Activists Push For Union At Smyrna Nissan Plant

NASHVILLE, TN — Activists protested outside a Nashville Nissan dealership Saturday, pushing for workers at the automaker's Smyrna plant and another in Mississippi to join the United Auto Workers.

The Tennessean reported 100 people marched outside the MetroCenter-area dealership, a high-traffic location relatively close to Nissan's gleaming headquarters in Franklin and its most productive plant in Smyrna.

One of the marchers, who works at the Canton, Miss. plant, told the newspaper that Nissan has shown him and his coworkers "anti-union" videos and threatened to shutter the factory if they unionize.

“It’s so bad that people are afraid to report injuries,” Michael Carter told the newspaper. “I like Nissan. It’s a good job, but I feel like I don’t have a voice, and I want that voice. I’m fighting to take that voice back.”

Nissan refuted those allegations and said the UAW has never ginned up enough support to hold a vote in Canton and that Smyrna's workers have voted against the union three times. All but three of Nissan's plants are union shops; those three are in right-to-work states.

In addition to workers, other marchers included representatives of the Tennessee AFL-CIO Labor Council, Nashville Organized for Action and Hope and the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, an organization for African-American trade unionists. Eighty percent of the employees at the Canton plant are African-American.