Three weeks into the lockout the employer hired replacement workers and has been running full production. Legislation outlawing the use of replacement workers was wiped out by the provincial government of Michael Harris after he took office in 1995.

The locked out union members earned an average of Can$12 (US$8.67) an hour. The company is demanding pay cuts of up to $4 an hour from about half the workforce. The majority of the workers are immigrants from the Philippines, India, and China. Striker Kusum Gohil says the main issue in the strike now is that the employer "wants to break the union."

Busloads and carpools of CAW members from aerospace, auto assembly, auto parts plants in Toronto, St. Catharines, Windsor, Oshawa and London are here. "We're not moving until they get a contract," said Juan Cruz of CAW Local 1967 at de Havilland.

CAW members at GM in Quebec have offered to send buses if necessary. Small contingents of unionists from the United Steelworkers of America (USWA), Ontario Public Service Employees Union, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers are participating. USWA member Jack Sward, one of the strikers from S.A. Armstrong who have been on strike for 16 months and who are also fighting the use of replacement workers, explained they were participating because they had become "roaming picketers, ready to be part of any action."

After the company got a court injunction, CAW members agreed to end the occupation of the plant and company property if the police didn't try to remove the mass pickets around the plant.

Joanne Pritchard is a CAW member and Communist League candidate for mayor of Toronto.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home