As more Ontario manufacturing jobs head south to ‘right to work’ U.S. states, the Canadian Auto Workers Union is ramping up membership efforts in places like Woodstock.
‘Right to work’ states like Indiana and Michigan don’t require union memberships for all workers in union shops, which helps lower labour costs.
Now the CAW is targeting the 7,000 employees at the Toyota plants in Woodstock and Cambridge, saying they should sign up for their own sake, and for the sake of the industry.
CAW organizer Bob Van Cleef says “Now the companies like Toyota and Honda, they’re leading the downward spiral, they’re trying to force the concessions on us, we have to negotiate to respond.”
Toyota has fended of unionization drives since the 1980s, in part because full-time employees earn about the same as unionized employees at the big three manufacturers - Ford, General Motors and Chrysler - about $34/hour.
But at the union drive on Thursday, cars were stopping and the CAW says union memberships cards were already filled out.
Some say uncertainty in the auto industry along with layoffs and closures at GM and Ford are part of the reason why there’s more openness to the union.
In addition, Toyota has also introduced two-tier pay, with new employees earning about $10/hour less than their co-workers.
Van Cleef says “What we’ve been able do is mitigate some of the impact on the workers, the Detroit three is in a spiral, we understand that. We’ve sat down time and time again and found them real solutions and preserved more jobs, and we actually had a say in how it’s going to impact the workers, but at Toyota they don’t have that say whatsoever.”
The CAW has seen its automotive membership decline amid the loss of tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs in recent years.
The hope is that success with Toyota could mean non-unionized staff at Honda would come on board as well.
