The dust had barely settled on the 2018-19 trade dispute between U.S. and Canada when the Trump administration announced in August that tariffs would be re-imposed on Canada in response to a supposed ‘surge’ in Canadian primary aluminum imports. Thankfully, the second round of tariffs was short-lived, lasting only a month before it was repealed.
The collective agreement ratified by Unifor members at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles this past weekend is a vital step in the rebuilding of the Canadian auto industry for the future.
The deal commits FCA to investing up to $1.5 billion in a new platform to build both Hybrid Vehicles and Battery Electric Vehicles in Windsor, with at least one new model by 2025.
It follows the pattern established by Ford members when they ratified a new collective agreement last month that also included a commitment to BEVs, and puts Canada well on the road to revitalizing the auto industry.
Scott Moe killed somebody. I stood up for the rights of working people. I spent more time in jail.
As has been widely reported this week, Saskatchewan’s premier was let go with a fine after a fatal crash in which a woman was killed in 1997.
Not only that, his name was not released at the time and the woman’s son, then a teenager, did not find out for 23 years who was responsible for his mother’s death.
Last month, it was reported that the Liberal caucus identified a guaranteed basic income as the top policy priority to debate and vote on at the party’s upcoming November national convention. This comes as little surprise. The COVID-19 pandemic and catastrophic job loss that ensued has intensified calls for the strengthening of Canada’s social safety net and income security programs that have proven to be inadequate during times of economic crisis.
By Jerry Dias, Unifor National President as published in The Star on September 13, 2020
The Trump administration announced in late July that 10 per cent tariffs on primary aluminum imports from Canada would be levied once again, heeding the demands of a small group of industry insiders calling themselves the American Primary Aluminum Association (APAA).
Getting together in big groups, as we would normally at marches and picnics in the usual celebration of workers’ collective power, is just not possible or even a good idea during the COVID-19 pandemic.
What makes this Labour Day so different is that workers in Saskatchewan are quickly headed toward a reckoning with the Sask Party government that is at odds, if not overtly hostile, to working people’s interests.
The COVID-19 crisis has exposed many hard-truths about the state of Canada’s economy in 2020.
The incompetence of our private sector in long-term care homes, for one. The lack of manufacturing capacity to produce critical goods when we need them, another. Generally unhelpful income security programs.
The list goes on.
But there’s a deep fault line in this crisis that runs straight through the world of work.
The world is emerging, slowly and carefully, from almost six months of pandemic-enforced isolation. We’re expanding our bubbles – a phrase few of us would have understood only months ago – and seeing relatives we’d dared not visit until just recently.
How open our communities depends on which province we live in – and beyond that which country or region. Travel between regions, and especially across international borders, remains limited.
Jerry Dias, Unifor National President & Renaud Gagné, Unifor Quebec Director
Against any semblance of good judgement, the United States is on the verge of yet another trade war with Canada by slapping a new round of tariffs on Canadian aluminum.
Sadly, this is the culmination of the current US administration’s stubborn refusal to understand just how important Canadian aluminum is to the US and its willingness to sacrifice jobs in both countries on behalf of special interests.
The American Primary Aluminum Association (APAA) recently called on the U.S. federal government to reimpose national security tariffs on certain aluminum products, arguing that a ‘surge’ in Canadian imports endangers the future of the U.S. industry.
