When negotiators for Unifor sit down with officials from the Big Three later this summer, they'll have to perform a balancing act.
Chair of the Auto Committee, Local 200 president Chris Taylor admits members expect some improvements after more than a decade of wage freezes. At the same time, he's very cognizant the industry's stretch of record sales have to come to an end.
"We know the industry is very cyclical. We're in the seventh year of a boom," he says. "At some point sales are going to soften."
Taylor is one of 120 Unifor representatives who sat down in London earlier this week to discuss strategy before heading into contract talks in August.
"Each bargaining committees has come up with their own list of demands -- and when we went through the information, it is very clear that this year, in particular, we all face similar issues," he says.
The number one priority will be attracting new investment for Ford, Fiat-Chrysler, and General Motors. That's proven to be a challenge in the past as the province, and country competes with rich incentives in other jurisdictions, but now that Ontario has a so-called Auto Czar, Ray Tanguay, Taylor's confident achieving that will be easier.
"We feel, as an auto group, now that the government understands what these investments mean, and they understand what it's going to take to get these investments," says Taylor.
Taylor says the last thing the union wants is for automakers to find themselves in a similar situation to 2007-08 when they were close to bankruptcies and asked for a bailout from governments. Union members were forced to take deep concessions to help keep the companies afloat.
