Vol. 72/No. 2      January 14, 2008

The “Framework of Fairness” agreement gives the company’s approval for the CAW to unionize Magna’s 18,000 workers, while establishing a union contract that bars Magna workers who join the CAW from striking and that imposes binding arbitration on unsettled union contracts. It substitutes traditional union stewards, elected by workers on the shop floor, with “employee advocates” selected by Magna and the top CAW leadership to work through joint union-management “fairness committees” in each plant.

The CAW-Magna deal, which became public last October, has generated widespread controversy in the labor movement. Less than two weeks before the CAW council meeting, delegates to the biennial convention of the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL), which the CAW left several years ago, unanimously voted to condemn the deal to “send a clear message to all employers that labour will not give up the right strike or the right to democratic representation in our unions and our workplaces.”

CAW Local 112 at Bombardier Aircraft has been one of the few locals to oppose the deal. “Without the leverage the right to strike provides, what other tools do workers have to back up their demands at the bargaining table to improve wages and working conditions?” asked Local 112 unionists in a leaflet distributed to the National Council delegates. “The right to strike is central to the collective bargaining process and must never be given up,” the leaflet said.

“CAW members at Magna should have the same rights as other CAW members,” said CAW Local 222 president Chris Buckley in opposition to the deal. “Has the CAW given up on defending our current members for a sweet-heart Magna deal?” He warned, “Other employers are going to want the same thing.” Local 222 represents workers at the giant General Motors plant in Oshawa.

The majority of council delegates and CAW officials who spoke in the day-long debate defended the deal, calling it “innovative,” a “foot in the door strategy,” and a step forward not only for the CAW but the for labor movement as a whole.

“At a tough time for auto assembly, auto parts, and manufacturing workers in Canada, this decision creates a new window of opportunity for workers to be able to join our union,” CAW president Basil “Buzz” Hargrove told the delegates. Hargrove, echoed by other CAW officials, argued that since a 30-year effort to organize Magna had failed—only 1,000 workers, in four of more than 45 plants, are CAW members—this was the only way to get the union in, and that “high union density” in the auto sector “is critical to the future bargaining success of all workers.”

Responding to criticism from the OFL and other unions, Hargrove pointed out that many other unions had signed agreements at one time or another conceding the right to strike and accepting voluntary arbitration. “The danger to the labor movement does not come from this agreement,” Hargrove said. “The threat comes from the Delphi Disease,” referring to the contracts recently approved by the memberships of the United Auto Workers with GM, Ford, and Chrysler in the United States. The contracts make steep union concessions, including a two-tier wage system for new hires.

Hargrove also noted that at recent conventions of other provincial labor federations across the country, no criticism of the CAW-Magna deal was heard. “The OFL is not attacking us because of the Magna deal,” he said. “It’s about the NDP [New Democratic Party], that’s the real difference.”

The NDP is a social democratic party linked to the unions and supported by the OFL. In the last federal and Ontario provincial elections, the CAW promoted “strategic voting” against the Conservative Party by urging workers to vote for many Liberal Party candidates. The OFL and most of its affiliates maintained their decades-long policy of backing the NDP.

In November more than 250 workers at Windsor Modules, a division of Magna, voted to join the CAW under the terms of the Framework of Fairness agreement. “I’m looking forward to our future in the CAW,” Moe Soydanbay, the “employee advocate” at Windsor Modules, said to loud applause.  
 
 
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