After a month-long strike and a war of words that erupted earlier this week, General Motors and the union representing workers at its CAMI assembly plant have struck a tentative deal.
Late Friday, Unifor Local 88 posted a statement claiming a breakthrough in bargaining talks that reached an impasse on September 17th. That means Chevrolet Equinox crossovers could restart production at the Ingersoll, Ontario facility on Monday — easing dealer fears over a shortage of the hot-selling vehicle.
Unifor won’t release details of the tentative agreement until a ratification meeting, which CBC News claims is scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday morning in London, Ontario. If the roughly 2,500 members give the agreement a thumbs-up, production resumes at 11 p.m.
On October 1st, GM reported a 41-day supply of Equinox crossovers. While production at two Mexican plants supplements Equinox supply, the lion’s share of volume rolls out of Ingersoll, and Unifor wants to keep it that way.
Earlier this year, the CAMI plant lost the GMC Terrain, now assembled in Mexico. Rather than wages and benefits, this round of bargaining talks centered around product and the continued production of the plant’s sole model. Unifor wants assurances that CAMI will remain the primary assembly location for the Equinox line. A second model, for which the plant has the capacity, would ensure CAMI’s continue operations, Unifor claims.
It isn’t known whether the latter request was granted, but Unifor’s national leadership wouldn’t green-light a deal without having secured the main bargaining point.
Should workers drop the picket signs and pick up tools again, workers will also return to the heavily impacted GM transmission plant in St. Catharines, Ontario. The strike also reduced output at two engine plants in Michigan and Tennessee.
Through the end of September, U.S. Equinox sales are more than 22 percent higher, year-to-date, than the same period in 2016.
[Image: General Motors]
Yup ….I figured something would give before week 5…GM placed their loaded weapon on the table..Cooler heads prevailed.
Ratification will be a noisy affair..Much gnashing of teeth, a whole lot of rhetoric..I see 78-80% of production people, holding their collective nose with a yes vote.
Skilled Trades ??? 57- 62% ..in favour.
The line will fire up Monday day shift….Saturdays scheduled for at least 3 months…Trades will certainly be offered Sunday shifts.
The universe is unfolding as it should.
Mikey, 1st of all, always good hearing from you. When I was a union ironworker, government jobs always paid prevailing (union) wage. Other jobs like building warehouses on the west side of Indianapolis paid well, but not union wages. I think the UAW/Unifor (or whatever the CAW has morphed into) needs to realize that full-size trucks, BOF SUVs will pay prevailing (union ) wages. CUVs and sedans? not so much.
Why lump CUVs in with sedans? They outsell BOF SUVs by a wide margin, and articles on this very site show they do make plenty of money for the automakers. Cars? Not so much.
I’d guess that trucks and big BOF SUVs have bigger profit margins than midsize and compact CUVs.
I wonder how many MAGA morons will show up here to whine about unions without realizing the irony of their ignorance?
“Make America Great Again” – Bill Clinton 1992
Ronald Reagan, 1980.
“Let’s make America great again” – Ronald Reagan 1980
Yes, but you see … MAGA doesn’t mean a damn thing here in Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada. You got you guy, we got ours. And MAGA is no part of our deal.
I sure would hate to buy a car produced by happy workers after this long strike.
Quality will suck :=)
Probably not. But for deliberate sabotage, the quality of modern cars has more to do with engineering than with the morale of the people who put it together.
True. As an example, Toyotas (or Toyota-affiliated vehicles, such as the old NUMMI, now Tesla, plant in Fremont, CA) built in the US are regarded to have quality as high as those built in any other country, including Japan.
@xtoyota…The individual assembler has minimal impact on final build quality…
Most people don’t realize the faulty components they blame manufacturers and their assemblers for building were sub-assembled by suppliers they never heard of.
The whole process must be firing on ALL cylinders.
Design, part quality, tools, manufacturing process must all be good AND the assembler must ‘close the deal’.
When he or she makes an error, today there is a very high likelihood it will never leave the factory. It will get repaired.
But here is the thing: if it’s assembled correctly the first time, it is MOST likely to provide the customer good, long service.
As with your friendly car dealer, every ‘repair’ at the factory is an opportunity to screw up, or undo, 2,3,4, 5, or 10 other things, depending on how ‘buried’ the defect is. Ditto faulty parts–if it’s buried and has to be replaced, the repair process has just undone the original processes that your friendly car maker spent millions on to get just right.
So the assembler really is kind of important….
The weather’s turned cooler in Ontario. Christmas is coming. UNIFOR needs to keep it’s dues incoming. No more strike pay outgoing. Usual self-congratulatory B.S. in the meeting halls.