UAW's Newly Elected President Calls for Toyota Protests

DETROIT - United Auto Workers President Bob King came out swinging on his first day in office, taking aim at Toyota Motor Corp., The Detroit News reported.

King criticized Toyota for closing a Fremont, Calif., plant the Japanese automaker had once operated jointly with General Motors, saying it was shuttered only because it was represented by the UAW, and he called for protest marches against Toyota and its dealerships.

King made the attack during a speech after he was sworn in as the union's 10th president. He argued that a renewed UAW attempt to unionize U.S. workers of foreign automakers is a key to winning back concessions made to Detroit's automakers to help them survive.

"There is no question in my mind that if we get Toyota and Honda and Kia and Hyundai and Nissan workers the right to join the UAW without a terrorism campaign by the boss, that they would come into the UAW," said King, former head of the UAW's Ford Motor Co. unit. "And that would then give us the power to win back the concessions and sacrifices we made and win more than that."

King wouldn't put a timeline on when the UAW would successfully organize a foreign automaker's U.S. work force. The UAW has twice failed to organize Nissan Motor Co.'s factory in Smyrna, Tenn. King led the last organizing effort in 2001, when Nissan workers rejected the union by a wide margin.

The former New United Motors Manufacturing Inc., or NUMMI, plant in California is the "first battleground" in the organizing effort, King told 1,200 delegates on the final day of the union's convention.

GM and Toyota ended their partnership after GM went through bankruptcy last year. Toyota spokesman Mike Goss said NUMMI was closed because Toyota could not afford to run the plant after GM withdrew. About 4,500 UAW workers lost jobs.

Toyota then sold the NUMMI plant to Tesla Motors and invested $50 million in the luxury electric carmaker to work on building electric cars together in Fremont. Tesla plans to hire up to 1,000 workers, but hasn't said whether they will be unionized.

"Our No. 1 fight with Toyota is to give those workers a choice," King said Thursday. "We're going to pound on Toyota until they recognize the First Amendment right of those workers to come into the UAW."

King also chastised Toyota President Akio Toyoda for taking work to Mississippi. The automaker announced Thursday that it would restart building its facility in Blue Springs, Miss., with a goal of making Corolla compact cars there by late 2011. Toyota had stopped construction when vehicle demand sank during the recession.

"Well, Mr. Toyoda, if you ... truly care about safety and quality in America, then you are going to build (at Fremont) and not in Mississippi," King said.