(Toronto) Canada’s largest private sector union announced Monday that it will turn to General Motors for its next round of negotiations, after its members ratified the agreement reached with Ford Motor this weekend.
Hailing the Ford deal as a historic agreement that “to a large extent” addresses the union’s priorities, Unifor President Lana Payne said the union would expect the same from GM when negotiations begin , Tuesday.
“I want to be clear, we hope that General Motors will follow the model established at Ford,” she said in a statement sent by video.
The union chose GM in part because it currently has more influence over that company than over Stellantis, Payne said.
GM’s Oshawa plant operates 24 hours a day to build profitable pickup trucks and its St. Catharine propulsion plant is also a mainstay of the company’s operations, she said, while the GM plant in Stellantis in Windsor is operating slowly due to work being done there.
“I don’t expect this round of negotiations to be easy. And I want to ensure that our union is best positioned to advance this trend for the benefit of all our members, active and retired. »
Unifor will seek key increases such as an increase in base salary from 20% to 25%, bonuses of $10,000, pension increases including a return to defined benefit plans, and commitments regarding transition towards the electric vehicles he got from Ford.
Payne argued the contract results showed the union had achieved its goals, after threatening to close all Ford plants in Canada by calling a strike.
However, Unifor will face challenges both at GM and within its own ranks, experts say, as only 54% of Ford workers voted for the new collective agreement, compared to 81% for their previous agreement.
“The remaining question here is: Will GM and Stellantis workers ratify a deal based on the Ford model, or will they want more, given that their companies are bigger and more profitable? » noted Steven Tufts, a labor expert at York University.
“No one is saying that significant gains have not been made, but these significant gains have been made at a time when workers’ expectations have increased, and in a period of rising inflation. »
The negotiations also come as U.S. auto workers are demanding much more, including wage increases of at least 30%, which is also likely to have affected the vote at Ford, Stephanie Ross said. , associate professor at McMaster University.
“Even though the context of American auto workers is very different, their ambition and more activist approach has affected Canadian auto workers’ perceptions of what they could or should do,” he said. she explained in an email.
The contract also includes productivity and quality bonuses of $10,000 for full-time employees and $4,000 for part-time employees, the reactivation of a cost-of-living allowance to help combat inflation, better health benefits and the addition of two new paid holidays.
Among the areas where the union did not achieve as much, however, were profit-sharing agreements, increasing retiree pensions and perhaps some items related to part-time workers, Tufts said.
Unifor’s negotiations with GM involve approximately 4,300 workers at the St Catharines powertrain plant, Oshawa assembly complex and parts distribution center in Woodstock, Ont.
The approximately 1,350 hourly workers at GM’s CAMI plant in Ingersoll, Ont., are subject to a separate agreement.
