Standing alongside and sharing a microphone with Stellantis COO North America Mark Stewart on the Brampton Meeting Plant, Unifor President Lana Payne signalled that Canada’s auto union will take a special method to this summer season’s contract negotiations than its union counterpart in the USA.

Payne and Stewart collectively toured the Toronto-area plant, which produces the Chrysler 300, and the Dodge Charger and Challenger muscle vehicles on July 21, shaking palms with manufacturing employees and posing for photos.

The occasion got here three weeks earlier than Unifor formally launches contract negotiations with Stellantis, Ford Motor Co. and Normal Motors, and its chummy environment was in stark distinction with latest robust discuss from the United Auto Staff in the USA. UAW President Shawn Fain, tossed apart a decades-old handshake custom with Detroit Three CEOs final week, saying he’d shake palms with the corporate executives after they “come to the desk with a deal that displays the wants of the employees who make this trade run.” The stance is in step with the adversarial tone Fain set this spring when he described bargaining as a “conflict” in opposition to employers who’re unwilling to provide union members their “justifiable share.”

Payne advised reporters in Brampton that she respects the “nice job” the UAW is doing representing its members, however Unifor is a special union and intends to take a special method.

“Unifor has its personal job to do. We’ve got our personal members to symbolize. We’ve got a special state of affairs in Canada. … We’re going to chart our personal course on this bargaining, and we’ll chart our personal course because the union that we’re.”

Unifor represents about 8,200 hourly employees at Stellantis crops in Canada, 5,700 at Ford and 5,800 at GM.

In 2020, the union took the weird step of negotiating three- versus four-year contracts with the three automakers, which put collective agreements for auto employees in each Canada and the USA on observe to run out concurrently for the primary time since 1999.

On July 21, Payne stated the choice to reset the clock on bargaining again in 2020 was “not essentially” to have talks overlap with the UAW, however to get in forward of the electrical car transition.

“We truly wished to get to the bargaining desk earlier than the retooling of our crops occurs, and to provide us an opportunity to have one other kick on the can and guarantee that we have been getting all the things in place that we knew wanted to be in place.”

Unifor has pointed to larger wages, improved pensions, and assist through the retooling course of as a number of of its key priorities for this spherical of bargaining.

MORE INVESTMENT?

Payne stated the union additionally hopes to “wiggle” extra funding {dollars} out of Stellantis so as to add to the red-hot Canadian auto trade’s operating tally of latest spending.

Stewart provided few specifics, however stated Stellantis is raring to get to the bargaining desk, and “completely” prepared to interact on union priorities equivalent to larger wages for employees going through steep ranges of inflation.

“All of us should be profitable collectively, and which means all people persevering with to have nice wages, nice advantages and an amazing place to work.”

Stewart additionally pointed to the latest deadlock with the federal authorities over the corporate’s three way partnership battery cell plant in Windsor, Ont. as a constructing block for Stellantis’ relationship with Unifor.

He credited the union for lending help with the intergovernmental subsidy deal that allowed building on the plant to restart, and stated it’s simply the most recent instance of how the corporate and union are “discovering methods by means of hurdles collectively.”

“We’ll get it accomplished on the [bargaining] desk as properly.”