Despite double-digit wage increases, pension improvements and other significant gains at the bargaining table, only a slim majority of Unifor members at Ford Motor Co. of Canada voted to ratify the union’s new collective agreement with the automaker in late September.
Stephanie Ross, an associate professor of labour studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., as well as Jim Stanford, director of the Centre for Future Work and a former economist at Unifor, agree that the collective agreement ratified by members Sept. 24 locks in big gains on multiple fronts. “There is no doubt that this is a tremendously rich deal, but how that translates into ratification votes depends on all kinds of things,” Stanford said. “I never second-guess the members.”Ross, Stanford and Sweeney each pointed to the overshadowing influence of ongoing UAW strikes in the United States against the Detroit Three as setting worker expectations off-kilter.
With no guarantee the UAW will achieve its aims and the contracts having different timelines, comparison is already difficult, Stanford said, but there are also stark differences between how Unifor and UAW have bargained over the past 40 years. “The assumption that is demanding more is quite wrong. I think you could argue they’re trying to catch up.”
As UAW members at select U.S. assembly plants and parts suppliers continue to strike, a contingent of Unifor auto workers has taken to social media arguing the union should have fought for more on the picket line, she said. The sentiment is that more could have been achieved through a strike than at the bargaining table alone, she added, though that is far from a foregone conclusion.
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