‘Economic war:’ Union vows to fight for jobs amid auto tariff

Unifor National President Lana Payne says 'we have no choice but to push back and to squeeze ourselves and play hardball' amid incoming U.S. tariffs.

The head of a union that represents more than 20,000 Canadian auto workers says that the country is now in an “economic war” with the United States following the rollout of a 25 per cent tariff on imported vehicles that she says is designed to “steal jobs from our country.”

Unifor National President Lana Payne made the comment during an interview with CP24 Breakfast on Thursday morning.

“We are in an economic war right now with our closest neighbour and this is an attempt by the U.S. president to destroy jobs in our country, to steal jobs from our country and to have production shifted from Canada to United States,” she said. “We have no choice but to push back and to squeeze ourselves and play hardball in order to make sure we are protecting every single auto job; not just for today but into the future.”

Trump announced the new tariff on Wednesday afternoon, though it will not formally take effect until April 3.

Auto industry officials have warned that the levy will potentially have devastating consequences on the North American auto industry and could even prompt some assembly lines to stop production.

In her interview with CP24 Breakfast, Payne said that placing a tariff on an integrated industry such as the auto sector - where vehicles routinely move back and forth across international borders - could easily result in assembly lines “grinding to a halt” on both sides of the border.

“It is not only Canadian auto workers jobs who are at risk here. American workers will be hurt by this too,” she said.

Union plans emergency meeting

The Ontario government has previously said that more than 100,000 Ontarians are employed in the auto assembly and parts manufacturing sectors.

That includes more than 3,000 employees who work at a General Motors assembly plant in Oshawa.

Unifor Local 222 represents more than 200 of those workers and is convening an emergency meeting with other union representatives today to discuss its response to the tariffs.

Workers are also planning to stage a rally outside the GM assembly plant to draw attention to their concerns.

Payne is expected to be among those in attendance.

“We are calling everyone down here, we are having an emergency tariff meeting, we are going to go over our strategy and what we are going to do,” Local 222 President Jeff Gray told CP24 on Thursday morning. “They (GM) are not taking one piece of equipment out of our plants. We are going to react if that is the case.”

Trump has said that the tariffs are designed to get auto manufacturers to relocate their plants to the U.S.

However, GM and other manufacturers have not signaled any intentions to scale back their Canadian operations at this point.

Speaking with CP24, Gray called the tariffs “malicious” and “ignorant” of how the industry actually works, noting that vehicles and parts sometimes cross the border six to nine times before being assembled into a final product.

“Our members we have gone through a little bit of a cycle in the last month. We have gone from being anxious and nervous to now I believe we are sick of being antagonized by Donald Trump,” he said. “These are our jobs. We fought for these jobs for the last 90 years here in Oshawa. We fought for them through collective bargaining and we paid financial and emotional prices. These jobs aren’t going anywhere.”

In a press conference on Wednesday, Premier Doug Ford told reporters that he supports “dollar for dollar” tariffs in response to the 25 per cent auto tariff.

He also said that he has encouraged Prime Minister Mark Carney to target American-made cars in any response.

“We either roll over as a country and he (Trump) runs us over 15 times and gets what he wants, or we feel a little bit of pain and we fight like we’ve never fought before,” Ford said.