A portion of the massive NextStar battery plant construction site in Windsor is shown on Dec. 12, 2023.Photo by Dan Janisse /Windsor Star
In an otherwise “extraordinary year” for the domestic automotive sector, the leader of Canada’s largest private sector union recalls the darkest day when she felt promised huge new investments — and thousands of jobs — were at dire risk.
Unifor national president Lana Payne said her most difficult day in 2023 was getting the phone call last spring from Stellantis North America COO Mark Stewart informing her the NextStar battery plant was in jeopardy over a dispute with the federal government on matching the much more generous U.S.’s Inflation Reduction Act subsidies.
“I knew the impact that would have on Windsor Assembly and the Brampton plant,” Payne told the Star. “That battery factory was the lynchpin for supplying those plants in their EV (Electric Vehicle) transitions. It put a huge number of jobs at risk.
“It was as serious as it could get. If we’d lost our momentum then, it was going to be hard to get back on an upward trajectory for the auto industry in Canada.”
After seven weeks of intense negotiations involving Unifor, Stellantis, LG Energy Solution and the federal and provincial governments, a deal was reached that could provide up to $15 billion in tax credits if production and job targets are met.
That successful effort secured a number of other exciting investments giving Canada a foothold in the transformation underway of the transportation sector.
We’ve turned auto jobs into plum jobs again
While the auto industry continued to take big steps in 2023 towards its electric future, it was the historic gains made by the auto unions in new contracts with the Detroit Three that topped auto sector observers’ lists of most significant developments of the year.
For the first time in more than two decades, aside from the financial crisis of 2008-09 that dealt with potential bankruptcies, Unifor and the United Auto Workers bargained new contracts simultaneously and those negotiations produced record deals for both unions.
“From a North American point of view, the labour negotiations were the big highlight,” said Sam Fiorani, AutoForecast Solutions vice-president of global vehicle forecasting.
“It will change not only the auto industry’s pay rates, but other industries as well. Between Unifor and the UAW, it opens the door for better pay for working-class people.”
Unifor national president Lana Payne tells a news conference in Toronto, Aug. 29, 2023, that the union’s tentative deal with Ford Motor Co. would solidify the foundations on which it will continue to bargain gains for generations of autoworkers in Canada.Photo by Tijana Martin /THE CANADIAN PRESS
After 15 years of fighting concessions, the unions caught the wave of prosperity and record profits that have left the industry flush with cash. They achieved immediate double-digit wage increases and compounded pay gains ranging from 20 to 33 per cent.
Unifor’s labour deals also confirmed the new electrified products for Windsor Assembly (Dodge Challenger and Charger), Brampton (an electrified Jeep) and ensured new investment that extends the life of the Etobicoke Casting Plant.
Salary grids were cut in half, a new defined pension plan was introduced in Canada and a full cost-of-living allowance restored meaning new hires will see their hourly rates nearly double by the end of Unifor’s three-year deal.
The impact within the industry among non-unionized OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), such as Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Volkswagen and Hyundai, has been immediate. All those firms announced they’d be improving their wage offerings similar to the Detroit Three settlements.
“It was an extraordinary year with a lot more investment,” said Unifor’s Payne.
“We got the next-generation Silverado pickup truck in Oshawa, secured the battery plant in Windsor and the labour agreements were so significant.
“Getting the battery plant secured was a turning point for us in the Canadian auto sector. It’s the return of greenfield construction along with battery plants in St. Thomas and Quebec.”
Helping secure those investments allowed Payne to leap from the frying pan into the fire of a complicated and uncertain set of negotiations in an industry transforming for an electrified future.
Payne said the success of those labour agreements represents “a turning point for the industry in North America.
“In Canada, it shows we can have strong investment and good paying jobs. One is not at the expense of the other.
“We’ve turned auto jobs into plum jobs again. That was our goal.”
In addition to economic gains, Payne said the contracts represent a template for other industries in how to support workers during the technological transformations of their workplaces.
A portion of the multibillion-dollar NextStar battery plant construction site in Windsor is shown on Dec. 12, 2023.Photo by Dan Janisse /Windsor Star
Trillium Network of Advance Manufacturing executive director Brendan Sweeney said the drama around the battery plant is a reminder of the fluid nature of an industry that needs constant attention.
“The work is never done,” said Sweeney, who felt the announcement of the massive Volkswagen battery plant in St. Thomas was the key industrial addition in 2023 for the Canadian auto industry.
“This industry is a big creature and we have a lot of work ahead to maintain the momentum.”
The willingness by the federal and Ontario governments to match American subsidies, said Sweeney, “shows how important and the value these investments hold. These are 50-plus-year investments.”
Sweeney said an interesting confirmation that emerged this year is just how important internal combustion engine products remain to the auto industry. He noted Ford Motor Company was the first of the Detroit Three to reach a contract agreement on either side of the border this past fall once Unifor threatened to shut down the company’s two engine plants in Windsor.
Windsor supplies 6.8-litre and 7.3-litre engines for Ford’s F-series truck lineup — the company’s most profitable product — commercial vans and the 5.0 litre engine for the Mustang.
“Those in the industry understand the need to maintain those internal combustion products to power the F-250s and 350s for more than another decade,” Sweeney said.
“They make lots of money from those trucks. The likelihood of them giving up on internal combustion F-series trucks without something similar to replace it is very low.”
In a broadcast appearance at Goldman Sachs’ 15th annual Industrials and Autos Week in early December, Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said the industry needs to be able to make a profit on a US$25,000 electric vehicle the middle class can afford. He added the industry is entering its ‘Darwinian’ era where the strongest survive and the legacy automakers are best-positioned to do that.
