Unifor’s latest agenda for the automotive industry, outlined by the union’s new national president Lana Payne on Thursday, puts electric vehicles at the centre of its bargaining plans more than ever before.

The wide-reaching plan addresses not only factory conditions and the need for more apprentices, but also recommends Canadian governments and companies support the auto sector with more EV charging infrastructure, critical-mineral processing, clean power production capacity and purchasing subsidies via the creation of a new ministry focused on auto supply-chain development. 

Here are five takeaways from Unifor’s 29-point auto agenda: 

1. New battery plants can’t skirt competitive pay: Like U.S. union United Auto Workers, Unifor wants to protect collective bargaining efforts where it sees gigafactories undercutting unions. “Employers will use these periods of transition to place new demands on workers–in effect, asking workers themselves to pay for this transition through lower wages, lesser benefits and weaker work standards,” Unifor’s document said, citing conflicts at Tesla’s Berlin plant and GM’s U.S. battery venture. 

2. Help smaller suppliers make the EV leap: About 16,000 workers, or about one-fifth of Canada’s auto-parts industry, make parts that can’t be used in EVs and need government transition programs. Unifor said it will push to standardize work conditions at parts manufacturers, where pay rates are uneven compared with big assemblers.

3. No subsidized union busters: The union plans to push for deals with the federal government’s Strategic Innovation Fund, where publicly funded companies must take “a neutral stance on unionization” enabling unions “without interference or intimidation.” 

4. Giving Indigenous communities a fair stake: Unifor said Indigenous stakeholders’ community oversight of environmental standards and co-ownership through equity shares should be required for new battery-material mines.

5. Include unions in equity reviews: Systemic racism and sexism in pay and hiring will “divide workers, break lines of solidarity and limit collective bargaining power,” the union said. It wants to push legislation requiring employers to make equity plans that include unions in “regular systems reviews.” 

The backdrop: Many of the major automakers’ commitments to build EVs in Canada over the past two years stemmed from 2020 negotiations between Unifor and the Detroit Three: General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler, or what is now Stellantis.

Payne will lead the nation’s largest private-sector union into another key round of auto talks in 2023—which, unlike last time, will happen in parallel with the UAW’s U.S. collective bargaining cycle.

The stakes: Upcoming bargaining rounds will not only set wages after a period of intense inflation, but will require the union to mount an uneasy transition after the exit of former president Jerry Dias, who led the union since its founding convention in 2013 but left under the cloud of an internal investigation.

The takeaway: Unifor said it sees “a once-in- a-lifetime opportunity” for a new auto-sector narrative, and it looks like EVs will play a major part.