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Unifor National President Lana Payne no longer sees eye to eye with UAW leader Shawn Fain.

In a split with its Canadian sibling, the UAW endorsed President Donald Trump’s 25% tariffs on foreign-made vehicles and parts — the same tariffs Payne called “reckless and dangerous” for the entire integrated auto industry.

Payne told the Free Press on Thursday, the day a new round of tariffs took effect, that she hasn't met with Fain in “some time," adding that she isn't sure where he's getting his labor figures to support the pro-tariff stance.

“I don’t know that I would say we have common goals here. Unifor is opposed to these tariffs that the president of the United States is placing on the Canadian auto industry,” she said.

Both unions claim that one country's auto jobs growth is the other's loss — with Fain stating that the United States has lost jobs to Canada, while Unifor, which represents Canada's autoworkers and has roots as part of the UAW, claims the opposite.

Meanwhile, one Detroit Three automaker, Stellantis, is already stalling Canadian production of vehicles, leading to what are said to be temporary layoffs in the United States.

On Wednesday, Trump did not include Canada in his announcement of sweeping tariffs on 185 countries in a move he called "Liberation Day," although previously announced tariffs on Canadian-made vehicles that don't comply with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement would still go into effect this week. Trump's tariffs on imported steel and aluminum remain a factor as do retaliatory actions from other countries.

Payne said Canada has lost more North American auto production than the United States while U.S. auto production has held steady over the past decade. Payne added that she told automaker leadership in Windsor last week that she intends for the Canadian auto industry to grow in the short term.

“We’ve been very clear that we expect not only to maintain the footprint and facilities and plants that we have in Canada, the supply chain that we have in Canada, but our expectation is that we grow it,” she said. “If you’re going to sell cars in Canada, we expect you to have a footprint in Canada. I think that’s a pretty simple notion.”

Meanwhile, workers on both sides of the border appear to be at risk. The tariff declaration prompted Stellantis, owner of the Jeep, Ram, Chrysler, Dodge and Fiat brands, to pause production at some of its assembly plants in Mexico and Canada, including Windsor Assembly in Ontario. That pause also hit U.S. workers, with temporary layoffs at plants in Michigan and Indiana. The facilities in those states support production in Canada and Mexico.

Reckless and dangerous

Unifor's position stands in contrast to what the UAW leader told reporters last week after an appearance at the Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University. Fain said that even if the Detroit Three slide production to the United States, “there’s plenty of work to go around for all of us.”

Any permanent job losses would be the responsibility of the automakers, Fain said, and likely the result of prioritizing short-term profitability over long-term worker welfare.

“At the end of the day, this is what the corporations are doing. They’re trying to pit worker against worker, in America, plant against plant, and if that doesn't work, they pit workers in one country against workers in another country,” Fain said.

Fain praised tariffs, noting that Michigan auto jobs can return “immediately” once tariffs pressure U.S. automakers to add shifts at underutilized plants — and that “corporate greed” is the only reason carmakers would raise prices.

But the two-way trade in automotive goods of roughly $160 billion per year is “split virtually down the middle in near perfect balance” between both countries, a delicate relationship that Trump threatens under tariffs, Payne said.

The UAW has called on U.S. automakers to swallow the additional costs associated with tariffs on behalf of their shareholders, workers and customers. 

Trump, however, appears uninterested in funding the auto industry's transition back home or in suppressing automaker attempts to raise costs.

When asked whether he felt concerned over automakers raising prices, Trump told NBC News he “couldn’t care less,” contradicting reports from The Wall Street Journal that said he cautioned automaker executives meeting at the White House not to raise prices: “No, I never said that. I couldn’t care less if they raise prices, because people are going to start buying American-made cars.”

Canada investment

When Ford, GM and Stellantis agreed to multibillion-dollar investments in Canadian assembly plants during contract bargaining in 2023, the companies were not running afoul of Trump’s updated trade policies. 

The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a successor to the North American Free Trade Agreement and signed during the first Trump administration in 2018, permitted further investment abroad. Fain, who told reporters that he has spoken with Unifor about tariffs, said he had a positive experience working with the Canadians during Detroit Three contract negotiations.

That was a time when the UAW and Unifor were quick to highlight their shared interests. In March 2023, as both unions prepared to bargain for new contracts with Ford, GM and Stellantis later in the year, Payne spoke during the first day of the UAW’s special bargaining convention in Detroit.

She delivered a message focused on building worker power together.

“In the months and years and decades to come, we will do great things together. Of that I have no doubt. We will do great things. We will do good for our members. We will continue to change this world. And when future generations reflect back on this time — let the record show that our two great unions stood together, shoulder-to-shoulder, in solidarity,” she said, according to a transcript of her remarks.

Unifor represents about 40,000 hourly autoworkers, half of whom work at the Detroit Three in Canada and another 17,000 at auto parts suppliers. Comparatively, UAW membership hit 375,161 in 2024, partially driven by a successful organizing drive of Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee. That marks an increase from 370,239 members in 2023 but down from 383,003 in 2022.

Deep ties in Canada

Canada’s first auto union presence was an extension of the UAW, formed in 1937 following a strike at General Motors' Oshawa, Ontario, plant. 

Under Bob White, the legendary president of the Canadian Auto Workers, the branch split off and formed an independent union in 1984. Since then, it merged with others to form Unifor in 2013. 

Several factors, representing a blend of economic and political differences, contributed to the split between the CAW and the UAW, according to Marick Masters, professor emeritus and labor expert at Wayne State University. The CAW perceived the U.S. wing as too conciliatory to management, he said, and that combined with intense international competition at the time to drive apart the two groups.

