The Globe and Mail Report on Business November 14, 1996
FORD DEAL LIMITS OUTSOURCING
-- CAW VOWS TO SPREAD FIGHT
Issue expected to surface at other tables
By Susan Bourette, Labour Reporter
TORONTO -- The last of the Big Three Canadian auto
makers has agreed to a deal that limits its ability to
contract out work, a principle labour experts predict
will become the rallying cry of the union movement
across the country.
Indeed, the ink had yet to dry on a tentative deal
reached yesterday between Ford Motor Co. of Canada Ltd.
and the Canadian Auto Workers when union president Buzz
Hargrove vowed to entrench the same limitations on
outsourcing at other bargaining tables.
"If you fight, you can win," an elated Mr. Hargrove
told reporters at a Toronto hotel where the negotiators
had been in marathon talks until yesterday afternoon
when the agreement was announced.
"You can't win if you don't challenge managements'
rights. . . . This will set the standard. It will be a
major demand in all of our bargaining."
The deal wraps up the triennial bargaining session
with the Big Three car companies that has spanned the
better part of the past three months.
Ford has agreed to the same restrictions on the
contracting out of work to auto parts companies as both
Chrysler Canada Ltd. and General Motors of Canada Ltd.
The deal between the union and GM was reached only
after a three-week strike against the auto giant.
The tentative three-year agreement--reached in
advance of a 7 p.m. deadline--averted a walkout by
nearly 12,300 workers at Canada's second-largest auto
maker.
However, late yesterday the two sides were still
putting final touches on sections of the deal at local
and subcommittee levels. Workers will vote on it this
weekend.
Don McKenzie, Ford's top negotiator, said the
company was pleased to have reached an agreement that
would allow it to work within its business plan in a
competitive industry.
The agreement provides wage increases of 2 per cent
in each year of the contract. With cost-of-living
improvements that adds up to 10 per cent over the life
of the contract.
The auto makers have agreed to replace any jobs
that are outsourced with similar work. They have also
agreed not to sell or close any plants over the next
three years.
With the pattern agreement now in place at all
three companies, the CAW appears to have achieved its
goals in this round of talks. In fact, some industry
experts argue that key principles won by the union this
year are perhaps the most significant gains made in
more than half a century.
Alfie Morgan, a business professor at the
University of Windsor, says he expects limits to a
corporation's ability to outsource work will now be a
key demand by other unions across the country as
companies continue to shed workers.
"Other unions will have a very difficult time
resisting this objective," Mr. Morgan said. "I
anticipate this will be the major trend in the labour
movement in Canada and eventually across the world."
Mr. Morgan argues that challenging a company's
right to manage its business--or place limits on
contracting out--is the most significant gain made by
unions since the so-called Rand formula of 1946 that
was a result of a Ford strike.
The principle introduced by arbitrator Ivan Rand, a
judge of the Supreme Court of Canada, helped unions
flourish by stipulating that all workers had to pay
union dues whether they chose to become union members
or not, because they received the benefits of working
in a unionized workplace.
"Buzz Hargrove has been tremendously successful in
questioning the prerogative of the corporation to
manipulate people only as a business variable," Mr.
Morgan said.
Charlotte Yates, an associate professor of labour
studies and political science at McMaster University,
said the CAW has often set standards of labour practice
that eventually filter throughout the trade union
movement.
Ms. Yates said if the CAW tries to enshrine such
principles in other deals it negotiates, other unions
will try to foist limits on outsourcing on their
employers--particularly because of the prominence of
the issue on most companies' agendas.
The CAW-Ford agreement also includes a ban on the
sale or closing of all Ford plants in Canada, except
Ford's Windsor, Ont., engine plant, which was announced
some time ago and is being closed this month.
The new agreement includes a buyout for some of the
600 workers at the engine plant. However, Mr. McKenzie
told reporters that most employees are expected to be
recalled in the next year to perform other work within
its Windsor operations.
Mr. Hargrove said he is optimistic the company will
add a second shift at one of its truck plant. However,
the company said it had no immediate plans to do so.
The CAW represents about 52,000 auto workers in
Canada, and about another 160,000 in the aerospace,
transportation and fisheries industries, among others.
The union currently is negotiating a contract with
16,500 workers at Canadian Airlines International
Ltd., and has several contracts up for negotiation in
the coming months.
