A large majority of the auto-supplier’s employees have, reportedly, signed a petition asking the UAW union to “leave this business and us, its employees, alone.”
According to the report, “about 80 percent of the Renosol employees signed the petition, dated April 6. ‘We do not need this union or any union here,’ it states in part.”
The UAW, however, is claiming the company us behind the employee petition.
A union statement on Thursday blasted the petition, alleging that management used illegal tactics to coerce workers into signing it. It alleged that workers were influenced by management and “an agent of management,” and asked to sign a blank sheet to which the statement was later attached. The union statement also alleged that temporary workers were offered full-time jobs in exchange for their signatures.
“It is perfectly clear that the ‘petition’ was misrepresented to workers over the six-plus months that management has been circulating versions of it,” read a statement attributed to the Selma Workers Organizing Committee.
Plant production worker Jacqueline Atkins disputed that and said management had no role in the petition.
“(A co-worker) wrote it up and asked us if we wanted to sign it,” Atkins said. “Everybody read it and signed it of their own free will. We were not forced. We were not tricked. Nobody threatened us any kind of way.”
Last year, Resinol came under fire amid allegations that the plant’s chemicals were making employees sick.
However, federal investigators found that the air quality “to be within federal gudelines” and the company has asserted the safety claims are part of the UAW’s campaign to scare employees.
