The writer, a Los Angeles freelancer and former Detroit News business reporter, writes a blog, Starkman Approved.
By Eric Starkman
Canadian union chief John D’Agnolo
Ford CEO Jim Farley couldn’t ask for a better foxhole partner to combat the fallout from President Trump’s tariff wars than Canadian union chief John D’Agnolo.
D’Agnolo wears a multitude of union hats including president of Unifor Local 200, chair of the Auto Council for Unifor — the union that represents autoworkers in Canada — and chair of Ford's Master Bargaining unit. D'Agnolo also represents some 2,000 workers at the Ford Essex Engine and Ford Windsor Engine plants, both across the Detroit River.
D’Agnolo is featured today in an impressively enterprising story by Detroit Free Press auto writer Jamie LaReau about his union’s valiant efforts to help Ford get enough engines his plant manufactures before Trump’s threatened tariffs take effect. D’Agnolo’s loyalty and dedication provides a sharp contrast to UAW president Shawn Fain, who took great pride in harming Ford during 2023 contract talks despite the automaker employing more UAW workers than GM and Stellantis.
What’s especially noteworthy about D’Angolo’s loyalty is that Ford stiffed his union on a promised C$1.8 billion investment to electrify a plant about 45 miles southwest of Toronto. GM also has significantly reduced its Canadian auto union employment in recent years, including closing a century-old plant outside Toronto for a period.
That hasn’t reduced Unifor’s loyalty and commitment to Ford and GM.
"Now, just as soon as we get the engines done, we bring them over," D'Agnolo told the Freep. “I want Ford to have as many engines as they can over the border because the company has to be successful for us to be successful, and at the end of the day, we’ll do whatever we can to support Ford Motor Co. Oshawa is doing whatever they can to get as many vehicles over to the other side for General Motors."
D'Agnolo feels burdened to protect not only his union members, but UAW workers in the U.S.
"We supply all the engines for Kentucky Truck, Dearborn Truck and Ohio Assembly," D'Agnolo said. "There are 2,000 jobs in Windsor — we’re feeding 9,200 employees at Kentucky Truck, Dearborn Truck has about 3,800, and then with Ohio about 1,700, so you’re looking at a total of 15,000 direct jobs I’m feeding to those facilities. I’m not even talking about all the parts jobs attached to those."
UAW's Comments
Consider comments by UAW communications director Jonah Furman on the platform then known as Twitter when the union began its 2023 “Stand Up” strikes in, as reported by the Detroit News.
Furman said that union negotiators were using bargaining sessions to inflict “recurring reputations damage and operational chaos” on the Big 3 automakers.
“(I)f we can keep them wounded for months they don’t know what to do. The beauty is we’ve laid it all out in the public and they’re still helpless to stop it,” Furman said.
It was a wonder to me that Furman wasn’t forced to resign when his comments leaked, but he remains a close advisor to Fain, still waxing on in interviews about the great harm the UAW intends to cause on corporate America if the union doesn’t get its way, including calling for a general strike in 2028.
“Corporate America is going to be on notice that if they can’t fix this issue and bring back a basic dignified retirement for auto workers and for everybody, then it’s not going to just be Ford, GM, and Stellantis’s problem. It’s going to be a problem for the federal government. It’s going to be a problem for this country,” Furman told New Labor Forum in an interview published in January.
Furman served as Bernie Sanders’ national labor organizer in 2020 and a political and labor organizer for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He also was co-chair of Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America Labor Working Group.
UAW President Shawn Fain
According to a bio posted by the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, Furman was born in Chicago and raised in Evanston, an affluent suburb. He attended Johns Hopkins University, where he majored in philosophy and literature. After graduation, Furman moved to Boston and was in a touring band for four years, which traveled the US and Europe. He later moved to New York and interned at the Street Vendor Project, a center for NYC street vendors.
It's unfortunate for Canadian auto workers that their country’s political leaders have done an appallingly poor job explaining how Trump’s tariffs are undeniably unfair and misguided with regards to Canada.
Canadians Are Major Buyers
Unlike Mexico, Canadians are major buyers of GM and Ford vehicles, particularly their EVs.
In 2024, GM was Canada’s industry market share leader for the second consecutive year, capturing 15.4 percent of the market—its highest share since 2010—with 294,315 vehicles sold and an 11.9 percent sales increase. Cadillac and GMC each had their best Canadian sales year ever.
GM’s Canadian sales represented nearly 10% of the company’s combined U.S. and Canadian sales. Canada represented more than 21% of GM’s combined U.S. and Canadian EV sales, despite Canada having a population of only 40 million, compared to America’s 335 million.
GM’s best-selling vehicles in Mexico are built in China.
Canada significantly contributed to GM’s 2008 bankruptcy bailout, losing an estimated C$800 million on the rescue. In return, GM closed a plant in Oshawa outside of Toronto in 2019, costing some 5,000 plant and supplier workers their jobs. GM reopened a scaled-down version of the Oshawa plant in 2020 to build its highly profitable Silverado pickup trucks but most of the workers were newly hired and paid considerably less than GM was paying the plant’s previous workers and given decidedly less job security.
Ford in 2024 ranked second in Canada, selling 279,221 new vehicles nationwide in 2024, a 16.1 percent increase over the year ago period. The company’s F-150 is the country’s best-selling pickup.
In April 2023, Ford announced with great fanfare that it would spend C$1.8 billion to transform an Oakville Assembly Complex outside Toronto “into a Canadian hub of electric vehicle manufacturing” that would include vehicle and battery pack assembly key to Ford’s plan to reach a global production run rate of 2 million EVs annually by the end of 2026.
The Canadian and Ontario governments committed to investing C$295 million each to help Ford upgrade its Oakville assembly plant to make EVs.
Ford reneged on its promise before Trump was re-elected. In July of last year Ford said it would refocus its Oakville plant to produce gasoline-powered versions of its flagship F-Series Super Duty gas engine pickup trucks by 2026.
Canadians have embraced electric vehicles considerably more than Americans, and Unifor was at the forefront of trying to attract EV investments to Canada to ensure the long-term security of its members.
“Ford’s commitment to invest in OAC retooling and upskilling signals a bright future for Canadian EV production and for Canadian auto sector employment,” said Lana Payne, Unifor National President in the Ford press release announcing its C$1.8 billion investment. “The transformation of the Oakville plant is an important step towards a stronger industry.”
GM and Ford are fortunate that Canadian officials so far have only targeted Tesla for revenge, rather than calling for a boycott of GM and Ford, which would cause the automakers great pain and likely force Trump to back off on his Canadian automotive tariffs. That said, I still doubt he will impose them, at least for an extended period.
For all Trump’s tough talk, he regards the stock market as his performance benchmark, and I expect the president will likely blink if GM and Ford refuse to move some of their Mexican manufacturing back to the U.S. and their stock prices keep plummeting.
Indeed, Farley told investors last month that despite Trump’s pledge to make America great again with increased manufacturing, Ford won’t be building new plants in the U.S. anytime soon.
While Canadian labor is costlier than Mexico’s, indications are the country’s auto workers provide a lot of bangs for their loonies. Toyota’s plant in Cambridge about 60 miles southwest of Ontario is among the most acclaimed auto factories in the world, garnering nearly two dozen awards.
Contact Eric Starkman at eric@starkmanapproved. Anonymity assured.
Also read by Starkman:
Shawn Fain’s Sellout of UAW Auto Workers
