UNIFOR LOVES ITS SUBSIDIES.

What does Unifor stand for? How about: United for Subsidies. Over the past few months, Canada's largest private sector union struck deals with the Big Three legacy U.S. automakers — GM Canada, Ford and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) — deals that Unifor President Jerry Dias describes as a historic repositioning of the Canadian automobile manufacturing industry. The contracts have one common element, but don't call it a bailout, even though the deals involve hundreds of millions in government subsidies.

The last of the three contracts was approved last Sunday by 87 per cent of GM Canada's 1,500 Unifor workers. As part of the deal, GM has agreed to participate in a $1.3-billion investment to assemble pickup trucks at the automakers' previously abandoned plant in Oshawa. Unifor contracts signed earlier with the other automakers involve investment commitments of $2 billion with Ford and $1.5 billion through FCA to assemble electric vehicles in Ontario.

Credit for the investment deals is being awarded to — and claimed by — Jerry Dias, whose seven-year term at Unifor is coming to an end. “How Unifor's Dias saved Canadian auto manufacturing,” says the headline on a fawning Automotive News Canada interview with the union leader.

Dias has been taking credit for saving the Canadian auto industry for some time. Back in October, after reaching the agreement with Fiat Chrysler, he claimed national victory even before the GM deal was announced. “This year's auto talks will go down in history as a transformational moment for the Canadian auto sector,” said Unifor in a statement.

To the degree that Dias was instrumental in cajoling three auto companies and two Canadian governments into investment-subsidy deals via union contracts, he certainly deserves credit. He's not shy about playing up his role. Asked how the GM deal came about, Dias told Automotive News Canada: “I reached out to GM, we sat down, had dinner, and just had a good conversation” about the abandoned plant in Oshawa. “So it was really about an olive branch and putting the bitter fight that we had behind us.”

Dias does not say whether his pact with GM executives included any references to the business of securing subsidies from Canadian governments. According to a federal government statement to Automotive News, Ottawa was part of the Fiat Chrysler union negotiations. “We are at the table and prepared to support the future of our auto sector, particularly with regards to the development of electric vehicles and battery production here in Canada.”

Also at the table, apparently, was Ontario's Progressive Conservative government, led by Premier Doug Ford, who previously appeared to be opposed to auto industry subsidies. But two weeks ago, Ottawa and Ontario each committed $295 million to a Ford Motor electric vehicle/battery plant in the Toronto suburb of Oakville.

Asked about Premier Ford's new embrace of auto subsidies, Dias said that the premier's “view of the role of industry today, I will argue, and the role government is much different than his perception two years ago. I'll leave it at that.”

Premier Ford has certainly jumped aboard the auto industry subsidy vehicle. “By making this investment in Ford Canada, we are ensuring our province continues to lead North America and the world in automotive manufacturing and innovation, while boosting our competitiveness in this key sector,” the premier said.

There has been no formal announcement of how much money Ottawa and Ontario are preparing to contribute to reviving auto assembly in Oshawa, but Dias says there is nothing to worry about. “The stars are absolutely aligned,” he said, implying that the two levels of government have been at the GM bargaining table.

But exactly how “transformational” is Canada's New Auto Deal? Unifor claimed in a statement that this year's tripartite union-corporate-government contract revolution followed “years of government neglect, job loss and worker despair is quickly turning into optimism, hope and a very bright future. Canada is back in the game, in a very big way.”

Government neglect of the auto industry? Ottawa and Ontario have been subsidizing and bailing out the carmakers almost annually for decades through billions in loans, grants and other forms of assistance, including the $14-billion 2009 bankruptcy bailouts. An Institute for Research on Public Policy paper reviewed the record and noted that it received $1.4 billion in subsidies between 2004 and 2009.

In short, there's not much new in Canada's New Auto Deal in terms of economic policy. What is somewhat new is the context of the new Canada/Mexico/U.S. trade deal, which establishes new trade, wage and other rules. As part of the emerging global trading environment, the New Auto Deal may serve as a vehicle to achieve lower wages.

The idea that lower wages are among the results of the New Auto Deal ranks high at the World Socialist Web Site, which was highly critical of Unifor's “Canadian nationalist-corporatist perspective, which claims that auto workers in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico must compete against each other for investments and products, and that workers' jobs and wages must be subordinated to corporate profitability.”

It may be futile to bang one's head against the bulletproof subsidized windshields of the auto industry, but Unifor's — and the industry's — insistence on government billions needs to be examined more critically, to put it politely.