From a pandemic to an internal scandal on top of supply disruptions causing mass temporary layoffs, Lana Payne already has seen Canada's largest private sector union through a series of trials.
But the newly elected — and first female — president of Unifor isn't settling down. Supply issues remain a concern. The scandal that prompted former Unifor president Jerry Dias to step down is still a fresh wound. And the union aims to ensure Canada and Canadian autoworkers are central to the electric-vehicle future.
Next year, Unifor and its U.S. counterpart, the United Auto Workers, will negotiate crucial contracts with the Detroit Three automakers during a time when the industry is seeing growth amid challenges. Automakers have remained profitable in spite of the pandemic's supply issues, continuing to spend billions on the EV transition. The unions now have to push to remain relevant when gas and diesel-powered vehicle production phases out.
"Despite the horizon, workers right now are still dealing with a lot of bumps as a result of the pandemic and the supply chain issues associated with that," Payne, 57, said in an interview with The Detroit News. "We're still working through a number of those things, but that can't stop us from doing the work that we know is necessary to build the sector as we go forward."
Payne, who took office last month, sees opportunity for Canada in the EV transition. The country ranked fifth worldwide for its lithium supply in BloombergNEF’s second annual Global Lithium-Ion Battery Supply Chain Ranking released in October 2021. In its recently released set of policy recommendations, Unifor points out the need for expansion of mining and refining of critical EV raw materials for Canada to have "a unique advantage and a foundation upon which an industrial strategy can be built."
The supply assets are on top of Canada's auto-making history and highly skilled workforce, which Payne says are the ingredients for the country to have a "great and robust ascent into the future."
Those ingredients have to be put together to achieve a successful transition, the Unifor president said: "There's no time for complacency ever, and this certainly isn't one of those times. We've got to keep pushing forward.
"We know that there's an opportunity and what that means is we've got to be able to seize the moment ... that means not giving up on the potential that we have going forward and not thinking it's just going to happen because all of these ingredients are there. We have to push for it."
Payne doesn't have an automotive background, but she sees the importance of the auto sector to the union. A former journalist, she started working in labor at the Fish, Food and Allied Workers Union when it was part of the Canadian Auto Workers in Newfoundland. Unifor formed in 2013 after the Canadian Auto Workers and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers union merged.
"The historic base of the CW's membership was male auto manufacturing workers in Ontario and so it does signal an interesting shift in the union that's been coming for a long time, too, because CW's membership has not been majority auto manufacturing for a long time," said Stephanie Ross, an associate professor and director of the School of Labor Studies at McMaster University in Ontario.
"This is a big shift," she said. "I guess the question is, how will the union receive this new leader from a sector and a place that isn't part of the historic core of the union membership?"
During the campaign for Unifor's next president, it was raised that Payne did not have as much direct experience in negotiating collective bargaining agreements as her main competitor Scott Doherty, executive assistant to the national president.
Yet Payne has shown she knows how to communicate effectively with the membership, the public, employers and policymakers, Ross said.
"She's very capable in that sense," she said, noting that Payne, who was secretary-treasurer during the internal crisis at Unifor, was able to navigate that difficulty and focus on staying transparent to the membership.
"She had to withstand a lot of internal criticism in performing that role, and she's really withstood that with some grace and fortitude," Ross said. "Those are the kinds of things that you definitely need to be able to have in collective bargaining."
Securing an EV future
Unifor represents about 40,000 workers in the auto sector, compared with more than 315,000 members overall, making the auto sector a small portion of the union.
Canada has seen its share of loss in the sector. Since 2000, major Canadian assembly facilities closed in Sainte-Thérèse, Quebec, and in several Ontario communities: Windsor, Talbotville, Oakville and Oshawa.
GM in the early 2000s closed its auto plant in Sainte-Thérèse, which made Camaros and Firebirds, according to a report from CBC. In Talbotville, Ford closed its St. Thomas Assembly plant in 2011. The Lincoln Town Car and Crown Victoria vehicles once rolled down the line there, CBC reported.
Leaders at the national and local levels have been able to land some new investment in recent years. GM, for example, restarted truck production at its Oshawa plant late last year after shutting the line down there in 2019.
GM also decided to invest $1 billion in Canadian dollars in its CAMI plant in Ontario to build the electric BrightDrop electric vans later this year. Stellantis NV, maker of Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram vehicles, said in May it would invest $2.8 billion into its Windsor and Brampton assembly plants for EV production.
Ford Motor Co.'s Oakville plant in Ontario is supposed to start EV production in 2025 after the union won product for the facility during the 2020 negotiations. The plant is slated to build five new EVs.
Still, since 2005 Unifor has lost more than 30,000 members in the auto sector.
"We're almost at a turning point again, in a good direction," Payne said. "I think back on all of the work that was really done over those 20 years and 30 years with local unions that refused to basically give up."
Unifor and the UAW are focusing on organizing the coming wave of EV supply plants. They include the facility GM and POSCO Chemical plan to build in Quebec to produce material for GM's EV batteries and the LG Energy Solution and Stellantis battery plant that's coming to Windsor.
Going into negotiations with the Detroit Three at the same time as the UAW — instead of the year after as before — could be an advantage, though the two entities still will fight for their respective memberships, experts say. The simultaneous bargaining could prevent the company from pitting one union against the other.
"By having the contracts expire at the same time, it helps with the whipsaw, so that the UAW can't say 'no, don't close our plants, close the Canadian ones' and the Canadians doing the same thing," said Art Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University's ILR School. "It gives them a more strategic position where both of them are expiring at the same time, so that they have a better chance of getting a more complete picture."
Getting past a scandal
In March, Unifor was rocked by a scandal involving the former union president, Dias, who had recently resigned. The union accused him of accepting $50,000 in Canadian money (about $39,700 U.S.) from an unnamed COVID-19 rapid test supplier that he promoted to employers of his members.
Several employers purchased the tests, the union found. Dias admitted he gave a Unifor employee half of the funds and told the employee it came from a supplier.
Payne, who was secretary-treasurer at the time, received a written complaint on Jan. 26 saying Dias had violated the union's constitution, which led to an independent external investigation. That inquiry found Dias had repeatedly breached the Unifor Code of Ethics.
To restore any missing trust between the leadership and membership, the union is establishing a task force for its code of ethics that will be led by an independent chairperson. The union is also looking to appoint an integrity officer.
"I've said this many times, there's no shortcuts here," Payne said. She's focused on talking with members at local levels and showing them the union's leadership is "committed to having the kind of union that they deserve ... a democratic, accountable and transparent one."
