Buzz Hargrove Quotations

We're going to hang with the deadline, ... We either have a settlement or we'll have a shutdown tomorrow night at midnight. We're working toward a settlement and we hope the company is doing the same thing.

What they're saying to us is that they are selling our jobs out to the market. We're not going to take that. Sunday or early Monday we will likely tell them that we will strike them.

working on finalizing an agreement that balances the needs of the CAW, our employees and the company.

We faced one of the most difficult challenges in bargaining that we have in a good many years, ... the Ford workers probably knew that more than anyone, given the amount of downtime they've had, given the uncertainty, the media speculation of workplace closures and layoffs.

We're not afraid of change, we embrace change. But not at the expense of our members and their families and their communities.

Workers everywhere are just starting to say, 'Look, we're fed up with this. We're going to start demanding that we have respect and we have job security and we have decent wages and benefits,'

We are not backing away from the pattern,

What we did here was based on relationships and commitments by Ford to its workforce and the long-term relationship with our union and the importance they place on us,

Mr. Green stated I will call you early tomorrow to let you know if and when GM is prepared to table an economic offer, ... It is not clear how much progress can be made until the pattern agreement is tabled.

Right now, as the president of the union, I'm looking to moving to DaimlerChrysler,

On the major issues that face us, we have made absolutely no progress at all,

I have decided in 1996 that the Chrysler workers will lead the bargaining,

But we're also far enough apart, ... that we could end up in the ditch tonight.

If I was making a prediction today, we'll be on the picket line, forced there by DaimlerChrysler management,

Given the current economic context that we're in, this is not the richest-ever agreement that we have bargained, but it's a responsible bargaining, recognizing all of the issues that we face,

He says it's much more costly for them to do the same thing and he wanted to be absolutely clear that that's not acceptable and that we have to find a way to deal with that in bargaining.

We took a very hard line in support of our members, that we could not and would not accept outsourcing.

We thought we had all of this behind us this morning, and now we're back to another couple of issues that are sticklers for us,

I think that was a short-term view of the values of Canada.

Just because we're a low wage economy and you can get someone to do our job cheaper, you don't have the right to sell our jobs as long as we're meeting the commitment of quality and productivity.

Our union does not resist change, so long as we can manage it in a way that does not threaten our members.

Our major problem is imports and lack of ability to export into the emerging growth markets of Asia. They ship into North America at their leisure and they close their markets to anything built in Canada and the United States.

I'm so frustrated and angry about this decision, I can't believe it. It's irresponsible at best. My worry is it's consistent with the Harper government's idea of letting the market decide, as opposed to looking after Canadian interests.

That's the only thing that he spoke against at almost every council meeting.

We have to solve that or it's a showstopper for sure.

We're close enough to do this, but far enough away to fall in the ditch, ... We're feeling somewhat better this morning, although we're not there.

We're certainly working towards a settlement and quite frankly, I'd like to do it before the 20th, given the state of the industry and the state of the companies, ... If we can do it early, I think that would be a credit to all of us.

We finally have the economic proposal on the table that does cover the pattern issue,

We've made a substantial amount of change, but no one is going to be thrown out of the street.

We have a new 1996 collective bargaining agreement, ... I think this is good for General Motors, CAW and all of our employees.

We had to negotiate solutions to some very tough problems with Ford in this bargaining,

We are optimistic today that we can avoid a strike. We could announce something today.

We're not going to have a rich agreement, but we're going to have a responsible agreement.

We're not going to come out of this without some pain.

We really did think we'd have this thing done late this morning or early afternoon, but it's become more difficult than we had anticipated, ... There's a lot of very difficult issues related to job security at all locations.

We thought this would be a lot easier than it's turned out to be,

We will move ahead and we will have a stronger position in terms of progressive politics down the road.

Unfortunately, I don't think they would be doing it this way if there was not going to be some negative news about changes. If there were no changes, they could just simply give us a phone call. But it doesn't look good.

We've had one strike in the last 30 years with Ford. It shows that they work a lot harder to get something that is mutually acceptable. That relationship, that history we think is our greatest strength going into bargaining.

We've had one strike in the last 30 years with Ford, ... It shows that they work a lot harder to get something that is mutually acceptable.

Every member of our union realizes it's not business as usual anymore.

There's a good mood, ... People know the union, and the company, by the way, have done an excellent job in terms of dealing with what was a very difficult situation.

The tone has changed clearly over the weekend and it would appear a settlement is imminent.

Things at the local table picked up a bit yesterday. For Chrysler to start doing local negotiations on a serious basis this early, it may very well be a signal they want to get a settlement,

The school of thinking of a number of people around here is that he's Canadian and he might want to prove that he's not tied to his past.

