Lana Payne celebrates on stage as Unifor, Canada’s largest private-sector union, announce Payne as their recent president to interchange outgoing leader Jerry Dias in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Aug. 10, 2022.
Cole Burston | Reuters
DETROIT — Canadian union Unifor and Stellantis have reached a tentative agreement early Monday morning, ending a transient strike that began after a deal wasn’t reached by 11:59 p.m. Sunday.
The Canadian work stoppage involved greater than 8,200 autoworkers at several facilities within the Canadian province of Ontario, including two large assembly plants that produce the Chrysler 300 sedan and Pacifica minivan and the Dodge Challenger and Charger muscle cars.
The strike and tentative deal, which must still be ratified by union members, occurred two days after Stellantis reached a tentative deal for about 43,000 U.S. autoworkers with the United Auto Employees union after roughly six weeks of targeted strikes that began Sept. 15.
Details of the tentative agreement with Stellantis weren’t immediately available.
The Canadian work stoppage comes nearly three weeks after Unifor launched a roughly 12-hour national strike against General Motors after the perimeters failed to succeed in a tentative agreement by a union-set deadline.
Unifor, which represents 18,000 Canadian employees on the Detroit automakers, took a more traditional approach to its negotiations than its U.S. counterpart. The Canadian union is negotiating with each automaker individually and using a deal first reached last month with Ford as a pattern for GM and Stellantis.
That traditional patterned-bargaining approach runs counter to the UAW’s recent strategy of bargaining with all three automakers without delay.
The UAW has been regularly increasing the strikes because the work stoppages began after the perimeters failed to succeed in tentative agreements by Sept. 14. The targeted, or “stand-up,” strikes are going down as an alternative of national walkouts.
Nevertheless, once the UAW reached a tentative agreement, which must still be ratified by members, Wednesday with Ford Motor, it has used that deal as a template for proposals with Stellantis and GM.