Canadian Auto Parts Workers Say ‘Enough Is Enough!’

[Hannah Bell]

In a dramatic Auto Parts Worker Day of Action Wednesday, 15,000 members of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) staged noon-hour rallies outside more than 100 worksites across Ontario. The action came in response to increasing pressure from auto parts manufacturers for union givebacks...

Auto parts companies are demanding givebacks even while the industry has begun turning around with stronger profits. Parts manufacturer Martinrea, for example, earned $21 million during the first half of 2010. Yet the Martinrea-Fabco stamping plant in Ridgetown, Ontario, with 200 members of CAW Local 127, is demanding members cut pay from around $21 per hour to $14. Local 127 will hold a strike vote meeting October 30.

The concessions being pushed in Canadian auto were ground-tested first in the U.S., with U.S. workers seeing more painful versions. The Big Three automakers GM, Ford, and Chrysler got the UAW to accept two-tier wage schemes starting in 2007, with new hires earning just half of regular wages, and today they are pushing to expand the portion of workers who receive lower pay, as seen at GM’s Lake Orion, Michigan, assembly plant and Indianapolis stamping plant.

In Canada, by contrast, CAW has largely resisted two-tiering in the assembly plants.

What is shared north and south of the border is the automaker pattern of moving more and more work to smaller parts makers, and then squeezing the parts makers to lower their prices—which, in turns, prompts the parts makers to squeeze their workers, and puts downward wage pressure on the assembly plants as well.



http://www.labornotes.org/2010/10/canadian-auto-parts-workers-say-%E2%80%98enough-enough%E2%80%99

[TBF]

1. K&R Solidarity nt