CAMI Strike 2017: After Another Setback Can Unifor Move On?
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- Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1500 .... October 24, 2017
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CAMI Strike 2017:
After Another Setback Can Unifor Move On?
Herman Rosenfeld
A four-week strike at the CAMI assembly plant, that began on September 17th, ended on October 16th. Members of Unifor Local 88 voted 86% in favour of the tentative agreement bargained with the stand-alone GM plant. Located in Ingersoll, Ontario, close to London, it is a former joint venture between Suzuki and GM. CAMI assembles hot-selling Chevrolet Equinox crossover vehicles.
CAMI has an interesting history, and it is reflected in the membership of Local 88. It was originally opened in 1988 as a ‘model’ team concept plant. It integrated key elements of Lean Production -- modeled on the Toyota Production System -- with promises of ‘worker empowerment’ and job satisfaction. Suzuki’s production... system attempted to combine notorious continuous work intensity practices (euphemistically referred to by the Japanese term for ‘continual improvement’ as kaizen), working in teams, and efforts to align the union with company goals. But Local 88, in partnership with the national union (Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) at the time), built a strong, independent and militant local union, relying on the critical thinking and ingenuity of the membership.
CAW sponsored a two-year participatory research project tracking the CAMI experiment and found -- to no one’s surprise -- that although CAMI was originally opened as a model team concept plant, it ended up being Just Another Car Factory (the title of a book on Local 88 and CAMI, subtitled Lean Production and Its Discontents).
A strike in 1992 continued the ongoing efforts of the local to limit and transform the company’s system of work intensity. In recent years, Suzuki pulled out and CAMI became part of the GM chain. But Local 88 was never fully integrated into the GM Master Agreement, bargaining separately, but tracking the pattern for the larger corporation.