“What we believe is that the guys who are using what we would call as a shortcut, the legacy business, to fund the future are going to be the guys who are going to be in the best position to accommodate those different scenarios, because, basically, we are doing very good money with the legacy business,” Tavares said.
“Already, (there is) significant money with the EV business, but there is still a lot of uncertainty out there.”
Advertisement 7
Article content
Employees at the Windsor Assembly Plant celebrate the Dec. 2, 2016, launch of the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid, the industry’s first-ever electrified minivan.Photo by Photo courtesy of Stellantis /Postmedia Network
Tavares revealed Stellantis is profitable in the EV market in both North America and Europe and currently enjoys the industry’s best profit margins at 14.4 per cent through the first six months of 2023.
He added the uncertainty on the pace of the EV transition going forward will be impacted by the outcome of next year’s U.S. presidential and European Union elections. Those outcomes could result in changes to fuel/emissions standards and the deadlines for the banning of the sale of new internal combustion engine vehicles.
A slower transition will help companies on the financial bubble, but Tavares expects to see some automakers get out of electric vehicle production during the last half of the decade.
“If it’s purely linear, with the amount of capital that you need to fund for products, which structurally are less profitable than the ICEs, they are going to put themselves in trouble quite quickly,” Tavares said. “In that case, a shorter period of time for them.”
Fiorani said governments have also miscalculated with increasingly aggressive timelines for banning the sale of new internal combustion vehicles. He cites the historical precedents on fuel and emission standards in California that were similarly aggressive only for the dates to be moved backwards repeatedly.
Currently, Canada and nine U.S. states plan to ban the sale of new non-commercial light vehicles with internal combustion engines in 2035.
“The problematic step in picking specific dates was never going to work,” Fiorani said.
“All the pushes are good for clean air and it pushed the industry forward. You can only go so fast based on how fast industry and buyers will go.
“At some time, politicians will have to push back the deadlines. In reality, they’re not going to happen.”
Jim Stanford, director of the Centre for Future Work and former Unifor economist, said another issue that bears watching closely is the rise of the Chinese auto industry and its attempt to gain access to North America by putting roots down on Mexico.
“The Chinese are going to take up more and more space in the market,” Stanford said. “Geopolitics is going to come into play.
“It’s likely American politicians will believe in trade, but not hands-off trade. Politicians don’t have this on their radar right now and they should.”
NEW YORK (AP) — Shares of Tesla soared Wednesday as investors bet that the electric vehicle maker and its CEO Elon Musk will benefit from Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
Tesla stands to make significant gains under a Trump administration with the threat of diminished subsidies for alternative energy and electric vehicles doing the most harm to smaller competitors. Trump’s plans for extensive tariffs on Chinese imports make it less likely that Chinese EVs will be sold in bulk in the U.S. anytime soon.
“Tesla has the scale and scope that is unmatched,” said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, in a note to investors. “This dynamic could give Musk and Tesla a clear competitive advantage in a non-EV subsidy environment, coupled by likely higher China tariffs that would continue to push away cheaper Chinese EV players.”
Tesla shares jumped 14.8% Wednesday while shares of rival electric vehicle makers tumbled. Nio, based in Shanghai, fell 5.3%. Shares of electric truck maker Rivian dropped 8.3% and Lucid Group fell 5.3%.
Tesla dominates sales of electric vehicles in the U.S, with 48.9% in market share through the middle of 2024, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Subsidies for clean energy are part of the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022. It included tax credits for manufacturing, along with tax credits for consumers of electric vehicles.
Musk was one of Trump’s biggest donors, spending at least $119 million mobilizing Trump’s supporters to back the Republican nominee. He also pledged to give away $1 million a day to voters signing a petition for his political action committee.
In some ways, it has been a rocky year for Tesla, with sales and profit declining through the first half of the year. Profit did rise 17.3% in the third quarter.
The U.S. opened an investigation into the company’s “Full Self-Driving” system after reports of crashes in low-visibility conditions, including one that killed a pedestrian. The investigation covers roughly 2.4 million Teslas from the 2016 through 2024 model years.
And investors sent company shares tumbling last month after Tesla unveiled its long-awaited robotaxi at a Hollywood studio Thursday night, seeing not much progress at Tesla on autonomous vehicles while other companies have been making notable progress.
TORONTO – Canada’s main stock index was up more than 100 points in late-morning trading, helped by strength in base metal and utility stocks, while U.S. stock markets were mixed.
The S&P/TSX composite index was up 103.40 points at 24,542.48.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 192.31 points at 42,932.73. The S&P 500 index was up 7.14 points at 5,822.40, while the Nasdaq composite was down 9.03 points at 18,306.56.
The Canadian dollar traded for 72.61 cents US compared with 72.44 cents US on Tuesday.
The November crude oil contract was down 71 cents at US$69.87 per barrel and the November natural gas contract was down eight cents at US$2.42 per mmBTU.
The December gold contract was up US$7.20 at US$2,686.10 an ounce and the December copper contract was up a penny at US$4.35 a pound.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2024.
TORONTO – Canada’s main stock index was up more than 200 points in late-morning trading, while U.S. stock markets were also headed higher.
The S&P/TSX composite index was up 205.86 points at 24,508.12.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 336.62 points at 42,790.74. The S&P 500 index was up 34.19 points at 5,814.24, while the Nasdaq composite was up 60.27 points at 18.342.32.
The Canadian dollar traded for 72.61 cents US compared with 72.71 cents US on Thursday.
The November crude oil contract was down 15 cents at US$75.70 per barrel and the November natural gas contract was down two cents at US$2.65 per mmBTU.
The December gold contract was down US$29.60 at US$2,668.90 an ounce and the December copper contract was up four cents at US$4.47 a pound.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 11, 2024.
