In what seemed a staged moment of “candor,” UAW President Bob King let it slip in an interview last week that the union would in fact not be declaring an organizing target this year. This comes after a year of threats and speculation on what was being touted as the most aggressive organizing effort by the country’s wealthiest union since the initial organizing of Detroit over half a century ago. “We are shifting our strategy a little bit. We are not going to pick or announce a target at all,” King said before then going on to target Nissan. According to the Detroit Free Press, King said the decision was not prompted by the union’s own self-imposed goal of organizing an automaker before the end of 2011. Instead, it was prompted by “civil and human rights issues” that “community groups” have raised about Nissan and rumors that the UAW was about to pick Nissan as its target. “There are some real concerns we have with human rights and civil rights with Nissan,” King said, declining to be more specific. “People in the community have raised issues.” So it would appear the union is launching a corporate leverage campaign through phony front “community groups” against Nissan, (no doubt with negligible Nissan employee support) and rather ham-handedly we might add, even for a first attempt. Also interviewed with King, UAW Secretary-Treasurer Dennis Williams perhaps summed the union’s clumsy gamesmanship up best, “From day one, we used the wrong term – ‘target,’” Williams said.
