The big-business press described the new auto contract as "rich," noting the 3 percent wage increase in each year of the three-year contract, the Can$1,000 signing bonus, and a 25 percent increase in pensions over six years.

CAW officials described it as a "historic" deal. But shortly after a tentative agreement was announced at GM, several hundred workers from its Oshawa, Ontario, plant walked off the job, shutting down the assembly line for seven hours. The action reflected the seething anger against worsening conditions in the plant and the belief expressed repeatedly to the media and at the ratification meeting that "nothing is going to change" with the new contract.

CAW negotiators accepted tentative deals before local issues were settled. Since there are no separate rounds of local negotiations, workers no longer have the legal right to strike against future company demands and proposals.

The Oshawa location voted 70 percent in favor of the contract, bringing the GM-wide vote down to 80 percent as compared to 94 percent at Ford and DaimlerChrysler.

Despite opposition from CAW national leaders present, a group of CAW members from the Lear Seating plant in Oakville, Ontario, set up an informational picket outside the September 21 ratification meeting for workers from Ford assembly plant there.

Ford is turning to the nonunion parts giant Magna International Inc. as a supplier of mini-van seats, canceling as of 2002 its contract with Lear, which employs 500 CAW members at Oakville. CAW president Basil Hargrove had stated publicly that the Lear issue was a key one at the bargaining table. But three hours before the strike deadline, union negotiators dropped the demand.

"They want us to take the money and run," said Ford assembly-line worker Mario DeSantis after the Ford ratification meeting. "We need to support the brothers and sisters at Lear Seating."

In the DaimlerChrysler talks the CAW negotiators threatened to strike over their demand that the auto company force Magna to recognize the union at its plant near Windsor that produces seats for DaimlerChrysler mini-vans. The union is contesting the results of a certification vote at the plant.

As with Ford and Lear, CAW officials dropped this demand in the final hours of the negotiations. The contract does nothing to counter the drive by the Big Three to increase their rate of profit by producing more cars faster and with fewer workers. More job cuts, speedup and injuries are to be expected.

To wrest concessions from the workers in the Big Three assembly and parts plants, the bosses are turning these shops into ever smaller islands in a growing sea of lower-paid nonunion and unionized parts plants. They rely increasingly on outside suppliers for parts and looking to "modularization," with whole sections of a vehicle would be produced by companies like Magna for final assembly by the auto makers. They are "spinning off" their parts divisions as separate entities.

Only half of the parts sector is unionized. By the end of the current CAW agreements in 2002, 80 percent of the jobs in the auto industry will be in the parts sector, according to the October 23 Toronto Globe and Mail. As well, "the number of CAW members at the Big Three will decline," despite recent investment announcements.

The absence of a fight against the contracting-out to nonunion suppliers deepened the divisions in the union, as reflected by a placard at the Lear informational picket line: "You get a signing bonus. We get unemployment insurance."

The deepest division in the labor movement in Canada is between English Canada and Québec. General Motors has plans to close the Ste-Thérèse plant, which currently employs 1,200 workers. It is the only assembly plant in the province of Québec. GM agreed only to wait until the end of the contract. CAW officials did not make this a strike issue, but rather offered a major concession. In the October 17 Montreal La Presse, Hargrove praised a Québec government offer to help finance the startup of modular production at Ste-Thérèse and questioned GM's lack of interest given "the union's openness to modular operation."

In the GM agreement, there is no proposal for the rehiring of the 1,500 workers currently on layoff from GM plants in St. Catherines and Oshawa in Ontario, as well as in Ste-Thérèse. In fact, the contract summary states that there may be a further "excess of employees."

Despite the hundreds of workers on layoff, CAW officials accepted the hiring of part-time workers. This concession creates a layer of lower paid, more vulnerable workers used to drive down the conditions of all workers.

At Ford the question of part-time workers is one of the unresolved "local" issues to be brought before an upcoming union meeting.

The contract summaries point to "improved language" to deal with on-the-job issues. But what counts in the fight against speedup, heavy work loads, job cuts or harassment is union power. Union strength can only be built through the kind of militant rank-and-file action taken by the GM Oshawa workers whose walkout shut down production.

Al Cappe is a member of the CAW at Ford's Ontario Truck Plant in Oakville, Ontario.  
 
 
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