A two-week-long employee strike at Motor City Chrysler in Windsor has ended.
Employee union Unifor Local 195 and the employer reached a tentative agreement on Wednesday and unionized staff voted to ratify the deal on Thursday. Around 70% of service staff voted in favour of the three-year contract, and just over 60% of the sales team voted in favour as well.
Union President John Toth says the new contract includes a varying wage increase for employees depending employee classification, as well as adjustments to vacation pay, increased benefits and a modest pension increase.
"The employees were looking to make gains. Many of them haven't had raises in ten to 12 years, so that was a sticking point [during bargaining]," he says. "Obviously people are looking at moving forward in this economy, not moving backwards."
Around 60 sales and service staff at the dealership walked off the job on January 31 after contract talks between Unifor and the employer broke down.
"There's no way this agreement could have been reached without that strike," says Toth. "I think it's a fair agreement. It's one that both sides can live with, which is what you're always hoping to gain at the end of the day. Obviously, the proposals that were on the table before the strike began were not proposals our membership was willing to live with and it took a strike to get where they're at."
The majority of the employees will return to work at Motor City Chrysler next week.