Trudeau confronted with unions’ concerns about sidelining of Canadian workers at Windsor EV plant

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was told Monday by a top union leader that grave concerns remain about the hiring of foreign workers at a flagship EV battery plant in Windsor, Ont., when skilled Canadians are available to do the jobs.

In a keynote discussion with the Prime Minister at the annual conference of Canada’s Building Trades Unions in Gatineau, union leader Sean Strickland told Mr. Trudeau that the concerns that emerged last year about the hiring of hundreds of Korean and Japanese workers at the EV factory have yet to be resolved.

Mr. Strickland, CBTU executive director, appealed to Mr. Trudeau for help to ensure that skilled Canadian workers – including those with experience installing and maintaining equipment for the plant – would get priority over foreign workers for jobs, and that companies would stick to their promises to hire Canadians.

“We have grave concerns when there are projects – particularly one in Windsor – where international workers are going to work when Canadians have the skills and the training. It’s not about knowledge transfer. In this case, they have the skills and the training and are available to work,” he said.

The NextStar EV plant in Windsor is being built with up to $15-billion in subsidies from the federal and Ontario governments. It is a joint venture between global auto giant Stellantis and South Korean battery maker LG Energy Solution.

NextStar disclosed last year that 900 temporary foreign workers would be coming to install technical equipment at the plant and going home once the work is done.

But in a letter to the Prime Minister earlier this month, Mr. Strickland and 12 other union leaders raised concerns about the continuing use of foreign workers, including as sub-contractors to displace skilled Canadians.

It said discussions so far with the companies had proved fruitless and asked for Mr. Trudeau to intervene, as “Canadian workers are being sidelined without consequence.”

“This is a slap in the face to Canadian workers and utterly unacceptable from LG and Stellantis,” the letter said. “This is the brazen displacement of Canadian workers in favour of international workers, by major international corporations thumbing their noses at both the Government of Canada, taxpayers and our skilled trades workers.”

Mr. Strickland told Mr. Trudeau on Monday he was very supportive of investments made by the government in EV battery production, saying the unions were holding preliminary talks with Honda about hiring Canadian workers and signing a memorandum of understanding.

A multibillion-dollar deal announced this month with Honda will lead to the expansion of its Alliston, Ont., plant to manufacture electric vehicles and host a large EV battery plant. Honda is expected to gain around $2.5-billion through tax credits for clean technology manufacturing and electric vehicle supply chain investments.

However, Mr. Strickland told the Prime Minister Monday that “we still have issues with LG, Stellantis and NextStar.”

“When you have a Canadian worker sitting at home, collecting unemployment insurance in their home community, and there are four workers doing his or her work in a plant, that is just completely inexplicable to that Canadian worker.”

He asked the Prime Minister if he would do everything he could to ensure most of the jobs go to Canadians.

Mr. Trudeau replied he “absolutely” would, saying government “will be there to support you every step of the way.”

“We will be there to lean in to make sure that the intent and the support of the contracts is there,” he said.

In the Commons, Conservative industry critic Rick Perkins renewed calls on the government to publish the contracts for the Windsor plant to reveal how many Canadian jobs had been guaranteed. He said Conservatives agreed that the hiring of foreign workers to do non-specialist jobs – such as a forklift driver – was “a slap in the face.”

Mr. Strickland told The Globe and Mail in a statement last week that the unions have held numerous meetings with LG, Stellantis, and their joint-venture, NextStar, since last year.

“We remain hopeful that we can get around the table with Stellantis, LG and NextStar to get an agreement in place that will maximize the number of Canadian jobs in the process equipment installation phase of this project,” he said.

“We have 1,600 Canadian workers on the job site today, and we hope to keep it that way during the next phase of this project, where the work will turn to equipment installation. We remain able to provide the skilled labour necessary to perform this work.”