California: Hecklers at Nummi talks prompt call to police

Fremont police were called in to help restore calm at a rowdy United Auto Workers meeting on Sunday as union leaders faced heckling from rank-and-filers as the March 31 shutdown of New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. sends tempers rising and morale sinking among more than 4,700 plant workers who expect to lose their jobs. Hecklers at Nummi talks prompt call to police

Tom Abate

San Francisco Chronicle

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Fremont police were called in to help restore calm at a rowdy United Auto Workers meeting on Sunday as union leaders faced heckling from rank-and-filers as the March 31 shutdown of New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. sends tempers rising and morale sinking among more than 4,700 plant workers who expect to lose their jobs.

A Police Department spokesman said four officers were dispatched to the union hall across from the factory that will soon be closed after the successive decisions of former partners, first the bankrupt General Motors and later Toyota, to end the 25-year joint venture for operating the auto plant.

Police said no arrests were made, although one meeting participant told officers he was pushed to the ground inside a hall where union leaders briefed about 400 members on a proposal by Nummi management for what will essentially be their severance package.

Union president Sergio Santos said his staff called police in response to what he called deliberate interruptions led by a few individuals who, he said, were not workers but "two or three plants" placed there by Nummi management.

"Of course Nummi didn't instigate a fight at the union meeting," a company spokesman wrote in an e-mail.

A video clip taken at the meeting and posted on Facebook shows a union leader losing his temper and cursing at hecklers, prompting a shoving match near the front of the auditorium. It is not clear whether the person complaining of having been pushed was involved.

Longtime Nummi worker and union member Ken Villegas, who was at most of the meeting, said the general tenor of the rank-and-file complaints were that union leaders should go after GM, as well as Toyota, and that they should be working harder at getting a package to assist workers who soon face the loss of hard-to-replace jobs.

Santos said leaders consider it is pointless to go after the bankrupt GM, and they are trying to tighten up the shutdown agreement.

On the issue of outside agitation, Villegas said of the hecklers that "the most vociferous out of that group was someone I've never seen and I've been here 25 years."