Canada’s Unifor union has ratified a deal with General Motors Co (GM) that will see C$554 million (US$420.84 million) invested in local plants, the labor group said on Sunday as it prepares for related talks with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV.
Workers voted 64.7 percent to ratify the deal, which will see the automaker renew investments in its local plants, Unifor said in an evening statement.
Unifor, which represents some 4,000 GM workers, reached that deal just minutes before a strike deadline. The four-year deal granted job security and wage increases, but less favorable pensions than before.
‘TEMPLATE’ DEAL
The ratification is expected to affect about 16,000 Unifor workers with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV and Ford Motor Co whose contracts also are up for negotiation.
Under a process called patterned bargaining, Unifor’s agreement with GM will be used as a template for talks with the other companies, which are expected to agree to similar terms.
Unifor has said it will negotiate next with Fiat Chrysler, and has set a tentative strike deadline of midnight Oct. 10.
Fiat Chrysler did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Unifor president Jerry Dias said the union was scheduled to be in talks with Fiat Chrysler yesterday, and that a significant issue will be the future of the company’s plant in Brampton, west of Toronto.
“We need some clarification,” he said by telephone late on Sunday afternoon, before the ratification results were released.
“We need some answers. We ultimately need some commitment,” he said.
Unifor has said it will ask Fiat Chrysler to upgrade an outdated paint shop at the plant, which makes the Chrysler 300 and Dodge Challenger and Charger sedans.
Dias said he does not expect talks with Fiat Chrysler to be easy, but it will be hard for the company to ignore the precedent set by the GM deal.
GM PLEASED
GM spokesman Tom Wickham said in a statement the company is “pleased,” and that it is working toward “potential support agreements” with federal and provincial governments to “optimize the competitiveness” of its Canadian operations.
In its deal with GM, the union gave up defined-benefit pensions for new hires.
Dias has said concessions were necessary to ensure GM continues operations in Ontario, home to nearly all of Canada’s once-thriving auto industry that has been losing out to the southern US and lower-cost Mexico.
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
BRAVE NEW WORLD: Nvidia believes that AI would fuel a new industrial revolution and would ‘do whatever we can’ to guide US AI policy, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Tuesday said he is ready to meet US president-elect Donald Trump and offer his help to the incoming administration. “I’d be delighted to go see him and congratulate him, and do whatever we can to make this administration succeed,” Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg Television, adding that he has not been invited to visit Trump’s home base at Mar-a-Lago in Florida yet. As head of the world’s most valuable chipmaker, Huang has an opportunity to help steer the administration’s artificial intelligence (AI) policy at a moment of rapid change.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) quarterly sales topped estimates, reinforcing investor hopes that the torrid pace of artificial intelligence (AI) hardware spending would extend into this year. The go-to chipmaker for Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc reported a 39 percent rise in December-quarter revenue to NT$868.5 billion (US$26.35 billion), based on calculations from monthly disclosures. That compared with an average estimate of NT$854.7 billion. The strong showing from Taiwan’s largest company bolsters expectations that big tech companies from Alphabet Inc to Microsoft Corp would continue to build and upgrade datacenters at a rapid clip to propel AI development. Growth accelerated for
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
RSS