UAW picketing at Toyota dealers to start in CA and NY says King

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.autoblog.com/2010/07/13/uaw-picketing-at-toyota-dealers-to-start-in-ca-and-ny-says-king/

by Chris Shunk (RSS feed) on Jul 13th 2010 at 5:58PM

The recently-crowned king of the United Auto Workers, President Bob King, has a monumental task before him: reverse the decades-long decline in UAW membership. To do that the UAW will likely need to make inroads at transplant automaker plants, and to accomplish this goal King promises to be more active in staging demonstrations than in the past, and an early target is Toyota and California. Automotive News reports that the UAW is organizing protests in front of several Toyota dealerships in the Golden State to draw attention to the recently closed NUMMI plant in Fremont, CA.

The facility, which was making the Toyota Corolla and Matrix until it was shuttered in April, was the only unionized facility producing Toyotas in North America. The closing of NUMMI, which happened in part because General Motors pulled out of its agreement with Toyota during its bankruptcy in 2009, left thousands of UAW workers without a job. Toyota has since sold the NUMMI facility to Tesla Motors, who will utilize only a portion of the plant and hire around 1,000 workers. Toyota did spring for a considerable severance package of nearly $300 million for the laid-off workers when the plant closed.

Of course the group most upset about the upcoming protests is the American International Automobile Dealers Association. AIADA president Cody Lusk claims that the protests will only hurt small businesses that supply plenty of American jobs, adding
"An assault on America's auto retail industry will only serve to highlight the disconnect between the UAW and reality."

[rurallib]

1. crank up the right wing echo chamber and let the lies about unions commence

as if they needed a reason.

[pipoman]

2. If they were really interested in doing some good

they would picket the maker who has exported the largest number of US jobs...I'm not positive which maker that would be but am pretty sure it isn't Toyota.

[demosincebirth]

3. Go toyota!! Union busters!

[pipoman]

7. Really? They are 'union busters',

yet companies who have exported union jobs to third world countries to manufacture vehicles formerly manufactured by union labor, then importing those vehicles back to the US to be sold all wrapped in the flag aren't union busters? Really?

[demosincebirth]

8. Not a convincing argument

[pipoman]

9. As usual no counter though...and failure to answer the simple question..

FAIL

[senseandsensibility]

4. Proud to be the fifth rec

eom

[unkachuck]

5. K&R....n/t

[TBF]

6. Solidarity K&R nt