When Japanese automobile companies began to set up manufacturing plants in the United States during the 1980s, they worried that the powerful United Auto Workers union (UAW) would force them to use a type of work organization that did not fit with Japanese production methods. In Japan the production system relied on flexible work assignments and cooperative work teams that could perform a wide variety of jobs. This was much different than in the United States where the UAW permitted workers to perform only one task on an assembly line. To get around this problem, many Japanese firms built their American manufacturing plants in right-to-work states, so they could prevent their workers from forming a union affiliated with the United Auto Workers.