“I’m excited”, exclaims Karen Weldon, 58, whose plant will soon be converted to the assembly of electric vehicles. The health and safety manager at the General Motors site in Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada recently spent a few days training in Michigan to understand how the EV600 electric van, which will succeed the Equinox model, would be assembled. ” It’s incredible, she enthuses. The vehicle is over 7 meters long and the battery pack is huge. To work on it, we will have to use levers and access from above, we who used to slide under cars. “
The assembly pilot Jeff Roberts, who, at 48, is also one of the twenty employees selected to go to train in the United States, anticipates big changes. “We will have to learn high voltage and review the ergonomics of workstations, he explains. I am a little worried but I trust. We are going to make this revolution, rather than chasing it. ” The shift from the automobile to the electric is transforming the organization of work and the need for skills.
The unions are trying to prepare employees for it. Jeff Roberts, who has twenty-seven years of factory behind him, wants to be cautiously optimistic. It was not always the case. “When in August 2020, we began collective negotiations, we realized that no investment in electric cars was planned in Canada, remembers Dino Chiodo, automotive director of the Unifor union. Many factories were going to close and the Covid was accelerating the movement. This is why we have consciously decided to join the electric strategy from the start. “
“Different staffing needs”
Unionists now have a quarterly technological meeting with manufacturers, General Motors, Ford and Stellantis. They aim to preserve as many “decent” jobs as possible for their 44,000 members with Canadian manufacturers and equipment suppliers.
The task is not easy. Industry experts have all noted the growing interest of major brands in so-called EVs (Electric Vehicles). General Motors recently set a goal of going all-electric by 2035. At the same time, California promised to ban new gasoline-powered vehicles. And US President Joe Biden mentioned the construction of 500,000 charging stations.
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