The United Auto Workers is ratcheting up pressure on Nissan in the hopes it may finally succeed at organising the Japanese automaker's plant in the typically anti-union southern US state of Mississippi.
It has taken its campaign to the world stage in a bid to pressure Nissan to cease what the UAW has called union-busting tactics.
The UAW 's efforts have won the endorsement of Nissan's Japanese unions and sympathetic unions have staged demonstrations protesting Nissan's tactics in Brazil and at the Geneva auto show.
The UAW is hoping to gain the backing of the powerful French unions of Nissan's partner Renault by bringing workers to Paris this week to describe their plight.
"The UAW's approach in Mississippi has been very innovative and very patient," said Harley Shaiken, a labour expert from the University of California, Berkley.
The aggressive campaign comes as the UAW celebrates a big break in its decades-long efforts to organise the plants of foreign automakers. Volkswagen is currently engaged in talks with the UAW about how to get employees at its Tennessee plant a seat on the German automaker's works council.
The UAW has never managed to organise workers at the plants of foreign automakers except in a handful of joint ventures with unionised General Motors, Ford or Chrysler.
But UAW president Bob King insists the tide is finally turning.
"We've never been this far along in an organising drive in the South," King said in a recent interview. "It's going really well."
King, a veteran of several failed organising attempts, said the number of employees supporting the UAW inside Nissan's Canton plant has continued to grow since the latest campaign was launched more than a year ago.
The campaign is being carefully watched by other automakers.
One former official from Honda, who has observed UAW organising efforts in the past and asked for anonymity, said it is likely the UAW has gained a foothold in Canton because of the widespread use of temporary workers.
That appears to have unsettled the regular employees, who thought they had finally won a measure of job security in a state with the lowest per capita income in the United States.
But those same job security fears could work against the UAW, said Sean McAlinden, chief economist at Michigan's Center of Automotive Research.
"They worry about Mexico," McAlinder said, noting that several automakers -- including Nissan -- will be opening new factories there this year.
