Vol. 71/No. 43      November 19, 2007

The agreement, announced October 15 by CAW president Basil “Buzz” Hargrove and company chairman Frank Stronach, stipulates that binding arbitration will be used to resolve disputes. Union stewards will be replaced with “employee advocates” to work with joint union-management “fairness committees” in each plant.

In plants where a majority votes for the union, workers will be covered by a new CAW-Magna national collective agreement. Annual wage increases will be based on a plant’s performance and the manufacturing wage index.

“The CAW accepts Magna’s culture of ‘fair enterprise,’” said Hargrove and Stronach in a joint statement, published in the October 17 Globe and Mail.

The statement struck a strong Canadian nationalist tone. “We’re both passionate about Canada,” they declared.

Canada-based Magna is one of the biggest auto parts companies in the world, with annual revenue of $24 billion. It has 61 plants in Canada with about 18,000 workers. The CAW currently represents workers at three of the plants.

Many unionists and others have sharply criticized the agreement. CAW Local 88, which organizes 2,000 workers at the CAMI Automotive plant in Ingersoll, Ontario, voted against the agreement.

In an open letter to Hargrove, Chris Buckley, president of CAW Local 222 in Oshawa, which has 23,000 members, stated, “I am writing to you, in as forceful terms as I am able, to let you know that I cannot in good conscience support the National Union’s agreement with Magna International… . Buzz, a ‘no-strike’ clause goes against the fundamental rights of unionized workers.”

“Without the right to strike you’ve got nothing. Hargrove is turning the union into a business with no product to sell,” Brad Cannons, a line worker in the car chassis plant, told the Militant November 1 as he was going into a Local 222 meeting in Oshawa. The meeting voted unanimously to reject the deal with Magna.

The deal with Magna will be debated by the more than 800 delegates to a CAW national council meeting in December.  
 
CAW official backs Liberal Party
The agreement “denies workers exactly those powers that underpin the right of collective bargaining, namely the right to strike and elect their own shop stewards,” said former New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Ed Broadbent in a statement published in the October 30 Globe and Mail.

Former Hargrove assistant Sam Ginden, now a York University professor, criticized the no-strike deal in an opinion column in the October 26 Toronto Star. “Perhaps this is not surprising from a CAW president who personally campaigned for the Ontario Liberal government,” he wrote. The Liberal Party was recently returned to office in Ontario’s provincial elections.

The Liberals and Progressive Conservatives are Canada’s two main capitalist parties. The New Democratic Party, a social democratic party with ties to the unions, has long been supported by most of the Canadian labor movement.

The CAW president also supported the Liberal Party in the 2006 federal elections, publicly presenting then-prime minister Paul Martin with a union jacket.

During the Ontario election campaign, Hargrove said, “I see absolutely no reason to vote NDP,” and praised the record of Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty.

The official CAW position was that workers should vote for the candidate in the best position to defeat the Conservative Party. The Canadian Union of Public Employees campaigned for the NDP.

John Steele contributed to this article.  
 
 
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