In 2023, the country’s biggest private-sector union—which represents Ford, General Motors and Stellantis workers—will come to the bargaining table in a high-profile test of whether Canada’s intensive focus on electric-vehicle manufacturing will translate into benefits for workers. 

Governments, auto companies and union leaders alike have reassured workers that a series of multimillion-dollar deals to build a domestic EV supply chain are future-proofing the industry for a once-in-a-generation shift. But there are still workers whose futures these new manufacturing commitments have yet to secure. About 16,000 workers—a fifth of Canada’s auto-parts industry—make parts that can’t be used in EVs. Many of them are members of Unifor, which has labour talks scheduled for summer and fall.

“In one sense, there’s a lot of excitement right now, because I think we recognize that the auto industry [in Canada] is on the cusp of something really big,” Unifor national president Lana Payne said in an interview with The Logic.

“Obviously this round of negotiations will be about trying to push that as much as we can, but not to lose sight of what is very important at bargaining, and that is the economic package that I know our members will be looking for….Wages and pensions in this high-inflation moment, I expect are going to be key considerations, as well as income security and looking at growing the footprint in Canada.” 

In some ways, auto workers have the wind at their backs, amid growing solidarity in the labour sector. Workers recently unionized an Ohio EV battery plant run by GM and LG, amid a 39 per cent increase in U.S. strikes this year. Google Trends data suggests searches for “general strike” rose to their highest level in five years in November; Payne has said that Unifor went on strike 31 times in 2022, up from 21 in 2021. Alongside Unifor, the United Steelworkers union has also benefited from growing battery production in Canada.

“Unifor, as Canada’s auto union, obviously sees this as an opportunity for workers to be able to join our union in these new workplaces of the future, whether they’re battery plants, whether it’s across the supply chain,” Payne said. 

But there is also a sense of uncertainty in an industry that has faced many plant shutdowns since U.S. GM workers went on strike in 2019, between the pandemic, the shortage of semiconductors, and now, plants retooling to EV assembly lines. Workers have had little say in defining issues like U.S. manufacturing policies, rising cost-of-living expenses or convoy protests that shut down trade.

In a November letter to the federal government, Payne said that the end of pandemic supports and stop-and-start auto production schedules during the supply chain crisis have left workers at one supplier plant, Syncreon, unable to qualify for EI, and that “many members had to take out loans and increase debt loads due to the drastic decrease in their income during this period.” 

Auto workers’ fate in 2023 will also be in the hands of fresh leadership on both sides of the table. Payne was elected last year to succeed former president Jerry Dias, who led the union since its founding convention in 2013. Dias had been credited with gaining major EV product commitments from automakers in 2020 bargaining, but departed after health issues and an  workplace investigation, which found he had breached an ethics policy by accepting $50,000 from a COVID-19 rapid test supplier seeking to get tests to union members.

Unifor’s first female president will go head to head with General Motors Canada’s president Marissa West, who took on the role in spring 2022, Ford Canada CEO Bev Goodman, who was appointed in 2021, and for the first time, Stellantis, the Amsterdam-based company that formed when Fiat Chrysler merged with Peugeot in 2021.  

The bargaining cycle will line up with that of one of Unifor’s U.S. sister unions, the United Auto Workers, which Payne estimates has not happened since 1999, except for emergency agreements negotiated during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. That union could also see a new leader chosen in a January runoff election, as reform candidates promise aggressive changes after a corruption scandal of its own.

“I do have a different leadership style, there’s no doubt about that. I’m a listener, I collaborate,” Payne said. “I am also tough and stubborn. But these are things that most trade union leaders would have in their skill set…you organize, prepare for whatever kinds of legislative change that you want, as these things don’t happen just because we wish them to occur. I think you need a plan.” 

Industry observers said that Unifor will need to prove that it can not only keep up with rising inflation and interest rates, but draw a new generation of workers from other growing industries in southern Ontario that are offering competitive wages amid a labour shortage. 

“How are you going to stand out above not just other automotive manufacturers, but other manufacturers, from the construction industry, from the tech industry?” said Brendan Sweeney, managing director of Trillium Network for Advanced Manufacturing, a non-profit founded with Ontario government funding to support manufacturing. 

On the plus side, the majority of assembly jobs—which accounted for 22,000 workers, or eight per cent of Unifor membership last year—will not change between EV or internal-combustion manufacturing, said Sweeney.

“There will still be a body shop doing a bunch of welding, there will still be people bolting things on there, there will still be cockpits, seats, windshields,” he said. “From a 30,000-foot view, it won’t be that dissimilar.”

While hybrid vehicles have more parts than traditional internal-combustion vehicles, EV powertrains have fewer parts, Sweeney said, so the mix of EVs and hybrids could impact plant headcounts. Parts manufacturers that make an exhaust system, for instance, will have to pivot, while new battery plants will need to hire a much higher percentage of engineers in their workforces than are found in auto assembly plants.

Greig Mordue, associate professor at McMaster University and former general manager of nonunionized Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, said the future of engine plants like Ford’s 950-worker Windsor plant and GM’s St. Catharines propulsion plant will be telling. He noted that while many automakers have committed to electrifying all their future models, EV contracts are still much lower volume, and thus require fewer workers than internal-combustion vehicle plants. 

“When five per cent of the market is EVs, it means 95 per cent is not. So the transition is going to be chaotic,” he said. 

At the re-opening of General Motors’ re-tooled Ingersoll, Ont. CAMI EV plant on Dec. 5, Payne told workers they were the torch-bearers, on the front lines of vehicle electrification. 

“There are a lot of eyes right now set squarely on this facility,” Payne said. “Many stories will be told and studies written about what happens here at CAMI in the months and years to come.”

Yet just 10 days before, the scene at 3400 Somme Avenue and 1855 Turner Road in Windsor was a bit more sombre. The two Unifor offices will be home to employment action centres to help more than 800 workers affected by rolling layoffs at Stellantis and suppliers like Syncreon, which the automaker has attributed to its “transitions to a sustainable, mobility tech company.” 

Payne said in an interview that Unifor will put “elbow grease” into building training programs, skill assessments and preferential hiring to help ease the EV transition, estimating more than 700 member jobs were lost at suppliers of the GM CAMI plant.

“There’s so much potential here right now… there is an ability to create new jobs,” she said. “We’ve just got to make sure that we’re not leaving people behind.”