Some CAMI plant workers in Ingersoll are struggling to make ends meet. Here’s why:

A program to help support CAMI workers during slow-downs is stalling, leaving some struggling to make ends meet and others stepping up to help.

The CAMI plant re-opening in early December was heralded as an unprecedented retrofit, moving the Ingersoll facility from producing internal combustion engines to the all-electric Brightdrop delivery vehicles in just one year.

However, the return to work after a year-long layoff has created new challenges.

"I noticed a co-worker not having lunches at work,” says nine-year CAMI worker Jessica Swarts. She says the individual hadn’t had lunch in days. "They told me that, unfortunately, they'd been waiting for back-pay for so long that they had no money for groceries. They had utilized food banks to feed their children but there was no money left for groceries."

Unifor Local 88 plant chair Mike Van Boekel says the funding issues are the result of rolling layoffs created by parts-shortages, and an overburdened employment insurance program.

"We have members up to six weeks now with no pay. When the money comes it will be good but to try to raise a family and buy groceries and pay a mortgage payment when there's no income for six weeks can be darn tough,"says Van Boekel.

CAMI Assembly in Ingersoll, Ont. on Tuesday, April 4, 2023. (Gerry Dewan/CTV News London)

Since the return to work the three shifts have been alternating, each shift working two weeks and then spending four weeks on lay-off. Currently the entire unionized workforce is on layoff until the end of the month. Workers says their Employment Insurance (EI) eligibility exhausted during the year-long layoff, so General Motors offered top-up pay but they require an EI denial letter each time workers request that funding, which is now every two weeks.

"Right now there's difficulty with EI,” says Van Boekel. “I believe they're swamped as well. It's just trying to get money to our members hands in a timely fashion."

Van Boekel says he's reaching out to MP's and other government officials to see if some kind of special accommodation can be made to avoid these long periods where workers aren't getting paid.

Swarts says some of her co-workers have gone nine weeks without a cheque. The exchange with her co-worker prompted her and others to start a program called Camily Funds for Food. They collect funds and pay for groceries that go to co-workers who are struggling. She says the response has been encouraging, "I posted to an unofficial union site the workers use on Facebook Tuesday and, I believe, by Thursday we had 500 donations from just co-workers alone."

In the meantime the CAMI plant conversion continues, with work on an expansion progressing quickly. Van Boekel says that expansion is larger and is moving faster than first projected. He’s hopeful there will be three full shifts running six days a week by the end of the summer.