Imagine the reception in Windsor, Ont. two or five or 10 years ago had a foreign carmaker swept into Canada and demanded autoworkers slash their wages and benefits by up to a third. In that union town? Ha! Today, with a sense that the survival of the city is at stake, Windsor’s daily paper is urging the unions and bondholders to take Sergio Marchionne, at his word. The CEO of Fiat has warned that he’ll leave Chrysler to the bankruptcy wolves unless they capitulate to Fiat’s demands. Yesterday, Industry Minister Tony Clement said that means cutting workers’ wages and benefits by $19 per hour. The Windsor Star has long made an art of treading the line between management and labour in the car industry. But with the Canadian Auto Workers union stuck in denial, the paper worries this last opportunity
to save Chrysler will be lost. “Marchionne isn’t speculating about what someone else might do in the future,” it warns today in an editorial. “He’s telling us what he is going to do now. This isn’t theoretical–it’s real.”
Ntk 3 and 4Windsor Star