GM reaches tentative labour agreement with workers at CAMI plant in Canada
16 Oct 2017
General Motors Co yesterday said it had reached a tentative labour agreement with striking workers at its CAMI plant in Canada, ending an almost month-old dispute.
Around 2,500 workers at the CAMI plant in Ingersoll, in southern Ontario, walked off the job on 18 September after the US automaker rejected a union call to designate the factory as lead production site for the Chevrolet Equinox model in North America.
''These members have shown incredible courage and strength by standing up for good jobs and a secure future for their families and their community,'' Jerry Dias, president of Unifor National, the main union leading the contract talks, said in a statement.
''This strike has shown all of Canada why a renewed North American Free Trade Agreement must address the needs of working people first,'' he said.
The agreement is subject to ratification by members, and Unifor said details of the deal will not be released until after the vote is held. The schedule for the ratification vote has yet to be decided.
According to a Unifor representative, the union was aiming to hold the ratification vote on Monday, depending on securing a venue that will be large enough to accommodate its members.
The union had called on GM to designate the factory as the lead producer of the Equinox, which the company also makes in Mexico. The issue could not be resolved as trade negotiators haggled over changes to Nafta, which Unifor and the United Auto Workers unions have criticised for enabling companies to take advantage of lower wages in the southernmost country on the continent.
Nafta, which was introduced in 1994, brought low-cost Mexico into the flow of tariff-free auto trade on the continent, which saw Canada lose over 53,000 automotive jobs from 2001 to 2014 before employment improved slightly, according to the Automotive Policy Research Centre at McMaster University.