Canadian car workers do deal with GM

Union president Buzz Hargrove said that they were close to deals with both GM and Chrysler after both companies said that they were willing to meet the pattern of a deal that the union reached with Ford last month.

Union spokeswoman Shannon Devine said that they were still working on a deal with Chrysler.

The current contracts covering about 22,000 GM and Chrysler workers expire in September. Any new contracts would need to be ratified by a vote on the part of the membership.

The surprise early deal with Ford kept the company's labour costs essentially the same as last year, the union admitted. It freezes basic wages and pension costs and buys union members out of one week of holiday.

But the contract did not gain Ford what it and the other car makers got from the United Auto Workers (UAW) in the US last autumn, a lower-tier wage for new employees of around half that of a current UAW production worker.

CAW Chrysler bargaining team head Ken Lewenza said: "We're not dealing with companies that have a lot of cash here. We're dealing with companies that are in market decline."

GM recently announced the closure of a plant in Windsor, Ontario in which about 1,400 workers will lose their jobs.

GM also recently announced 900 job losses at a plant in Oshawa, Ontario.

But Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said that he is prepared to give GM more taxpayers' money for new projects, despite the layoffs.