The Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) (properly the National Automobile, Aerospace, Transportation and General Workers Union of Canada) is one of Canada's largest and highest profile trade unions. While rooted in the large auto plants of Windsor, Ontario, Brampton, Ontario, Oakville, Ontario, and Oshawa, Ontario; the CAW has in recent years expanded and now incorporates workers in industries from fisheries to air travel. Currently led by Buzz Hargrove, the union is strongly left leaning and it has traditionally been a strong supporter of the New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Bloc Québécois (Bloc). However, it began lending its support to the Liberal Party of Canada in ridings which the NDP were unlikely to win in the recent federal elections.
The UAW was founded in August 1935, and the Canadian Region of the UAW was established in 1937 at General Motors's Oshawa, Ontario plant after a contentious and violent strike. Before 1979, the Canadian Region was largely seen to follow in the contractual footsteps of the larger US-UAW, and despite growing differences, continued under the auspice of the UAW until 1985.
The reasons for the CAW split from the UAW are complicated. Holmes and Rusonik (1990) contend that although the Canadian labour movement has been seen as traditionally more militant than its American counterpart, it was in fact the uneven geographical development of both management and labour restructuring that:
led the Canadian auto-workers to develop a distinctly different set of collective bargaining objectives, [which] placed them in a far stronger bargaining position as compared to the UAW in the U.S., and, ultimately, brought about the events that led directly to the Split.
Two of the main forces demanding the restructuring of management and Labour during this time were the rise of Japan as a major automotive force, and the general recession of the world economy in the late 70's and early 80's. Aided by the Auto Pact and the weakening Canadian dollar in relation to the Greenback, a geographic difference developed which provided some relief to the Canadian auto-worker.
By December 1984, significant differences in the value of negotiated contracts, and divergent union objectives had set the stage for the creation of the CAW, a process documented in the Genie Award winning film, Final Offer.
In 1984, the Canadian section of the UAW, under the leadership of Bob White and his assistants Buzz Hargrove and Bob Nickerson, broke from the UAW because the American union was seen as giving away too much in the way of concessions during collective bargaining. Additionally, the UAW had been lobbying the U.S. Congress to force the transfer of auto production from Canada to the U.S. and the Canadian branch felt there was a lack of a representative voice during UAW's conventions.
In 1985 the split from the American union was complete and Bob White was acclaimed as the first President of the CAW. He went on to serve 3 terms as president.
After separation, the CAW began to grow quickly in size and stature. It merged with a number of smaller unions to double in size and become the largest private sector union in the country. Most notable were the mergers with the Fishermen, Food, and Allied Workers and the Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Transport and General Workers. The CAW also voiced strong opposition to the then-federal government of Prime MinisterBrian Mulroney and such policies as the Goods and Services Tax and free trade.
Under White and Hargrove, the CAW has moved toward the European model of social unionism and away from American business unionism.
