CAW Signs Tentative Agreement with Ford Canada

11/08/96

Canada NewsWire has reported that Buzz Hargrove, president of the Canadian Auto Workers union, announced that the CAW had reached a tentative agreement with Ford of Canada. The deal, once the CAW's Ford membership ratifies it, will conclude this year's round of collective bargaining between the Canadian subsidiaries of Detroit's Big Three automakers and Canadian auto workers. The newly negotiated collective bargaining agreements will spell out the rights and responsibilities of Canadian Big Three employees for the next 3 years.

Hargrove said that the contracts as a whole establish a "new moral standard for businesses" in Canada. The new agreement with Ford Canada maintains the pattern established at Chrysler and GM. It extends limits on outsourcing, improves wages, and provides more paid time off the job and better health care benefits.

Hargrove indicated that the new contract followed the principal of work ownership that the CAW established in its contract with Chrysler this year and won from GM through a 21 day strike. He said, "this agreement will create an additional 300 jobs at Ford through the extension of the CAW's paid time off the job program."

The new deal prohibits the sale or closure of any plant in whole or part during the life of the agreement, except for the Windsor engine facility which was identified to close long before bargaining started. Ford has also agreed that it will not outsource any major operations during the three-year contract, and that it will replace small numbers of jobs that are outsourced with the same number of jobs in the same community.

Hargrove said the new outsourcing protections negotiated with the Big Three set a new moral standard for corporations and prove that workers can make gains for their families and the communities they live in, despite the popular conceit that says no controls should be put on a market economy.

Paul Dever -- The Auto Channel