Who Do You Want to Call? Hiring Policy at the Canton Nissan Plant

• In Event: The Importance of Historical Precedent in Modern Politics

Abstract

What strategies did Nissan and the Mississippi government employ when trying to find workers for the Canton Nissan Plant? After the November 2000 announcement officially made Canton, Mississippi the site of a new Nissan automobile plant, both the company and the state had to confront the challenge of finding thousands of workers for the plant. While previous findings before 2000 indicated that at least some of the East Asian auto companies looked to hire mostly White workers, preliminary evidence from the Canton hiring process indicated that Nissan made attempts to create a workforce more representative of the state. Why was this the case? This paper seeks to examine why Nissan chose to adopt a different line of thinking.

Author

• Kyu Chul Shin, Rhodes College