Unifor Strike Targets General Motors in Canada
While the United Auto Workers (UAW) decided to implement an aggressive strike campaign that bucks some of the historical trends American union leadership feels did not serve the cause in the past, Canada’s Unifor has vowed to take a more measured approach during its contract negotiations with the industry. However, that does not mean simply rolling over for automakers in order to strike any old deal.
Last week, Unifor criticized General Motors for failing to meet important elements of its pattern agreement with Ford Motor Company. With both sides failing to make any tentative agreements by the Monday deadline, Unifor has announced plans to strike in Ontario — hindering the company’s ability to manufacture light and heavy-duty pickups.
The Canadian walkout is reportedly down to GM "stubbornly refusing" to match the contract the labor union had already reached with Ford, including a wage increase of up to 25 percent and improved benefits. Demands are similar to what we’ve seen from the UAW.
"The company continues to fall short on our pension demands, income supports for retired workers, and meaningful steps to transition temporary workers into permanent, full-time jobs," Unifor National President Lana Payne stated.
With the UAW having been striking since mid-September, automakers are already assumed to be losing millions of dollars each week due to production shortfalls. Unifor is targeting GM's Oshawa assembly complex, St. Catharines powertrain plant, and Woodstock parts distribution center. This will further hamper the company’s ability to manufacture the extremely lucrative Silverado pickup as well as the powertrains those (and other) GM products use.
The automaker has said it would “remain at the bargaining table” and remains “committed to keep working with Unifor to reach an agreement that is fair and flexible.” But it also claimed to be disappointed that a deal failed to be reached with the union after “very positive progress on several key priorities over the past weeks.”
Unifor is similarly disappointed. But said that GM failed to adhere to the pattern agreement made with Ford, leaving the union with no other recourse.
That agreement applies to over 5,600 Canadian employees located at Ford factories and has already been ratified by a narrow majority of union members. It offers a nearly 20 percent wage hike (25 for trades over a lifetime agreement), general wage increases over the next three years (with a 10 percent bump coming in 2024), a restoration of cost-of-living adjustments, the timeline for standard wage progression to be halved to just 4 years, improvements to all pension plans, a $10,000 Productivity and Quality bonus for full-time employees ($4,000 for part-timers), improvements to healthcare, improvements to retirement benefits, special EV transition measures for workers located at Ford’s Oakville Assembly, and more.
[Image: General Motors]
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Consumer advocate tracking industry trends and regulations. Before joining TTAC, Matt spent a decade working for marketing and research firms based in NYC. Clients included several of the world’s largest automakers, global tire brands, and aftermarket part suppliers. Dissatisfied, he pivoted to writing about cars. Since then, he has become an ardent supporter of the right-to-repair movement, been interviewed about the automotive sector by national broadcasts, participated in a few amateur rallying events, and driven more rental cars than anyone ever should. Handy with a wrench, Matt grew up surrounded by Detroit auto workers and learned to drive by twelve. A contrarian, Matt claims to prefer understeer and motorcycles.
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GM was afraid of a ton of Payne.
The agreement basically mirrors the one that UNIFOR negotiated with Ford Canada. And that only received a 54% in favour vote by the UNIFOR members at Ford. GM however has generally an older workforce, so the pension clause will add more cost to GM than to Ford. What shocked me the most is that there were only 4,300 UNIFOR members in the bargaining unit(s) involved. I remember when GM employed well over 10,000 in Oshawa alone.
Next up is Stellantis (Chrysler) Canada which shockingly is the largest employer of unionized auto workers in Canada among the D3 with just over 8,000.
Union leadership expects a much tougher time with Stellantis. Perhaps because there are currently no vehicles for Brampton and the mini-vans in Windsor are not exactly hot sellers.