I’M NOT INVITED TO PARTICIPATE ... IN NAFTA TO SHUT UP.

has kept him in the loop ever since — although Dias and the government don’t agree on everything and don’t speak for each other.

“I’m not invited to participate with the Canadian team in NAFTA to shut up,” Dias said. “I mean, they know who I am.”

At the same time, Dias knows he has a different relationship with this government than he did with the Conservatives under former prime minister Stephen Harper, whom he describes as having viewed the labour movement as an enemy.

“Justin Trudeau and the Liberal government view us as a stakeholder — a legitimate stakeholder with a voice.”

Unifor, Dias noted, is one of the most politically active labour organizations in the country, including when it comes to third-party election spending, and represents workers in more than 20 economic sectors.

“They’re viewing us as a group that has a heck of a lot to add.”

Like the CAW before it, Unifor urged its members to vote strategically against the Conservatives in the 2015 federal election, rather than endorsing the New Democrats, the traditional allies of the labour movement, said Christo Aivalis, who researches Canadian labour history.

“It underpins their political strategy of, ‘We can find friends in any party except the Conservative party,’” says Aivalis, a post-doctoral fellow with the department of history at the University of Toronto.

Lisa Kelly, director of the women’s department at Unifor, said Dias has a talent for understanding where power lies around him.

“Anyone who knows Jerry knows that he thinks the rules do not apply to him — and nor should they,” said Kelly, because those rules were not written with the best interests of working people in mind.

Dias is quick to point out the NDP have never formed a federal government, but he also recognizes the Liberals can credit at least some of their success in the 2015 election to having shifted to the left.

“They have done a lot of things that I will argue they took right out of the NDP playbook,” he said.

“For me, it’s not a question of who does it. I just want it done.”