Unifor members at General Motors’ CAMI Assembly Plant in Ingersoll, Ont. voted overwhelmingly Aug. 25 to approve a strike mandate, as bargaining teams from the union and automaker prepare for contract talks in September.
The routine strike-authorization vote positions roughly 1,200 members of Unifor Local 88 to strike, if the two sides fail to reach an agreement when the current three-year contract expires on Sept. 17 at 11:59 p.m. ET.
Members that build BrightDrop delivery vans, as well as Ultium battery modules at the newly expanded plant, voted 97 per cent in favour of the strike mandate.
The contract talks between Local 88 and GM are set to begin in earnest Sept. 9.
They follow a wider round of bargaining last fall, when Unifor negotiated master agreements with GM, Ford and Stellantis. Workers at CAMI, a plant that was originally a joint venture between GM and Suzuki Motor Corp. when it opened in 1989, have traditionally bargained on a different cycle than other Unifor members at GM Canada.
Unifor will focus on locking in higher wages for workers in this round of talks, as well as getting more of its members back to work full time, Mike Van Boekel, Unifor chairperson for the plant, told Automotive News Canada this spring.
CAMI has faced significant downtime during the outgoing three-year contract period, including a roughly eight-month retooling project in 2022 and a production halt brought on by battery shortages lasting about six months through late 2023 and early 2024. The plant resumed building BrightDrop vans in April, but only on a single shift.
GM Canada did not weigh in on how it will handle the union’s priorities ahead of bargaining, but in an email, a company spokesperson said the automaker “is committed to working with our Unifor partners to create a new labour contract for CAMI employees.”
