Production at the Fiat Chrysler Automotive assembly plant in Brampton has halted due to a strike by workers at a factory which supplies the seats used to assemble cars in Brampton.

The Wednesday afternoon shift at the Chrysler’s Brampton plant was canceled for all production workers except skilled trades workers, and the morning only worked a partial shift.

The reason for the shutdown is that workers at Lear Corporation, located in Ajax, went on strike over the weekend. Union members subsequently rejected a tentative agreement with regard to wages between the company and Unifor that would have brought workers back to work had it been accepted.

On Thursday Lear Corporation announced that it plans to close its plant in Ajax and have withdrawn the tentative offer that was overwhelmingly rejected by the union earlier in the week.

“Due to the resounding rejection of the tentative agreement by the membership on May 1, 2018, and other recent developments from our customer regarding the future work, the company is announcing a closure of the Lear Ajax plant,” the company said in a memo to Unifor Wednesday.

Seats aren’t generally kept in inventory at assembly plants and are usually sent to the assembly line within hours of arriving on-site (a practice known as just-in-time manufacturing) so the shutdown of the seating supplier plant has caused production to halt.
Fiat Chrysler’s Brampton plant currently produces three of the automaker’s top performing vehicles, the Chrysler 300, Dodge Charger and the Challenger.
Lear’s management said in the memo to Unifor that the plant would close “as soon as practical” but it will remain in its current spot until the cars produced in Brampton are redesigned in 2020.
As of this writing, there’s no word on when the Brampton plant will resume production.
Feature image – ©Chrysler Group

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