By Daniel Wiessner
Feb 3 (Reuters) - A U.S. labor board has cleared the way
for 86 technicians at Nissan Motor Co's Smyrna,
Tennessee plant to vote on whether to join a union, rejecting
the automaker's claim that the unit should include thousands of
production workers.
The Democrat-controlled National Labor Relations Board
(NLRB) in a ruling on Thursday said the tool and die workers
have special skills and separate supervision, making them
distinct from production employees, backing the International
Association of Machinists.
The NLRB overruled a 2021 decision by a regional official
who said any election should also involve employees on the
production line because they share working conditions.
The ruling comes after the NLRB in December made it easier
for unions to carve out small groups of an employer's workforce.
The board threw out a Trump-era standard that curbed unions'
ability to organize smaller units, which business groups say
fracture workplace and complicate collective bargaining.
The new union-friendly test does not apply to Nissan's case,
but the board on Thursday said that under an older standard, a
unit of workers who practice a distinct trade was appropriate.
Unions have struggled for decades to unionize the Japanese
automaker's Smyrna factory, which opened in 1983, and other auto
plants in the U.S. South. In 2001, workers in Smyrna voted
overwhelmingly against joining the United Auto Workers union.
Nissan in a statement provided by a spokesperson said it
disagreed with the decision, but respected its employees' rights
to vote on union representation.
The Machinists union said in a statement that the decision
sets a strong precedent that "craft units" should be approved.
"It is unfortunate that a broken and painstakingly long NLRB
process has again allowed a company to put the brakes on workers
obtaining a voice on the job without delay," it added.
(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by
Alexander Smith)
