Unifor President Jerry Dias is pushing FCA to commit to significant investments in Ontario.
Contract talks between Unifor, the union representing auto workers in Canada, and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles are coming down to the wire with the two sides surprising some distance apart.
As the strike deadline between Unifor and Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles approaches, the union said it continues to push for the pattern Agreement established last month with General Motors. The pattern settlement included pay increases for workers.
“FCA has been dragging its feet at the table but now the clock is ticking, a pattern has been set and the union will accept nothing less,” said Unifor National President Jerry Dias. “In every round of Detroit Three bargaining our priority remains, this is about the future of good jobs in the auto sector.”
The deadline for contract talks with FCA is Monday, Oct. 10, at 11:59 p.m. If FCA continues to resist the pattern agreement, which includes new investment, 9,750 Unifor members at the Windsor, Brampton and Etobicoke FCA facilities will strike, Dias warned. Unifor members authorized a strike with an overwhelming vote on Aug. 28.
Apparently a firm commitment to update an aging paint shop at FCA’s Brampton Assembly Plant is one of the key pieces not yet in place. In the case of the agreement at GM, the Canadian government of Justin Trudeau stepped in with financial support for the automakers commitment to revamp an assembly plant in Oshawa, Ontario, outside of Toronto.
Sergio Marchionne said in August the paint shop in Ontario needs an upgrade. New paint shops, such as those FCA has built for its assembly plants in Sterling Heights, Michigan, and Toledo, Ohio, cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
“All plants require investments,” Marchionne said. “There are some structural issues that impact on Brampton about its long-term viability without additional investment, which are not product related. They relate to the longevity of the paint shop.”
(GM pact approved by Canadian autoworkers. Click Here for the story.)
FCA makes the Chrysler 300 and Dodge Charger and Challenger at Brampton.
Meanwhile, as Unifor is seeking major investments in Canadian plants from Detroit’s automakers it is also facing pressure from newer union members to shorten the grow-in period required now to reach the top of the contract’s wage scale. The grow-in period was left intact in the pact with GM and more than a third of the GM workers voted to reject the contract.
The number of Unifor members who are not paid top wages make up a substantially larger part of the workforce at both FCA and Ford, which will be Unifor’s next target once the FCA pact is settled.
Dias and the Unifor bargaining team are acutely aware of the concerns of newer union members and last week sought to address the issue in a post on the union website that challenged the assertion that by keeping the 10-year wait for top wages Unifor had made a significant concession to GM and by extension Ford and FCA under pattern bargaining where the economic provisions of all three agreements are virtually identical.
(Click Here for more about the deal between Unifor and GM in Canada.)
“Is this a concessionary agreement? No.” the post stated. “Important gains were made for our members in this agreement. There is no way that this could be called ‘concessionary.’ Not getting everything everyone wanted is not the same as concessions. A concessionary agreement would include things like cuts to wages, benefits, time off and working conditions; and on balance would move people backward, not forward.
“In this Agreement, Unifor negotiated $12,000 in lump-sum payments for current employees, two 2% wage increases for traditional members, a significantly improved new-hire wage grid, which will deliver many thousands of dollars in new money to our in-progression members, temporary workers were converted to full-time status, and we made some improvements to benefits, including: dental, counselling, childcare and new physiotherapy coverage,” the post noted.
The post on the Unifor website also said overall value of the Unifor-GM Agreement varies depending upon job classification and seniority, but the economic gains are nearly $20,000 for our traditional production members. In recognition that members on the progression wage grid have lower earnings, the value of the economic gains for these members is significantly higher.
(Canadian auto workers authorize strike for talks with Detroit’s Big Three. Click Here for the details.)
“This is clearly the best economic agreement in more than a decade,” the post noted. “The last time members did as well was in 2005. In our negotiations in 2008, as the economy started heading into depression, wages were frozen.”