Unifor, the Canadian union representing auto workers, announced this morning that it has reached a tentative with auto giant Stellantis. The announcement came just hours after the union had started strike action at Stellantis plants in Brampton, Etobicoke and Windsor, Ontario. The union had promised picket lines if no deal between company and union representatives by Midnight on Sunday night.
Unifor has not revealed details of the agreement, and that won’t happen until a ratification vote among union members takes place. Unifor plans to present an update, to begin at 3:30 pm this afternoon.
The two parties have been in talks since October 18, after contract talks with Ford and General Motors had led to agreements.
Unifor president Lana Payne said on Friday that negotiations with Stellantis were moving ahead only slowly, the two sides using the deals arrived at with Ford and GM has precedents, or “patterns”. The added obstacle in the case of Stellantis was that the union was demanding specific commitments from the automaker in relation to future construction of EVs at the Brampton plant, as well as product planning more generally at the Etobicoke and Windsor plants.
Though it ended up lasting only a little over seven hours, this morning’s strike action was the first to hit Stellantis in Canada since 1986.
UAW and General Motors reach deal south of the border
Very quickly after the Unifor-Stellantis agreement came word that the UAW had itself reached a deal with the last of the Big Three automakers, General Motors.
Neither side has released an official statement as of yet, but it’s widely believed the terms of the agreement are very similar to those reached between the UAW and Ford and Stellantis.
At the time the agreement was reached, some 20,000 workers at GM plants were on strike in the U.S. Workers will head back to work this week while the union’s presiding GM Council reviews the agreement, before a ratification vote is held among all members of the union.