat down with the UAW and has issues with them of its own, tell us about it.
There’s a lobby body in the US known as ‘Do Better Together’ that is urging Nissan give more priority to unions. It’s starting to coalesce a hefty range of opinion in its favour.
“At the height of the anti-apartheid struggle, UAW members marched and campaigned in defence of basic rights for all people of South Africa,” says the organisation.
“Today, South African workers are standing up for rights for Mississippi workers at Nissan.”
Glover’s building quite a coalition around the world to persuade Nissan. What is the Japanese manufacturer going to say about it?