(It was) the strategy during the election that was carried out and mandated for me to carry out as the president, and I was suspended for that.

It was an extremely challenging situation that could have led to a shutdown. I believe our members will see the wisdom in what we have done here.

After some tough negotiations we have reached a tentative agreement. This has been a very difficult and challenging set of negotiations with General Motors and of course we anticipated that.

So we're going to give them the opportunity now to move off of that and try to get a settlement even before the 20th but failing that there will be a strike. And the last formal get-together we had with DaimlerChrysler they werfe just as tought then as they were prior to us selecting Ford.

This is not the richest settlement. There will be moderate improvements in most areas. I think it is a responsible response by Ford Motor Co. in some of the most difficult times that we've faced as an industry which means our union has to face it as well.

This is not the richest settlement ... There will be moderate improvements in most areas. I think it is a responsible response by Ford Motor Co. in some of the most difficult times that we've faced as an industry, which means our union has to face it as well.

This has been a very difficult and challenging set of negotiations with General Motors. The challenges we faced here didn't happen by chance. They happened because of the declining market share of General Motors, Ford and DaimlerChrysler.

They tabled a large number of offsets, some make sense as long as it doesn't disadvantage our members, ... But a number of those we're just not going to buy into.

They're demanding major outsourcing of our jobs, not because they need it but because they think they can make them somewhere else cheaper.

There is still such a vast difference in the costs it would be impossible to get close to our costs.

It was a tough set of bargaining, ... To get that kind of endorsement from the membership is just exhilarating.

It's about jobs ... and if you have less jobs how you deal with people.

Ford has asked me for an early morning meeting tomorrow, which indicates to me they wouldn't call us into a meeting unless they had some bad news for us.

It's going to strike a lot of Windsor families today when they get this news.

It shows that even in tough bargaining, if the union and the company meet their responsibilities, a deal can be reached,

It's a major restructuring. I don't want to downplay it,

It'll open up a lot of old wounds. These things aren't done without a lot of emotion.

It was pretty clear that they couldn't do anything by saying we led the way in improving wages, pensions and job security for people in a time when they were going the other way in the U.S.,

they build in Tokyo. They build in Hiroshima. They build anywhere they find a big enough dock to ship their vehicles over here.

That means two or three more vehicles per shift, ... That's good for General Motors but not for the people who build them.

That means two or three more vehicles per shift,

The CAW remains committed to strengthening working class politics and we will expand our financial support and efforts to work with other like-minded groups in our common goal of building a progressive alternative in our country.

I keep thinking it's going to be easier, and I must say it was at the other two companies.

I'm more optimistic today, we should be able to do this in the next few hours. The only way we couldn't is if they stuck to their position on reducing our relief and didn't solve the job security issues in St. Catharines, Windsor, Oshawa and Woodstock.

I'm up to the challenge. I love what I do and I'm not offended by somebody running at all.

I'm not very optimistic at this point. The big thing is the demand on jobs that they have, on outsourcing our jobs .Ê.Ê. to anywhere in the world that can do it cheaper.

I'm not very optimistic at this point, ... The big thing is the demand on jobs that they have, on outsourcing our jobs ... to anywhere in the world that can do it cheaper.

If you devolve all the powers to the provinces, what do you have left?

Clearly, in the wake of today's announcement, the long-run future of the St. Thomas assembly plant is in jeopardy.

Chrysler made it very clear to us when we were doing our probing to try to find out where we could get the best agreement on our issues without a strike that ... that if we didn't accepot their demands on outsourcing and (plant) closure that we could not get an agreement with them and they would forsce the dispute,

Chrysler made it very clear to us when we were doing our probing, to try to find out where we could get the best agreement on our issues without a strike, that . . . if we didn't accept their demands on outsourcing and (plant) closure that we could not get an agreement with them and they would force the dispute,

I don't see an issue out there that would cause us to be out on the street tomorrow at midnight.

I don't want to downplay what Cordiano and those guys did ... but at no time in the discussions did Ford say we can't (cut further) because of this (deal) with the government,

The cloth has been cut. The pattern is there,

The company was honest and frank with us, and together we were able to address those challenges in a manner that clearly satisfied our members.

Am I a little more optimistic? I guess you could say yes. The only problem we still have is there are still some offsets we find offensive.

All these issues are the same. The right wing and the employers are saying that people shouldn't have security, but people should have the ability to put roots down and buy a home and raise a family.

The likelihood of a strike tomorrow at midnight is greatly reduced.

The likelihood of a strike at midnight tomorrow is reduced substantially by the progress we made over the weekend.