TORONTO - The head of the Canadian Auto Workers said Saturday his union and Chrysler Canada remain far apart as a Tuesday deadline looms for the automaker to submit a restructuring proposal to the federal and Ontario governments.
CAW President Ken Lewenza partly blames the Obama factor and too many cooks in the kitchen for the failure to reach an agreement on labour concessions. Chrysler says the concessions are a key part of the case it intends to make to government to get US$2.3 billion in loans.
The union's negotiating team held two information meetings in the Toronto-area Saturday to inform its members of the state of talks. Another such meeting is to be held in Windsor, Ont., Sunday.
The message from the Saturday meetings was "almost unanimous that the pattern agreement struck at General Motors must be the objective of the union," Lewenza said in a phone interview Saturday.
Chrysler has 10,000 hourly workers in Canada at vehicle assembly plants in Brampton, Ont., and Windsor, Ont., and a casting plant in Toronto. The union said more than 2,400 workers attended the Saturday meetings.
Most of the discussions involving the CAW and Chrysler at a Toronto hotel Saturday were with smaller groups at the higher levels of both the union and automaker, Lewenza said.
He didn't expect there would be face-to-face negotiations involving the master bargaining committee members Saturday or early Sunday.
He said bargaining committee members are on alert to head back to the table, but it depends on the results of the conversations senior union and company officials have. Lewenza said the goal now is to reach a tentative agreement by Tuesday.
Chrysler is seeking deeper concessions than GM agreed to earlier this month, including lopping off $19 an hour from its labour costs and insisting it won't accept the pattern set by the GM deal.
Lewenza also said "a major stumbling block" is that Chrysler wants to ignore the cost savings it achieves by manufacturing in Canada,. where the loonie closed Friday at 80.81 cents U.S.
Chrysler Canada spokeswoman Mary Gauthier only said Saturday that the automaker was still engaged in discussions with the union.
But Gauthier would not respond to Lewenza's comments that the Canadian division's bargaining team might be being overruled by Chrysler LLC majority owner Cerberus Capital, or by the U.S. parent company's bankers or the U.S. government.
The talks in Canada come as U.S. President Barack Obama is to announce the administration's plan for the auto industry in Washington on Monday.
The Obama administration is likely to demand deeper concessions from Chrysler LLC and General Motors Corp. in exchange for additional federal loans. Both automakers have received a total of US$17.4 billion in U.S. government loans.
GM is seeking another $16.6 billion more, while Chrysler wants $5 billion more.
"What's happening in the United States with the Treasury Board and the auto task force that reports directly to Obama is complicating the process," said Lewenza.
"We're dealing with Chrysler, we're dealing with Daimler, we're dealing with Fiat, we're dealing with private equity, we're dealing with bankers."
"So when you put that many people in a room that have differences of opinion on multiple issues then you know there's going to be some delays."
