The auto industry is taking a hit on both sides of the border due to the protest shutting down the Ambassador Bridge.
The economic effects are building with Toyota, Ford, GM and Stellantis all slowing production this week due to parts shortages. The demonstration, now in its fourth day, was started to empower truck drivers who didn’t want to get vaccinated from COVID-19, but that working-class sentiment isn’t resonating.
Manufacturing at Ford’s engine plants in Windsor has resumed, but the decision whether to shorten shifts or halt production altogether remains day to day.
In the meantime, truckers are forced to drive the extra 60 miles to the Blue Water Bridge in Port Huron to get into Canada. Backups have regularly extended over 10 miles.
Unifor Local 200 President John Dagnolo says the demonstrators should focus their anger elsewhere. “I think the protest should be more focused on the people that are making decisions and not protesting at the border, which impacts not just the community in the Unifor workers in Windsor but across Canada because there’s a lot of workers that are affected by this.”
Dagnolo says when there’s a shutdown or shift cut, workers without seniority aren’t getting paid because they do not have Supplemental Unemployment Benefits, which pays workers when they are unemployed due to incidents like a temporary work stoppage.
“The newer workers do not have that. They send them home [and] they have no money,” Dagnolo says.
Dagnolo says tensions are running high.
“You’re gonna have the people that believe in vaccinations. You’re gonna have people that don’t believe in vaccinations. You have a lot of internal issues happening as it is and now with the border, it just adds that much fuel to the fires,” he says.
Dagnolo says about 90% of the workers at the plants he covers are vaccinated.
On Thursday, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer called on Canadian authorities to end the days-long protest blocking traffic at the bridge and to “take all necessary and appropriate steps” to reopen immediately.
“It is imperative that Canadian local, provincial, and national governments de-escalate this economic blockade,” Whitmer said in a statement.