Unifor leader ‘glad to be in the middle’ of the action
OTTAWA Just hours before Bombardier Inc. was to unveil a dramatic plan to escape its latest crisis, Jerry Dias was summoned to Montreal to meet with Alain Bellemare, the beleaguered firm’s chief executive.
There, the head of Canada’s largest private-sector union was told that after months of searching for partners to help finance its sleek new C Series jet, Bombardier would be teaming up with European manufacturer Airbus, which would take on much of the responsibility for building and selling the aircraft.
The deal would give Bombardier a way around the sky-high U.S. tariff prompted by a complaint from American rival Boeing. But it also put Dias — national president of Unifor, a union that represents more than 315,000 Canadian workers, many of them at both companies — in a tight spot.
It is not unusual for a big business to let big labour know about a big deal, but that would be especially important when it involves Dias, who is not afraid to make a lot of noise on issues that matter to his membership.
Dias, 59, wasn’t thrilled. But to his mind, Bellemare had little choice. “If I’m faced with a similar situation, where it’s life or death, I’m choosing life,” Dias said in a recent interview.
A Bombardier spokesman characterized their meeting as giving a heads-up to a trusted stakeholder. But Dias said his pragmatic conclusion likely came as a relief to Bellemare. After all, there was nothing stopping Dias from trashing the deal to anyone who would listen.
Dias said he knew something big was on the horizon. A former aerospace worker himself, he knew Boeing ’s anti-subsidy complaint to the U.S. Commerce Department had left the Montreal company between a rock and a hard place. Sooner or later, it would have to do something drastic to wriggle free.
“There was no way that Bombardier was going to go under,” said Dias.
Dias talks to the people around him often enough, and with enough confidence, to know where the prime minister and his cabinet stands on a number of issues of major importance to the Liberal government. “There’s a lot in play right now and I’m glad to be in the middle of it.”
That includes the negotiations of the new North American Free Trade Agreement, where Dias has been at every round and is trusted with many of the details.
“We talk to him all the time,” says a senior government source who interacts regularly with Dias.
The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity since they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the Liberal government reached out to Dias on trade early on and has kept him in the loop ever since — although they don’t agree on everything.
“I’m not invited to participate with the Canadian team in NAFTA to shut up,” Dias said. “I mean, they know who I am.”
Dias knows he has a different relationship with the Trudeau Liberals than he did with the Harper government. “Justin Trudeau and the Liberal government view us as a stakeholder — a legitimate stakeholder with a voice.”