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Manitoba strike ripples into Ontario

The impact of a two-month strike at a big Winnipeg manufacturer of aircraft parts is escalating and spilling into southern Ontario.

About 100 members of the Canadian Auto Workers held up employees and production on Thursday morning at a Magellan Aerospace operation in Kitchener and the union promises similar actions at other company plants to increase pressure for a settlement of the Winnipeg strike.

“We are going to be stepping this up until we get a fair deal,” warned Jerry Dias, a senior CAW official. “What happened today will not be isolated.”

He added the protest disrupted work at the non-union machining shop in Kitchener for a few hours. A spokesman at Magellan’s headquarters in Mississauga would not comment on the Kitchener incident and any impact.

It follows the walkout of about 400 union members at Magellan’s plant in Winnipeg on April 1. The workers who earn between $16 and $23 an hour have rejected company demands for concessions including elimination of all health care benefits for about 100 retirees.

The plant repairs and overhauls military aircraft and builds components including tail cones that end up on Bombardier’s Q400 NextGen aircraft in the Toronto suburb of Downsview.

Magellan spokesman Bill Matthews said the company is still supplying customers despite the strike.

“We’re maintaining our ‘critical path” deliveries,” said Matthews, the company’s vice-president of marketing.

The union charged the Magellan plant in Winnipeg has started using replacement workers with no experience who are filling orders where safety and quality could be jeopardy.

“We’re sending Magellan a message that we will not tolerate the use of scabs,” Dias added. “That message will become clearer if this dispute is not resolved.”

He would not divulge any other operations that the union might target for production delays during the next week.

Matthews said he would not comment on whether the Winnipeg plant had hired replacement workers for production.

He also would not discuss the impasse in negotiations or outstanding issues but noted that if workers would vote on the latest offer they could ratify it.

“We’ve given a good offer that could be acceptable,” Matthews said.

But Dias countered that almost 100 per cent of workers recently rejected the company’s latest offer in a show of hands at a membership meeting.

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