Canada\u2019s autoworkers union, UNIFOR, is threatening to suspend contract talks with Stellantis.<\/p>\n
The union wants the Canadian government to block a proposed sale of the automaker\u2019s assembly plant in Brampton, northwest of Toronto.<\/p>\n
UNIFOR also insists Stellantis is serious about getting rid of the Brampton plant, and that would mean the loss of thousands of jobs.<\/p>\n
Talks on a new contract between Stellantis and UNIFOR came to a tense standstill 10 days ago. The two sides were trying to reach an agreement before the current collective agreement expired Sunday night.<\/p>\n
What threw a major wrench into the negotiations was a memorandum of understanding Stellantis said it had reached with Roshel to buy the Brampton plant. Roshel is a Canadian manufacturer of armored vehicles.<\/p>\n
But UNIFOR president Lana Payne said that\u2019s unacceptable.<\/p>\n
“I want to be clear: Stellantis is 100% serious about exiting Brampton,” she said.\u00a0“Currently, that is their only plan. Everyone needs to understand this, especially our governments.”<\/p>\n
Payne said there are other options that would protect the auto assembly footprint in Canada. But Brampton could become the first plant in the country to fall to the trade war with the White House.<\/p>\n
“This, after all, is one of the best, most productive facilities in the Stellantis chain, building award-winning vehicles,” Payne said. “A jewel in the crown. Suddenly, suddenly there was no future for Stellantis in Brampton.\u00a0Suddenly there were no more options.”<\/p>\n
Local UNIFOR leader Vito Beato said the 2,000 workers in Brampton were ready to resume production of the Jeep Compass.<\/p>\n
“We were supposed to be back to work right now as of today,” Beato said. “And when you look at our plant, it\u2019s ready.\u00a0It\u2019s ready to go, and it’s ready to build and our members are ready to get to work.”<\/p>\n
Payne said her union was never part of the discussions about a sale, and she wants the federal government in Ottawa to intervene. She said the union is considering strike action if Stellantis goes ahead and sells the Brampton assembly.<\/p>\n
Industry minister Melanie Joly has gone on record that Stellantis to is expected to honor its commitments.<\/p>\n
“We want a new model at the Stellantis plant and we\u2019ll put maximum pressure to make that happen,” Joly said. “If they don\u2019t, we\u2019ll get our money back.”<\/p>\n
The buyer \u2014 defense contractor Roshel \u2014 said it\u2019s ready to commit to giving laid off UNIFOR workers first consideration and bring them back to work as soon as possible. But Payne said that\u2019s not good enough.<\/p>\n
“Let\u2019s be clear here: This is a defense contractor,” she said. “They exist by government procurement.\u00a0It … cannot compare to a commercial enterprise building vehicles.”<\/p>\n
Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown said selling the auto plant would be devastating to his community.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s disappointing that this is yet another broken commitment from Stellantis,” Brown said.\u00a0“It\u2019s discouraging to know they\u2019ve made a false pledge, a false promise to all these … thousands of workers who spent their life working at this plant.\u00a0They\u2019ve treated them very poorly.\u00a0They\u2019ve treated the city poorly. Despite the fact this company, Stellantis, has received hundreds of millions of dollars in Canadian taxpayer subsidies.”<\/p>\n
In a letter to Stellantis employees, the company said market and trade conditions have impacted the original business case for Brampton and no options have emerged supporting a continued business case for the facility.<\/p>\n
$500 million in public financing signed by Stellantis in 2022 bars the automaker from closing its Brampton plan before 2035 unless there are exceptional circumstances beyond Stellantis reasonable control, making the plant commercially unviable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canada\u2019s autoworkers union, UNIFOR, is threatening to suspend contract talks with Stellantis. The union wants the Canadian government…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":904149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194339],"tags":[51759,49,48],"class_list":["post-904148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brampton","tag-brampton","tag-ca","tag-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=904148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/904149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=904148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=904148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=904148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}