23,000 Canadian autoworkers take on US car giants

By Barry Ellsworth

TRENTON, Ont.

Negotiations between the Canadian autoworkers union and the so-called Detroit Three automakers – General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler – got underway Wednesday and it looks like a hard road to travel to get a deal.

The union, representing about 23,000 Canadian workers employed at the Detroit Three, said at a press conference in Toronto that the discussions are “the most important contract talks in a generation.”

The private-sector union, Unifor, is led by national president Jerry Dias. As negotiations opened Wednesday with GM, he was talking tough.

“There will be no deals with any of the companies without commitments from each of them for investments in Canada,” he said at the press conference. “These negotiations are an important first hurdle in building a business case for future investments in Canada. The business case will also include other partners, such as government, suppliers and our communities.” Talks with Ford and Fiat Chrysler begin Thursday.

Canada has lost about 53,000 auto sector jobs in the last 15 years, according to the Automotive Policy Research Centre, with most going to plants in Mexico and the U.S.

Oshawa is an example of migrating jobs. Once GM’s most important manufacturing hub in Canada, it has slowly declined and 1,000 jobs disappeared when the company moved production of the Camaro last year to the U.S. state of Michigan from Oshawa.

That put the future of the Oshawa plant in doubt, but Dias said something has to be done to secure work there and in other Canadian plants such as in St. Catharines.

“We have to find a solution for Oshawa or there will be no agreement,” Dias, who is leading the negotiations for his union, said at the press conference. “There will be no agreement until we have solidified the footprint in Canada.”

The union is also concerned about the future of Ford’s engine plan in Windsor after it lost a key contract to a Mexican plant, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported Wednesday. A Fiat Chrysler assembly plant in Brampton is also facing a clouded future, the union said.

But one expert told the CBC that the automakers may push back during the negotiations.

“I think the car companies are going to say, ‘if you make it too tough for us, we’ve got alternatives. We can go to Alabama, we can go to Mexico,’” Marvin Ryder, marketing professor at the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University, told CBC News.

Negotiations are expected to last one month.