ISO: former Nemak employees who may be eligible for compensation

Former Nemak employees sought It’s the end of an automotive era in Windsor and the final chapter in the Nemak story. CTV Windsor’s Michelle Maluske explains.

Union officials are looking for former employees of a Windsor aluminum plant who may be eligible for compensation.

Unifor has finalized settlements for workers who are owed money after Nemak unexpectedly closed.

“People have gone everywhere, right? They had to find other jobs. Some people have left out of town and we wanted to make sure we could get as many people as possible,” John D’Agnolo told CTV News Wednesday. “We've been on the phones trying to get ahold of people, but there's some people that we have actually missed and we want to make sure we get them.”

D’Agnolo can’t discuss the details of the final settlements because of a non-disclosure agreement Unifor made with Nemak.

“It was a good place to work. It really was and it is unfortunate that Nemak’s no longer here,” he said.

The factory on G. N. Booth Drive, on the city’s west end, opened in 1996 as the Windsor and Essex Aluminum plants, according to Unifor.

In 2000, Ford entered a joint venture with Nemak to take over day-to-day operations.

By 2009 the work at Essex Aluminum was moved to Mexico; the factory has been idle ever since.

Unifor Local 200 members inked a five-year collective agreement with Nemak in 2014 to build engine blocks.

In 2016, the workers agreed to a three-year contract extension.

D’Agnolo says they accepted a pay freeze in exchange for job security by building the 1.6L block for GM trucks and the bedplate for Corvettes.

That deal was set to expire in 2022.

So it came as a shock, D’Agnolo said, when in July 2019 Nemak told the union the factory was closing and the work was going to Mexico.

“I've never seen where we've signed an agreement, shake hands, and then they tell us we're going to close you down,” said D’Agnolo. “We did our best to try and resolve this issue (by) looking at other investments.”

When those negotiations went nowhere D’Agnolo said the 200 workers “had to use some extreme measures”.

Labour Day weekend, 2019, the workers took over the factory and blockaded the front gate for 13 days in protest.

“If this (plant closure) was allowed, then this could be a free-for-all. We had to do what we could to make sure that this didn't happen again.” Said D’Agnolo.

Nemak successfully received a court injunction baring the demonstration which Unifor members ignored.

The two sides agreed to negotiate but couldn’t hammer out a final contract so the matter returned to court.

Initially Nemak successfully argued they could close the factory inside the contract they had.

Unifor appealed the decision and a higher court sided with them in 2021 and forced an arbitrated settlement onto Nemak.

The company said it was “disappointed” by the decision, telling CTV News at the time, “Nemak has always observed the rule of law, with the conviction that the decision made to close the facility did not violate the collective agreement.”

Since then, they have been negotiating with Unifor to settle with all 200 employees working at the factory when it closed in October 2020.