President of the Canadian Auto Workers, Jerry Dias, said the organization is “not a union that’s afraid of injunctions,” after the province of Ontario said its organized supply chain strikes were illegal and urged it not to undertake such proceedings.
Unifor carried out the so-called “bottleneck strikes” earlier this year after General Motors announced it would be closing the Oshawa Assembly Plant before the end of 2019. These strikes saw Unifor workers walk out of crucial supply plants, forcing the automaker to temporary halt production in Oshawa.
Around 100 workers walked off the job the Inteva Products plant just outside of Oshawa in mid-January, while workers at a nearby Lear Corp. staged a walk out shortly after in early February. Additionally, a temporary sit-in protest was held at the Oshawa Assembly plant in January, which also saw workers block the entrance to the factory for two days.
The Ontario labor board ruled the strikes illegal, but Dias says the union won’t be intimidated by regulators.
“Those that think they can hide behind the legal process really don’t know us very well, because that doesn’t mean anything to me,” Dias told Automotive News Canada. “We’re not going to stop fighting because some legal tribunal tells us we have to. And if you look at the history of the labor movement, it wasn’t exactly built on blind obedience.”
Dias said the strikes help to bring awareness to their cause and expedite the negotiating process.
Unifor has halted its campaign against GM after the automaker agreed to enter discussions with the union about the future of the plant. It has not held any strike actions, nor aired or published any anti-GM ads, since February.
Source: Automotive News
Comments
the blind leading the blind. Sign a contract and then violate it because you think you can. shut down their plants and move everything to u.s. territory.
They are fine anyways shut em down now.
What’s the CAW? That organization hasn’t existed since 2013. WE ARE UNIFOR!!!
I never want to see anybody lose their jobs but this idea that a worker is supposed to be able to work at a place for their entire life is a joke.
Companies should not be forced to keep the doors open just to make the people of that city, state, or country happy.
If you feel the need to move operations to another location then that should be that companies right! I find it funny that works feel like that deserve the right to run the company.
A worker once told me that we should have a say in how the company makes its decisions. I told him if that’s something you want to do then you need to own your own company.
The point is, these people would feel totally different if they owned or were in charge of running the company. And their workers were trying to tell them what they should be doing with the company.
They would tell their workers you are the employee and I am the boss. Dont like that then there’s the door.
So my question is should companies be forced to stay in a location for a lifetime?
Or should companies be able to move if they get a better offer?