Unifor's Jerry Dias hammered out the same deal with FCA as he did with GM.
With a strike threat hanging in the air negotiators for Unifor and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV reached a last-minute tentative agreement that averted a strike by 9,700 auto workers that would have shut down the company’s two Canadian assembly plants and a casting plant used for engine parts.
Fiat Chrysler agreed to a new contract virtually identical to the one the union had forged last month with General Motors, which gives union members $12,000 in bonuses spread over four years and wage increases of 2% in the first and fourth years of the contract.
FCA representatives protested the GM agreement was too rich for the Italian-American company, but as the deadline approached agreed to the union demands, which also included a major investment the automaker’s assembly plant in Brampton, Ontario.
The deal between the Canadian union and the automaker also calls for investment of $325 million to build a new paint shop at the Brampton facility, a move that should secure its future.
“This has been one very difficult set of negotiations,” Unifor president Jerry Dias told a news conference late Monday night in Toronto.
Unifor said it was prepared go on strike if it did not reach an agreement that provides a wage increase for its members and a commitment from FCA to invest in Brampton.
(FCA labor talks in Canada approach strike deadline. For more, Click Here.)
Denise Hammond, Unifor’s director of communications, had said the negotiations had hit a snag.
Earlier in the day Hammond said the automaker continued to say the contract Unifor reached on Sept. 25, included wages and raises that were too steep for FCA to accommodate.
(Click Here for more about the deal between Unifor and GM in Canada.)
The union’s contract with GM also included a revised wage scale for new and recently hired workers that starts at $20.92 per hour and increases every year for 10 years until they are paid $34.15 per hour in Canadian dollars.
During the weekend FCA chief executive Sergio Marchionne flew into Toronto to meet with Dias. But right up until the last minute before the strike deadline, FCA had insisted the agreement was too expensive.
(Canadian auto workers authorize strike for talks with Detroit’s Big Three. Click Here for the details.)
“But our members deserve this and it is only fair, after the years of zeros they have received,” Unifor officials said.