The Canadian autoworkers have a tentative contract with GM
The Canadian Autoworkers and General Motors Reach a Tentative Contract Agreement (https://www.npr.org/2023/10/11/005030932/news/GM/UNIFor
GM said that it reached the deal with Unifor around 1 p.m. Tuesday after workers went on strike at the Ontario facilities just after midnight. The agreement recognizes the contributions that employees make and the benefits that they receive, the automaker said.
About 4,300 striking workers at two GM factories and a parts warehouse will return to work Tuesday afternoon and will vote on the three-year deal later.
When faced with the strike, the Unifor union’s Lana Payne said that GM had no choice but to follow a pattern agreement with Ford.
She says the deal includes “all items that the company had initially fought us on such as pensions, retiree income supports and converting full-time temporary workers into permanent employees over the life of the agreement.”
The new agreement covers autoworkers at GM’s assembly plant in Oshawa, a powertrain plant in St. Catharines, and a parts distribution center in Woodstock.
Payne said she expects a ratification vote on the GM deal in the coming days. If approved, only Jeep maker Stellantis would be left without a contract with Unifor. Payne said she expects talks to begin soon with the company, which has the largest manufacturing footprint in Canada of the Detroit automakers.
The Unifor statement said that the deal included pay raises of 20% for production workers and 25% for skilled trades. In the first year there would be 10% of general pay raises, with 2% and 3% in the second and third. The company also agreed to restore cost-of-living pay raises starting in December of 2024. Temporary workers would get pay raises, and those with at least one year of service would get permanent jobs.
The Automotive Workers’ Union Strikes: Why the Union hasn’t Solved the Auto Workers’ Discontents?” UAW President Shawn Fain
Payne said earlier that the union had a lot of bargaining leverage with GM because the factory in Oshawa is working around the clock to build profitable Chevrolet pickups.
Thus far, the union has decided to target a small number of plants from each company rather than have all 146,000 UAW members at the automakers go on strike at the same time.
Unifor members at a fourth GM facility, the CAMI Assembly Plant in Ingersoll, Ontario, are covered by a separate bargaining agreement and did not strike.
The Ford plant in Michigan was taken down by surprise around 6:30 p.m. The factory makes a variety of vehicles, including large Ford and Lincoln SUVs.
UAW President Shawn Fain said in a statement that the union has waited long enough “but Ford hasn’t gotten the message” to bargain for a fair contract.
If eight hundred workers shut down this extremely profitable plant, it will help them understand it.
The strike happened just four weeks after the union began it’s walk out against each of the companies.
In a statement, Ford called the strike expansion “grossly irresponsible” but said it wasn’t surprising given the UAW leadership’s statements that it wanted to keep Detroit automakers hobbled with “industrial chaos.”
A Ford executive said the union set up a meeting at the company’s Dearborn, Michigan, headquarters Wednesday afternoon where Fain asked if the company had another offer.
High-ranking Ford executives are working on bringing electric vehicle battery plants into the Uaw’s national contract to unionize them. But they didn’t have a significantly different economic offer, the executive said. The company had put a strong offer on the table but there wasn’t enough room to increase it and keep it affordable, said an executive who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Fain responded by saying, if that’s the company’s best offer, “You just lost Kentucky Truck Plant,” said the executive. He said the meeting lasted about 15 minutes.
The significant escalation against Ford shows that Fain is trying to increase pressure on the company, said Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University who follows labor issues.
Ford and the other manufacturers have agreed to make concessions, he said. He said the companies could have reached their resistance points in different degrees. He said executives are unable to cross their bottom line positions so they can’t stay competitive.
The union’s move doesn’t leave him optimistic for a quick end to the strikes, Masters said. The issues that remain on the table are very complex, and he pointed to union demands of getting defined benefit pensions and health insurance when they retire.
As the strikes increase, more workers will be laid off from non-striking plants. Once metal stamping factories that supply multiple assembly plants have produced enough parts for non-striking facilities, the companies would likely shut them down.
Striking workers are receiving $500 a week from the union’s strike pay fund. By contrast, anyone who is laid off would qualify for state unemployment aid, which, depending on a variety of circumstances, could be less or more than $500 a week.
Separate companies that manufacture parts for the automakers are likely to have laid off workers but might not report them publicly, said Patrick Anderson, CEO of the Anderson Economic Group in Lansing, Michigan.
According to a survey by MEMA Original Equipment Suppliers, more than half of the companies have laid off workers and about 30% will do the same by mid-October.
