April 30, 2024

 

Workers at St. Andrew’s Terrace Long Term Care Community in Cambridge, Ont., have chosen Unifor as their voice in the workplace.

This new addition brings 170 workers from various classifications, including personal support workers (PSW), cooks, environmental workers, dietary aides, maintenance staff, and life enrichment personnel.

The campaign for unionization began in Feb. 2024, driven by the workers’ desires for improved job security, better working conditions, fair wages, and enhanced benefits and pension plans.

Their collective voice was clearly heard on April 11, 2024, when they voted overwhelmingly in favour of joining Unifor.

As Unifor prepares to negotiate a collective agreement, the union remains committed to ensuring that the concerns of our newest members are addressed, and that the workplace becomes a model of fairness and equity.

To learn more on how you can organize your workplace, visit join.unifor.org.

April 28, 2024

 

Unifor members and staff joined the annual Steps for Life event in Toronto’s Coronation Park on Sunday, April 28, the Day of Mourning. The walk is hosted by Threads of Life, an organization that supports those impacted by workplace illness, injury and death and fights to end workplace tragedies.

The event hit record registration this year with more than 400 participants, raising a combined $65,000 to support the work of the organization. The Unifor team raised $4,800, including contributions from the national union and Unifor’s national staff union, and supporters, family and friends’ contributions.

Unifor’s Director of Health, Safety and Environment Joanne Hay delivered remarks to a large crowd of participants and supporters, recognizing organized labour’s role in effecting changes that protect worker’s health and safety.

“We must continue to push and demand that employers create and support robust safety programs and cultures within their workplaces,” said Hay. “Health and Safety is not optional. Workers deserve and have a right to be safe at work.”

Unifor Director of Health, Safety and Environment Joanne Hay speaks to event participants on the Day of Mourning

She emphasized the increased impact authorities and regulators could have in preventing workplace death and serious injuries if they developed a stronger approach to enforcement.

“We need new and improved health and safety regulations, and even more urgently, police and regulators must enforce existing laws, including the Westray Law,” she said. “We ask police leadership to work in a coordinated manner with Crown Prosecutors and Safety Regulators to create a harmonized approach that will see employers charged when they choose profit over workers’ health and safety.”

Unions recently marked the 20th anniversary of the Westray Law, which amended the Criminal Code of Canada to establish the criminal liability of corporations and executives for careless or reckless breach of legal duties that result in injury or death.

Despite the law being on the books for two decades, there have been fewer than 20 charges and even fewer convictions of corporations and their executives.

Approximately 1,000 workers in Canada die each year in workplace incidents.

To date in 2024, Unifor mourns the loss of MWF Local 1 member Jamie Knight at the Halifax Shipyard who died on February 19; a transport driver member of Local 4209 at Kindersley Transport on March 6 who name is being withheld at the request of the family; uncle and nephew fish harvester members of FFAW-Unifor Trevor Childs and Nicholas Skinner who died on April 21; and Jim Anderson, a driver at WM in Calgary who died on April 24, 2024.

Each step taken at the Steps for Life walk is to honour those lost and to re-commit to taking action to prevent worker injuries and deaths.

See photos of the event on Facebook.

Read and share National President Lana Payne’s statement for the Day of Mourning and watch her video message to Unifor members.

April 25, 2024

 

TORONTO – Critical multi-government investment for new Honda Canada electric vehicle, battery and battery material facilities will further bolster Canada’s auto sector and help secure and grow jobs across the value chain.

The projected $15 billion investment to assemble new electric vehicles, build a new battery cell plant in Alliston, Ontario alongside additional joint venture battery component and material facilities in Ontario is expected to create an estimated 1,000 new, direct jobs.

“This EV transition is an unstoppable reality and staking Canada’s claim and the jobs that go with it is only possible with the government investment and industrial strategy that Unifor has long called for,” said Unifor National President Lana Payne. “It is paramount however that government investment comes with guarantees of good paying jobs and transition supports for workers, and that workers’ rights to organize are fully respected.”

Today’s announcement by Honda marks the single, largest investment in Canada’s auto sector, following a string of other record-breaking announcements since 2020, when Unifor negotiated the first major EV investment in history at Ford Motor Company.

Honda EV production is tentatively scheduled for 2028, according to reports, with no details released today on retooling plans for Honda’s existing vehicle assembly plants, anticipated production downtime, future product programs or transition supports for affected workers – all critical issues that pose serious challenges for workers, and that Unifor has had to address in recent years for thousands of autoworkers in Ontario.

“As exciting as it is to build the auto sector of the future, we can’t lose sight of the instability this transition brings to autoworkers. We know this because we are living through it right now in Ontario. Our members are living through it,” Payne said. “Honda workers and those in the supply base will have many questions that deserve answers. Questions about job security, income security during the transition, and what their job of the future will be. They will need and deserve assurances.”

The Honda investment was made possible through strategic federal and provincial government supports estimated at $5 billion. It expands Canada’s forecasted electric vehicle production outlook as well as processing capacity for battery materials and represents Canada’s fourth announced battery cell “gigafactory” following prior announcements on the construction of the Stellantis and LG Energy Solutions NextStar battery plant in Windsor, Ontario, the Volkswagen battery plant in St. Thomas, Ontario, and the Northvolt battery plant east of Montreal, Quebec.

“Canada is vying with the world to obtain these long-term facilities and the thousands of jobs that will support the communities where they are built,” said Unifor Quebec Director Daniel Cloutier. “What governments are doing to secure the future of this industry is working, and a welcome change from past governments who oversaw the auto industry’s decline.”

Despite recently announced EV production slowdowns and retooling delays that are affecting auto assembly and parts workers in Canada and elsewhere, there is an undeniable growth path for EVs and EV investment that will transform the industry. In 2022, Unifor outlined a series of 29 specific recommendations to grow the industry and navigate this transition in support of workers.

Unifor is calling on governments to ensure that all automakers in receipt of public funds commit to deliver good, high-quality jobs for Canadian workers. This includes a commitment by automakers to remain neutral and impartial to employee efforts to form a union in their workplace. Unifor is also calling on the federal government to ensure the speedy passage of the promised Clean Technology Manufacturing Investment Tax Credit announced in the Budget 2023 Budget as well as its supplementary EV Supply Chain Investment Tax Credit announced in Budget 2024.

Unifor set of 29 recommendations for governments and automakers are contained in the union’s auto policy document, Navigating the Road Ahead: Rebuilding Canada’s powerhouse auto sector.