Electrification of Windsor's auto industry promises new jobs — but what happens to blue-collar workers?
CBC
This is the third in a three-part series, The Real Cost of Electric Vehicles, diving into the future of electric vehicles and how electrification will impact Windsor-Essex. On the first day, we looked at affordability. On the second day, we looked at environmental impacts.
For 23 years, Jayson Mercier has packed a meal, left his home and hit the road to go to work at the Windsor Assembly Plant.
The southwestern Ontario city's biggest employer is about to go through some major changes as Stellantis, the company that owns the plant, makes big moves to electrify its automobiles. From a $4.9-billion investment to build a new electric vehicle (EV) battery plant and a $3.6-billion investment to retool both the Windsor and Brampton assembly plants for fully electric vehicles — times are changing.
"I'm optimistic. I know it's gonna bring a tonne of jobs. I just hope that it transfers to my plant," Mercier said this January afternoon as he prepared for his shift that day.
"We've been just kind of beat up so much in the last 20 years that ... we're looking forward to some gains."
As an autoworker in Windsor, he's been through layoffs and shutdowns, and the loss of the plant's third shift.
When the battery plant was announced in March 2022, it promised to be the jolt of energy the local auto industry needed, particularly after the assembly plant was reduced to two shifts. There are promises that third shift is coming back, but as the city moves to electrify its vehicles, there are concerns there could also be a reduction in staff at the plant.
In November, Reuters reported that at a conference in Detroit, Ford Motor Co. chief executive Jim Farley said electric vehicles would require 40 per cent less labour to build than current combustion vehicles.
The Local Unifor 444 president, Dave Cassidy, also anticipates a reduction.
"We're going to be short," he said.
He explained that at three full shifts with an ICE vehicle, the plant can employ 6,000 members, but that with the transition to battery electric vehicle assembly, while he doesn't know for sure what the number of jobs would be, he predicts it might eventually go down to 3,500 to 3,800 jobs over the three shifts. Currently at two shifts, the plant employs about 4,000 workers.
"We don't know what that negative loss is just in the assembly plant itself, not even talking, you know, about our feeder plants," Cassidy said.
However, he added given that through the transition the assembly plant will be building multiple vehicles — including battery electric, hybrid and internal combustion engine vehicles — the assembly lines will need extra people "for some time."
"You know my ultimate goal for that would be that we could have a group that could transition between the two facilities," he said.
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