Nissan workers reject union bid at Mississippi plant

Canton : Nissan has defeated a bid by the United Auto Workers to unionize employees at a factory in the US Deep South, ending a bitter contest that critics said laid bare a racial divide in the company.

Some 60 percent of the approximately 3,500 workers in the Mississippi factory rejected the union in the vote that ended Friday, according to results released by the National Labor Relations Board, with pro-union employees vowing to continue their fight.

In a statement following the tally's release the company said it believes the outcome "positions Nissan to be competitive in the future" and urged the United Auto Workers union to end its bid to organize employees.

Nissan had been accused of conducting a vicious anti-union campaign at the plant -- where 80 percent of the blue-collar work force is African-American, and about 3,000 temporary and contract employees working at the plant were not eligible to cast a ballot.

"It ain't over yet," Michael Carter, a Nissan employee who helped lead the union drive, told a crowd of more than 100 union supporters after the votes were counted.

"We are never giving up," he added.

After years of work trying to organize foreign car factories in the South, UAW president Dennis Williams called the results a setback for workers -- but said defeat should not be conceded.

"Nissan and its anti-worker allies ran a vicious campaign against its own workforce that was comprised of intense scare tactics, misinformation and intimidation," he said.

A complaint by the NLRB Friday accused Nissan of threatening employees with termination because of union activities, and threatening to close the plant if workers voted to unionize, charges Nissan vehemently denied.

"Nissan is running one of the nastiest anti-union campaigns in the modern history of the American labor movement," Gary Casteel, secretary-treasurer of the UAW, said in a recent statement.