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Members Obtain Four Year Deal at CAMI Plant

Tuesday, 17 October 2017 04:52

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Things are back to normal this morning at Cami in Ingersoll.

INGERSOLL - Things are back to normal this morning at Cami in Ingersoll. 

Unifor Local 88 membership voted in favour of a new four year yesterday. Membership voted 85.9% in favour of the offer while the Skilled Trade members voted 78.7% in favour of their offer.

Plant chair for Local 88 Mike Van Boekel says he feels like the 4 week strike was worth it in the end. 

"Well a lot of the stuff that did come in the contract came in the last week and over the last couple of days, so yeah I think we would of brought back where we were 4 weeks ago our members would of voted it down. The goal was never a strike, the goal was always to try and find a fair contract that we could ratify, I think it just took us 4 weeks to get to that point but we got a deal that will work for us." 

The deal does not include an elite plant status letter to build the Chevy Equinox. However it does tackle job security and includes massive penalties for GM if they try to lay off workers or close up shop and move to Mexico. 

"We talked to GM and we have put some major penalties in place if they want to lay us off in the future, or try and close the plant, it's almost a $300 million dollar penalty now payable to the membership if they want to do any layoffs or try to close the plant in the future. We couldn't get the lead, but on the other hand we have made it extremely tough or extremely expensive for them to leave." 

Employees will get four per cent wage increases over the four-year deal, a six-thousand-dollar signing bonus and annual payments of two-thousand dollars each Christmas. Van Boekel adds that membership is ready to get back to work.

"I think most people were fairly relieved, four weeks is a long time to go without money for individuals or families, so it's good to get it behind us and hopefully move on from here." 
 

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