Hargrove calls for auto pact-style sanctions against Navistar

TORONTO (Oct. 21, 2002) — Canadian Auto Workers president Buzz Hargrove said his union will lobby for auto pact-style sanctions against Navistar International after the company’s decision to close its plant in Chatham, Ont., next summer and shift production to Mexico.

The Chatham plant produces International 9000i series vehicles, Navistar’s flagship class-8 highway tractor. It employs roughly 1,000 workers.

Navistar plans to move 9000i production to its plant in Escobedo, Mexico. Opened in 1998, Escobedo also builds 9000i trucks and is a more modern facility than Chatham. Production workers there earn the equivalent of $4 US per hour, including benefits, compared with $33 US for a worker here.

“If you move our work out of Canada to a third-world country where you’re going to pay slave-labour wages and benefits, and arrogantly say you’re going to keep selling that truck in Canada, we’re telling government to say no to Navistar. This is the time to take a stand for Canadian workers. Navistar should not be allowed to sell that truck here.”

Hargrove lamented the demise of the Canada-U.S. Auto Pact last year. He said without a policy requiring companies to build vehicles here in order to sell them here without paying duties, the federal government is showing a reckless indifference to vehicle manufacturing jobs.

“The duty was about 6.1 per cent, which on a $120,000 or $180,000 truck is a lot of money. Now that the auto pact is gone, there’s no rules,” he said. “You can build those trucks anywhere and sell them in Canada so long as they have 62.5-per-cent North American content. That includes Mexico.”

Only two other manufacturers produce heavy trucks in Canada: Freightliner LLC, which build trucks in St. Thomas, Ont., under the Sterling badge and PACCAR, which produces medium-duty trucks in Ste-Therese, Que.

“Those companies have significant investments in Canada,” Hargrove said. “They have a commitment to this market, they have invested in jobs. They should have the market.”

The CAW signed a two-year labour deal with Navistar in July that requires the Chatham plant to remain open until at least June 2003.

According to Navistar International spokesman Roy Wiley, the new contract did little to chip away at the $14 million US a year the company needed to save in order to make the plant viable in the long term.

“Production of a quality truck was not an issue,” he said. “This decision boils down to cost.” Wiley added that the company has spread the job cuts across the board, with 860 workers recently laid off at its Springfield, Ohio, truck plant.