“Autonomy to determine their own destiny also factored into the equation, as the former CAW has merged with other major unions to become Unifor,” Masters said. “Interestingly, the UAW attempted to merge with the Steelworkers and Machinists (unions) in the 1990s, but the leadership of the three unions overreached and were unable to consummate the combination.”

Masters noted the two autoworker unions are caught up now in the vortex of relations between the United States and Canada, and the Detroit Three must navigate the effects of the tariffs in determining products to manufacture in Canada.

“It is a highly fluid situation which lies in decisions significantly beyond the control of the unions in both countries. One key factor to keep in mind regarding the existing situation in terms of the Big Three's production-location decisions across the Northern U.S. border is the differential in labor costs,” Masters said. “The companies want to preserve their competitive advantage in Canada in this regard.”

Losing auto plants

While Fain insisted his support of tariffs isn’t an attack on Unifor, he added that plenty of U.S. auto jobs had been lost to Canada over the years.

The Detroit Three shuttered over 60 facilities in the United States over the past 30 years that NAFTA has been in effect, according to the UAW, and those that remain operate below full capacity.

“The minivans used to be made in St. Louis. There’s work that went from there to Canada. The Charger and Challenger that is going to Canada was supposed to be made in Belvidere. That got shifted,” Fain said. “We’re not fighting over that, we’re not fighting them over those things, but at the end of the day, there’s plenty of work to go around for all of us, but this is all about holding these companies accountable.”

Dimitry Anastakis, the L.R. Wilson and R.J. Currie Chair in Canadian Business History at the University of Toronto, said historically speaking, there’s some case to be made that a lot of labor intensive manufacturing got shifted to Canada in the years after a 1965 trade agreement between the countries known as the Auto Pact. 

“Bob White used to always say that the health care difference in Canada was like slapping $1,500 on the hood of a car in terms of cost savings,” he said.

But automotive labor has diminished in Canada since the early 2000s, according to Anastakis, as the industries across North America became further entwined. 

“They’re all part of the same industry. It’s not necessarily who is taking jobs from whom, it's the same industry,” he said. “No one is stealing from anybody. There’s shrinkage on both sides of the border.”

Last year, the UAW began calling out Stellantis over what the union said were the company's plans to move Dodge Durango production from Detroit to the Windsor Assembly Plant. The union's leadership, which didn't reference Unifor or Canadian autoworkers in its comments on the situation, had threatened a potential national strike over Stellantis' U.S. product commitments.

In January, however, after Trump was sworn in and following the unexpectedly early departure of Carlos Tavares as CEO, Stellantis announced it would build the next-generation Durango in Detroit and restart the idled Belvidere Assembly Plant in Illinois, which it had committed to doing during 2023 contract negotiations with the UAW. The union ultimately backed off its strike threat.

Reshoring hurdles

As the Free Press has reported, automakers are not able to quickly move production. Car manufacturers and parts suppliers make multibillion-dollar investments in plants, technology, equipment and new vehicles many years ahead of when the cars and trucks hit dealership lots. In addition to final vehicle assembly, many small factories must remain close by to fulfill the “just in time” production system the U.S. adheres to.

Breakage fees for canceling existing contracts with Canadian suppliers could rise to $500 million per facility, with the increased costs likely being passed onto U.S. customers, according to new data from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

Rather than an ultimatum, Candace Laing, president and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement that the tariff declaration should instead be “part of a path to real negotiation, ultimately leading to long-term partnership focused on continental economic security and resilience.”

Detroit in particular has a lot to lose in a trade war with Canada. The chamber said it ranks in the top three U.S. cities most export-dependent on Canada.

“The world is waking up today to a reality that Canada has been living with for months. Businesses around the world have had their uncertainty expanded, the effects of which will undoubtedly boomerang to Canada as well,” Laing said in the statement. “This chain reaction of tariffs and counter-tariffs will have a real and distressing economic impact on Americans, Canadians and the global economy.”

Shifting production at a single facility requires an average capital investment of $2.3 billion and takes between one and a half to three years to build from planning to completion, the chamber also said. Canada exports about 1.5 million fully assembled vehicles to the United States each year, accounting for nearly 10% of domestic U.S. car sales, and it purchases about 2 million new vehicles per year. To pick up that slack, U.S. automakers would need to construct six new assembly plants in the United States, without accommodating for the UAW's suggestion of increasing plant utilization.

Unifor support

Meanwhile, Unifor has worked closely with officials at the Detroit Three automakers to shield the companies from tariff impacts. 

John D’Agnolo, president of Unifor Local 200, chair of the Auto Council for Unifor, and chair of Ford's Master Bargaining unit, told the Free Press that tens of thousands of jobs on both sides of the border hang in the balance. 

“Now, just as soon as we get the engines done, we bring them over,” D'Agnolo said. “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.”

Rather than bickering over who is taking whose jobs, Payne said a much larger threat to the North American auto industry is looming overseas.

“The other big problem here that’s being ignored while the U.S. is fighting with its neighbor is that we have capacity that has been created in China that dwarfs the entire North American industry,” Payne said. “We’re going to be even further behind, and five years from now, much more vulnerable to the incredible industrial capacity China has built up.”

Free Press senior autos writer Jamie L. LaReau contributed to this report.

Jackie Charniga covers General Motors for the Free Press. Reach her at jcharniga@freepress.com. Contact Eric D. Lawrence: elawrence@freepress.com. Become a subscriber. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters.