•Union meeting is after 2nd shift tonight and tomorrow at 7:15 am, 1 pm and 15 minutes after the longest 1st shift line time.
•On February 14, GM announced a maximum profit sharing payout of $6,750 for eligible hourly employees who accrued 1,850 or more compensated hours during 2012. Eligible hourly employees who accrued less than 1,850 compensated hours will receive a pro-rated share ($3.65 per hour) based on the number of accrued compensated hours. Here is some more information about the payout, some of which has already been published:
- Payment is scheduled to be included in active employee paychecks received on Friday, March 1 (Roll 9 - pay ending Sunday, February 24, 2013). Eligible retirees will receive their payment Friday, March 22
- Payment, including profit sharing deferrals into the Personal Savings Plan (PSP), will be FICA taxable >li> Cash payment will be taxed at Federal with-holding tax rates based on individual W-4 elections and will be subject to applicable state and local taxes. Any employee wishing to turn in a new W4 must have it filled out and faxed to Xerox processing center at 866-741-7415 no later than February 20th, 2013 in order to ensure processing for Roll 9.
- Union dues, for UAW-represented employees, will be deducted at a rate of 1.15% from the payment. Paycheck notation for the dues deduction will reflect as “UNION LUMP SUM DUES”
- Cash payment paystub notation will reflect as “PRO SHR”
- Deferral paystub notation will reflect as “PROFSHR DEFER”
- Employees growing into retirement under a Special Attrition Program are eligible to receive a profit sharing payment based on their compensated hours
- Payments for deceased Profit Sharing Plan participants will be paid to their surviving spouse or estate
- Workers Compensation hours (40 hours for each complete calendar week) will be added to eligible compensated hours if employee was actively at work for at least one complete calendar week in 2012
- Eligible Local Union leave hours will be credited up to a maximum of 40 hours per week
UAW battles for human rights in organizing drive at Mississippi Nissan plant
Seizing advantage of a widespread complacency about the suppression of labor rights in the United States, employers have conducted a scorched-earth war against American labor since the 1950s, driving down private-sector unionization to a mere one-fifth of its peak level of 35%. This war essentially spread from its base in the former slave states of the South, where elites maintained tight control over workers through anti-labor "right-to-work" laws that helped to foster a national race to the bottom on wages and to suppress unionization.
But in an innovative appeal, the UAW is boldly asserting that union rights are crucial human rights, driving home this point in a battle to organize as many as 4,500 workers at Nissan’s expanding auto plant in Canton, Miss.
The battle is taking place in one of the most fervent bastions of anti-unionism. Mississippi has enshrined the anti-labor "right to work" concept with a provision in its constitution, a step led by arch-segregationist Governor Ross Barnett in 1960. For its part, Nissan is running the standard high-pressure management campaigns that are unique to the United States among advanced democracies. The tactics include subjecting workers to interrogations about their sympathies, forcing them to attend one-on-one meeting with their supervisors where immense pressure can be applied, and hinting that a pro-union vote could lead to the plant closing.
Meanwhile, workers are chafing over stagnating wages, the emergence of a large, low-paid segment of contract workers, assembly-line "speedups," sharply rising healthcare costs, and the absence of any worker voice in decisions at the Canton plant.
The plant, which is expanding from 3,300 to 4,500 workers, was built with $373.8 million in taxpayer funding from the country's poorest citizens—Mississippi ranks dead last in per-capita income—and a 30-year exemption from local taxes in Canton.
The South is supposedly rocky soil in which to plant the seed of unionism and social justice, especially when the pay is relatively high, topping off at $24 an hour at Nissan. But by emphasizing that union rights are human rights, the UAW has established strong roots among the workforce at Canton, about 80 percent of who are African-American. Union supporters find it degrading that Nissan has been unwilling to accept a union in Mississippi when it has worked with unions across the world, from its home in Japan to a union representing primarily black workers in South Africa. Mississippi NAACP President Derrick Johnson, in an interview on MSNBC's "The Ed Show," asked: "If workers in Brazil can organize, who work for Nissan, if workers in Japan who are Nissan workers -- if workers in South Africa at their Nissan plant are organized and able to collectively bargain, why shouldn't Mississippi workers be able to organize?”
The environment of fear cultivated by Nissan should offend all Americans who value human rights and the right to choose freely, he stated. “We in the NAACP believe that workers should have a voice in the workplace free of intimidation and retaliation. But we’ve got workers who feel intimidated if they support organized labor. The company has been very sophisticated in alluding to the possibility of the plant closing.”
Many African-Americans and white progressives retain the vivid memory of Martin Luther King Jr. merging civil rights with labor issues. On March 18, 1968, just days before his assassination on April 4 while in Memphis supporting striking sanitation workers, King gave a speech outlining the interrelationship between the parallel struggles for rights: "All labor has worth. … Don’t despair. Nothing worthwhile is gained without sacrifice. The thing for you to do is stay together. … Let it be known everywhere that along with wages and all of the other securities that you are struggling for, you’re also struggling for the right to be organized and be recognized."
That spirit—for the right to full recognition of one's humanity and for the right of free association—is animating the fight for unionization at Nissan in Mississippi. Tom Brune
UAW/GM Communications Coordinator
Wentzville Assembly
636-327-2119
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