— On Friday,
an attempt by the United Auto Workers union
to organize a Nissan plant in Canton, Mississippi collapsed.
— Y’know, Nissan has fought an intense fight,
and we fell short.
— That may not sound like a surprise.
The South is the home of the right-to-work movement,
where cheap labor, anti-union laws, and government incentives
have lured factories for decades and made it hard for unions to organize.
But the argument in Canton came down
to who offered the best path to prosperity for the black working class.
Evan McMorris-Santoro was there for the final week of campaigning.
— Tony Hobson lives the working class American life.
— I go to work at Nissan from 11 ‘till 7.
I get off at 7.
I have a second job, by choice.
I have to be there by 9.
— Tony has worked at the Nissan plant for 15 years.
It’s a good job for him—
$28 an hour driving a forklift on the nightshift.
The median hourly wage in Jackson is $15.34 an hour.
The second job at U-Haul is just for extra money, he says.
— How’re you doing? — Alright, how’re you doing?
— Good.
How can we help you this morning?
— Tony is the type of guy the UAW couldn’t convince to organize last week.
— “Vote ‘no’ or you’ll be an unemployed autoworker”?
— You’ll be UAW.
— Pretty good.
“World’s deadliest viruses: HIV and UAW.”
That’s pretty strong.
— Because when they get in you, that’s death.
— The South attracts manufacturing, in part,
because of how deep anti-union sentiment goes here.
The Nissan plant—
the first modern car factory in Mississippi—
opened in 2003.
— We are the union!
— The UAW has failed in three attempts to organize majority-white southern plants in the last 30 years.
Organizers had a reason to believe that Canton would be different.
Black working class Americans are more likely than any other demographic group to belong to a union.
— The facility is 80 percent African-American.
Their sister plant is in Tennessee,
and they make $1.70 more than the workers here in Canton, Mississippi.
Why is there a disparity?
— UAW organizing efforts started not long after the plant opened,
drawing in big names from the black community to help:
— You’ve taken your courage and used that courage as a platform for change.
— The message:
unionizing Nissan is the next rung in the long climb
to equality for black people in the deep South.
That message works for Betty Jones.
She’s an engine inspector at the plant and has worked there for 14 years.
Betty makes $26 an hour:
— At the beginning, when we started this,
I mean, my whole line was just—
they were just “Yes.”
But when Nissan started bringing in those anti-union videos,
I saw my coworkers, just…
the look on their faces— “Ms. Betty, I just can’t do it.”
— One thing I’ve heard is this idea, that maybe
the white workers don’t want a union with people who are black telling them how they can work.
— I tell people,
if you look at the history of the UAW, the UAW was started by white people.
The reason we have this type of thing—
health care—
is because of the UAW.
— One of the things we talk a lot about in politics these days is the white working class, right?
These are the guys who voted for Trump,
these are the people who wanna talk a lot about it.
And I wonder if you think there’s a difference
between the white working class and the black working class in this country.
— Yeah, because, I mean,
they just look at us like we aren’t supposed to be in a leadership position.
And I believe that if if the plant was 75 percent white,
we’d probably have a union about 10 years ago.
— People like Betty scared anti-union folks.
Nissan and its allies waged an expensive campaign against them.
The effort caught the union off-guard.
— The basic message is, if you do this, you are going to lose your job.
— Absolutely.
Your livelihood.
— But you can’t guarantee that’s not going to happen though, right?
— No.
We’ve never guaranteed the workers anything.
— A Nissan spokesperson told VICE News
the UAW is “knowingly spreading falsehoods,”
and “shamefully using the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement to stir emotions.”
Emotion-stirring is common in Mississippi around the union.
A Koch Brothers-funded ad campaign warns a union would turn the area into Detroit.
Republican Governor Phil Bryant made it clear what that meant.
There was a lot of conversation about why a union was bad for black workers.
— That worked for Tony.
— I’m afraid of losing my job.
Right now, I’ve got job security for 15 years, sir.
We have not had a layoff.
We have never missed a beat.
— What do you think of their campaign?
— They don’t have one.
They wanna say, “They treat black people like slaves.”
I have been driving an Infiniti for 15 years.
I make great money—
more money than people with degrees make down here.
If that’s treated like a slave, then keep using me.
— Race is a part of this conversation, isn’t it?
Can you talk a bit about how it’s part of the conversation for you?
— It really is not,
and that’s another tactic that the UAW is using to try and get in the plant.
— 1,307 workers voted for the union.
2,244 workers voted against it.
For every Betty at the Nissan plant,
there are two Tonys.
— So you think that they were, just in the end, too afraid?
— Too afraid, yeah.
— Do you think that other workers in other factories across the South,
who look at a situation like this,
might say, “Look, this isn’t worth the trouble”?
— I’m sure, yeah.
Because everybody was looking at us.
Didn’t happen this time.