Bostrom seating plant workers join UAW

[kscarbel2]

The New York Times / September 24, 2015

When the results of a vote to join the United Automobile Workers (UAW) union was announced late Wednesday at the Commercial Vehicle Group (C.V.G.) in Piedmont, Ala., the “hollering and whooping” echoed throughout the plant, said Alan Amos, a welder there.

The 2-to-1 margin of victory at the small factory, which makes Bostrom brand truck seats, represents an unusual win in the uphill battle to organize autoworkers in the South. But it was unclear whether the vote signaled a broader breakthrough for labor and the U.A.W. in a region that has historically been allergic to most unions.

Employees at C.V.G. cited low pay, which tops out at $15.80 an hour, the growing use of temporary workers at even lower wages and rising health insurance costs as reasons they voted to join the union.

The use of temporary workers as a way to cut costs has become a potent organizing issue, according to Daniel B. Cornfield, a labor relations expert at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Workers see it as closing off “a conventional pathway to the American dream,” he said.

Mr. Cornfield considered the Piedmont vote significant despite the plant’s small size. (There are only about 150 regular workers and 60 temporary workers.)

“If the U.A.W. can succeed in organizing a Southern manufacturer,” he said, “it makes a statement that trade unionism is not necessarily an anathema to Southern work culture.”

For Mr. Amos, a 10-year veteran of C.V.G. and one of the people who spearheaded the organizing effort, the breaking point came this spring. “There were conversations around the break room about how things kept getting worse and worse,” Mr. Amos said, citing high temperatures inside the plant, worsening benefits and the extensive use of temporary workers who earn $9.70 an hour and have no insurance.

“It just kept piling and piling on top of each other,” he said. “We complained, but it kept falling on deaf ears.”

In May, Mr. Amos called the 1-800 number on the U.A.W.’s website. From there, the organizing drive coalesced quickly, despite the failure of previous efforts at the plant by the United Steelworkers.

In many ways the organizing effort flew under the radar. By contrast, conservative groups and Republican lawmakers rallied to defeat attempts to organize employees at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., even though the German car company itself had stayed out of the fray.

Opponents argued that unionizing would damage the state’s competitiveness, and repeatedly raised the specter that unions helped bring about the problems in Detroit’s automobile industry.

The loss in Chattanooga, by a 712-to-626 vote, was one of a series of failed attempts over the decades to unionize automobile workers in the South, where a number of foreign manufacturers, including BMW, Toyota and Nissan, operate assembly plants. (C.V.G., a global auto supplier, has its headquarters in Ohio.)

Volkswagen subsequently agreed to allow several labor unions represent employees in Chattanooga without giving them bargaining power.

In Alabama, the U.A.W. is still hoping to organize workers at the Mercedes-Benz assembly plant in Tuscaloosa County, where there are more than 2,200 regular employees and more than 1,000 temporary workers. A local chapter was formed at the plant last October, but it does not have collective bargaining rights there, either. The company has said it is staying neutral on the topic of labor representation.

As for this week’s vote in Piedmont, Cindy Estrada, a U.A.W. vice president, said, “I think it shows that workers do want change and they can stand up and win in the South.”

In a statement, C.V.G. said, “While we do not believe union representation is in the best interests of the employees, we respect their right to vote on this very important matter.”

The National Labor Relations Board is expected to certify the unofficial results next week.

Alabama has proved to be more receptive to unions than its neighbors. It has higher union representation than any other state in the South and most of the Midwest; 10.8 percent of its workers belong to unions, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nationwide, just over 11 percent of wage and salaried workers were members of a union in 2014, compared with more than 20 percent in 1983.

Despite anemic membership, advocates for organized labor say they have been encouraged by the growing numbers of Americans who say they have a favorable view of unions. Last month a Gallup poll found that 58 percent of those surveyed approved of unions, up 5 percentage points in just one year and 10 points from a record low of 48 percent in 2009.

Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project, saw the rare organizing victory in a different context, arguing that it reflected a new militancy by workers at fast-food outlets, Walmart and others at the low end of the wage scale. Referring to efforts to raise the minimum wage to as much as $15 an hour in some cities, she said, “The ‘Fight for 15’ has been a catalyst for organizing by and on behalf of low-wage workers, and that is reflected in the U.A.W.’s success.”

The National Employment Law Project, which receives some funding from unions, released a study last year showing that many factory workers earn much less than their counterparts did in the past. The average wage in manufacturing is $23.37 an hour, according to the Census Bureau. But hourly pay in the auto industry has taken a steep dive. Median wages for parts workers fell to $15.83 an hour from $18.35 between 2003 and 2013, the study calculated.

Ms. Estrada of the U.A.W. said that many people did not realize that 80 percent of a car was built by workers in the parts sector, which is where she said the union was concentrating many of its efforts.

Bruce Nissen, a professor of labor studies at Florida International University in Miami, agreed that a broader awareness of stagnant wages and inequality seemed to be energizing workers in the South and the rest of the country.

“I am seeing more willingness to organize on that basis,” he said.

Note: CVG produces all the Mack cabs, and has over the years purchased several well known component brands including Bostrom and National seating.

http://www.cvgrp.com...es/default.aspx

It's up in the air as to whether CVG will produce the new cab. Connecting the dots of Mack conventional cab supplier history, Sheller-Globe purchased Motor Panels of the UK and then put the Norwalk Mack cab plant under its new Motor Panels division. Then that division was sold in 1989 to UK-based CH Industrials, which was sold in 1991 to UK-based Mayflower Vehicle Systems, which was sold in 2005 to CVG. The company had no prior history of assembling cabs, but was willing to do so.

Currently, CVG stamps and assembles the cabs under contract in a run-down plant in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, originally located there to supply the Winnsboro, South Carolina plant, from which they are trucked up to Macungie.

[Red Horse]

Won't be long before this work goes to Mexico-although sounds to me with such a high percentage of workers on temp status and at such low labor rates the Mexicans probably make as much. This to me sounds like stupid management-or should I say truly greedy

management?

As for KSC's comments about the Mack cab production being done in a run down plant that exists because of its proximity to Winnsboro, that contract can't be long for this world. Let's see- who is i that business in close proximity to Macungie?

Is CVG a Brit company or American owned?

[41chevy]

Put the blame for temp workers where it belongs, Obama care, no more no less. Temps fall into the black ACA hole. As temps, the company using them does not pay health care and the agency that they contact to for jobs is exempt, because the temps are considered independent contractors. In fact the company using temps pays the temp agency per worker and the agency determines the hourly wage and pays the temps.

The only ones to benefit in the long run will bbe the union. The first run in with the UAW will sent the plants out of the US for survival.