Plant Location Sunderland

Abstract

The finalists of what was termed by the British unions as a “beauty contest” were Shotton and Sunderland. The former wished to accommodate Nissan because its steel industry was in decile and unemployment increased. Leftist unions remained influential and made Nissan doubt on whether its preferred Japanese unionism—single union agreement—could be implemented in the new plant. Sunderland had also suffered the decline of shipbuilding industry, but “fortunately” the influential union AUEW had signed single union agreements with Japanese multinationals in the region and was prepared for another. The plant celebrated its launch on 8 September 1986, where Thatcher herself was present. The TUC member unions fell into a serious split on such Japanese agreements.