DaimlerChrysler Canada headed for strike-union

TORONTO, Oct 14 Scott Anderson writing for Reuters reported that some 11,000 workers at DaimlerChrysler's <DCX.N><DCXGn.DE> Canadian operations are headed for a strike unless the automaker promises no jobs will be lost at one production plant and backs down on demands for concessions, the head of Canada's auto union said on Monday.

With the clock ticking toward a Tuesday midnight deadline, Canadian Auto Workers union President Buzz Hargrove said there was a "95 percent" chance of a strike for the company's Canadian hourly employees.

"Unfortunately, I don't feel good about that because we don't usually do a scale like that. But it's very difficult to think that we can find a way to do this in the next 36 hours," Hargrove told reporters. "Chrysler would have to make a very radical change."

The key issue, Hargrove said, was the future of the Pillette Road plant in Windsor, Ontario, scheduled to stop production next July at the cost of about 1,100 jobs.

The union wants the company to find new jobs for unionized workers at the beleaguered plant, as well as provide jobs or severance for another 1,500 employees laid off at its Brampton, Ontario, car plant last year.

Company spokeswoman Kerrey Kerr said there is no new product earmarked for the Pillette plant after 2003.

GM, FORD DEALS SIGNED

The union has signed three-year deals at General Motors Corp. of Canada <GM.N> and Ford Motor Co. of Canada <F.N> without resorting to strikes.

Hargrove said the company and the CAW were close to agreement on wage and other economic terms along the lines of those in the contracts with GM and Ford.

Those deals include a base-rate increase of 3 percent in each of the first two years of the contract and 2 percent in the final year, as well as 28 hours of extra paid vacation and C$1,000 signing bonuses.

But Hargrove said he took little comfort in almost wrapping up the financial package knowing that the issues of jobs and concessions remained, with very little time to negotiate.

"It's absolutely impossible to see how we can avoid a strike," Hargrove said.

Still unresolved, the union leader said, were demands for dozens of workplace concessions in scheduling, overtime and workplace rules, among others.

Hargrove also said he was incensed that the company's top negotiator had suggested that further investment could be in jeopardy if the union did not reach a settlement.

The union on Saturday suspended talks at all levels except the top level until it said Chrysler showed it was willing to budge on the Pillette Road issue.

SOME MOVEMENT ON JOBS

Hargrove said the company moved slightly on the jobs issue on Monday by promising to move about 700 of the 1,100 jobs from the Pillette plant to another Windsor plant if the plant was awarded a new product and the marketplace showed signs of improvement.

But union officials said this was not an acceptable solution given that more than 1,000 would still be out of work at Chrysler's Brampton car plant as a result of a layoff in June 2001.

Kerr said the company presented its latest offer "in good faith" and believed it was "a viable offer for the union to consider."

Job losses were seen as the main stumbling block in the recently concluded talks with Ford, but the two sides averted a strike when Ford promised either new work or lucrative retirement incentives for 1,400 workers scheduled to lose their jobs at a truck plant in Oakville, Ontario.

But with several hundred workers already on layoff at DaimlerChrysler, the union said the Ford solution was no help.

"It's a critical time in bargaining right now. But discussions continue and they will continue right up until deadline, and we are working towards reaching an agreement," Kerr said.

With some 12 weeks of scheduled downtime before the end of the year at the company's Canadian operations and its operations dedicated to mostly production, a strike by the union would have little immediate effect on its output, the union and company officials said.

The last Chrysler strike in Canada was in 1987 and lasted five days.