Zero movement on investment for Ford engine plants
It’s less than a week before an Oct. 31 strike deadline, yet contract talks between Unifor and Ford are moving “pretty slowly,” Jerry Dias, the union’s national president, said Tuesday.
“We’ve got more issues on the table than you can shake a stick at,” said Dias. “We have yet to see an economic package, and there’s still nothing on investment for Windsor.”
Ford is the last of the Detroit Three automakers to bargain a new contract with Unifor, which represents about 1,400 workers at two Windsor engine plants and 5,000 at the Oakville vehicle assembly facility.
Unifor expects Ford to match agreements recently ratified with Fiat Chrysler and General Motors, which set the pattern deal.
The agreements included wage gains for both traditional and entry-level workers, $12,000 in bonuses, and pledges by the carmakers to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in their Ontario plants.
Unifor has made new product investment at the Windsor sites the top priority in the Ford negotiations. But “we have yet to make any inroads with Ford,” said Dias. “They understand investment needs to be part of the agreement, and we need to know fairly soon what that means.”
When talks officially kicked off Oct. 17, Ford issued a statement, saying it would “work collaboratively with Unifor to negotiate a globally competitive collective agreement.”
Ford, said Dias, has argued that improvements made to the 10-year grid for new hires would harm the competitiveness of the Oakville plant. Of the 5,000 hourly workers, about 2,200 are new hires. “They say they are the company most negatively impacted because they have the highest number of new hires,” said Dias.
In 2013, Ford announced it would spend $700 million on a new global platform for the Oakville plant. It subsequently hired more than 1,000 hourly workers to help produce the new Ford Edge SUV.
Under the new contracts, new hires will receive pay hikes in each year of the 10-year pay scale. Previously, they remained on the starting hourly rate of about $20 an hour for the first three years.
Another complication in the Ford talks centres around the Oakville union’s displeasure with the GM pattern.
Dave Thomas, president of Local 707, has said while his members support the effort to secure new investment for the Windsor operations, they would likely vote down an agreement similar to the GM deal.
Dias would not comment on “the union’s internal discussions.”
Negotiations, he said are moving more slowly than he would have expected, although he is not “overly concerned.”
The two sides have until 11:59 p.m. Monday to reach a tentative deal. If they don’t, the union will be in a position to authorize a strike.