#labor

The CAW and General Motors have reached a tentative agreement, sticking closely to the “pattern” set by negotiations between Ford and the CAW.

The Windsor Star is reporting that the CAW “has all but given up” on trying to re-open the Oshawa Consolidated line that was closed earlier this year. The Star quotes CAW President Ken Lewenza as saying

“We’re going to keep raising it until the deal is done…But the reality is vehicle production is based on market and market is based on capacity and GM told us they don’t need the capacity.”

The CAW is still in talks with Chrysler and General Motors to continue hammering out the details of their labor agreements, but the discussions have reportedly slowed as the two companies comb through the “pattern agreement” reached with Ford.

Ford and the CAW have reached a 4 year collective agreement to Sept 2016. Details from the CAW press conference below.

With the CAW’s strike deadline set for 11:59 P.M tonight, the union will apparently focus on Ford as the target for a collective agreement, while also remaining in talks with Chrysler and General Motors.

Union leaders met with Ford officials last week during Ford’s Amsterdam extravaganza, and when the topic of closing the Genk, Belgium plant was raised…nothing was said.

As negotiations between the Big Three and the CAW continue to grind away, Sergio Marchionne had more strong language for the union.

With the CAW’s strike deadline just four days away, the union has apparently tabled a proposal to reduce wages for new hires, a move that would stop short of a true two-tier wage system, but meet a major demand of the Big Three auto makers.

For all the rhetoric being passed back and forth between the OEMs and the CAW in this round of contract negotiations, the overwhelming feeling from our commenters is that there will be no strike, compromise will be had, and somehow, both sides will play it off as a victory. The latest bulletin from the CAW seems to support that notion.

With the CAW’s strike deadline looming, Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne is taking a harder line in the media, pushing his vision of a profit-sharing agreement between Chrysler and the CAW, while boldly stating what everyone knows, but is afraid to say; auto makers have “other options” when it comes to building cars.

A report by Reuters suggests that the Canadian Auto Worker’s union may take the unprecedented step of striking at the plants of all three domestic automakers.

The CAW may abandon their tactic of using negotiations with one automaker as a precedent for other negotiations, and conduct simultaneous talks with Ford, Chrysler and General Motors.

Members of the Canadian Auto Workers union have voted overwhelmingly in favor of a strike mandate as talks between the union and the Big Three resumed today.

France is asking the EU to look into an uptick in South Korean car imports, which could possibly result in tarrifs being slapped on the vehicles, despite an EU-South Korean free trade agreement.

The establishment of a new manufacturing base in North Africa has fascinated me for the past couple months – though few others seem to really care. The leader in this movement has been Renault, which is setting up plants in Morocco and Algeria to build their popular, low-cost Dacia vehicles in factories where employees earn a fraction of what a French assembly line worker would make.

PSA doesn’t have a low-cost brand of it’s own, so jobs haven’t gone across the Strait of Gibraltar – yet. But the closing of the Aulnay plant, where a massive contingent of North African immigrants (now French citizens) work, is a compelling snapshot of the socioeconomic and racial dynamics of France that happens to intersect with the auto industry.