Are Toyota Cambridge Plant Employees to be Unionized? Instigate and report on the situation at hand. Analyze with respect to the implications for industrial relations in general and the role of trade unions in particular. Why is this situation relevant?

Résumé du document

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers cancelled the vote to unionize the workers at Toyota's plant in Cambridge. Ontario Toyota's Cambridge plant that makes Corolla and Matrix cars just like all Japanese automobile plants in North America has always adhered to the 'Toyota Way'. Adrian Korstanje, spokesman for Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Canada quoted in the Financial Post saying the company has worked very well in the 'Toyota Way'. As far as he's concerned, the workers have 'excellent compensation and benefits as well as employment security'. Jeffrey Liker, the author of the new book Toyota Culture, says that the employer and the employee are wanted to 'prosper together'. Hence, unionization isn't avoided but the so-called 'Toyota Way' is preferred to it as in favor of the respect of people and continuous improvement, core values of the company, which is willing to be trusted by its employees. Even though their success is not guaranteed, if the Machinists could obtain the unionization of the Cambridge plant, it would be an important achievement for the labour movement, since it would be the first time in North America a union would break into a major Japanese automaker.

Extraits

[...] In 2000, the Canadian Auto Workers called for a vote in the Cambridge plant but it turned out they hadn't signed up enough union cards of the bargaining unit are required by Canadian law) and the results of the vote had never been counted. Another union, the International Association of Machinists, is trying to have unionization voted in the plant only five months after it began its own drive. The Machinists claim that workers at Toyota Cambridge did not want to join the Canadian Auto Workers union because it was part of a “pattern bargaining” with General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Corp., and Chrysler LLC[3]. [...]

[...] Toyota officials think as the enterprise as a team with a common purpose, loyal to a single source of authority, where conflict is regrettable. Conflict had been somewhat avoided so far by management through good working conditions and relationships with the employees, so that they wouldn't find anything to complain about. Conflict has been avoided, but its potentiality, as we can see while workers from the plants in particular in Cambridge do sign up for union cards. On the opposite of what management at Toyota seems to believe, unionization or campaign for unionization is a sign that there is a conflict between them and the workers. [...]

[...] This unionization as an aggressive reaction can be inhibited or facilitated, as Wheeler explains, by diverse factors that explain the time it can take. In the case of the Cambridge plant, we can identify some of the factors he lists as relevant. First of all, facilitating conditions that do help the movement for unionization: employee solidarity is nowhere cited as relevant but it might be suitable; the belief that the union will be the instrumental in ending the workers' deprivations is something the Machinists are surely to work on, since the testimony quoted before states it is not a general belief. [...]

[...] I believe the delay of the increase of union organization in these companies can be attributed to the fact that certification is the result of a psychological and social process that has to take place in the workers' viewpoint on their interest and how much they want these interests to be represented and satisfied. This process cannot be immediate, given the fact that these companies, as manager officials like to remind us, have been working very well and without major conflict for several years. [...]

[...] Analyze with respect to the implications for industrial relations in general and the role of trade unions in particular. Why is this situation relevant? The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers cancels the vote to unionize the workers at Toyota's plant at Cambridge, Ontario Toyota's Cambridge plant that makes Corolla and Matrix cars just like all Japanese automobile plants in North America has always adhered to the “Toyota Way”. Adrian Korstanje, spokesman for Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada is quoted in the Financial Post saying the company has worked very well with “Toyota Way''. [...]