'A slap in the face': Foreign workers still building NextStar battery plant in Windsor: CBTU

Canada’s Building Trades Unions is demanding the federal government intervene as it alleges local workers are being “sidelined” by foreign employees.

In a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, obtained by CTV News, CBTU members say they have had several “fruitless” meetings with NextStar Energy and LG to secure work they say their members can perform.

“Canadian workers are being sidelined without consequence,” the letter reads. “For our members in Essex-Kent, the current state of affairs is intolerable.”

CBTU is made up of 12 skilled trades unions, including painters, carpenters, plumbers, Teamsters, elevator and rail operators to name a few.

In a statement to CTV News, CBTU Executive Director Sean Strickland says they have 1,600 workers at the factory on Windsor’s east end but they also have 180 Essex-Kent millwrights and ironwokers who are currently unemployed and available to do the work.

“This has never been a case of ‘knowledge transfer’ or ‘specialized knowledge’,” the CBTU letter reads. “This is the brazen displacement of Canadian workers in favour of international workers, by major international corporations thumbing their noses at both the Government of Canada, taxpayers, and our skilled trades workers.”

NextStar Energy however says the CBTU complaint is “inaccurate”, while also admitting four percent of the people working inside the factory are non-Canadian.

“At present, there are 1,975 workers on site who are readying the plant for launch. All of those workers are Canadian except for 72”, the NextStar Energy statement reads. “These workers are hired temporarily by the suppliers to install proprietary equipment and are a requirement of warranty obligations.”

A statistic quoted by Prime Minster Trudeau during a news conference Thursday in Alliston, Ont.

The federal government is giving Honda five billion dollars in incentives to build electric vehicles and EV batteries in Ontario.

NextStar Energy also tells CTV News, the “projected” 2,500 jobs at NextStar “will be filled by Canadians”.