By A.D. Frat
Workers at Titan Tool and Die in Windsor walk the picket line chanting, “Titan lied, they took our pensions, we’re locked out.”
This current fight is part of a protracted battle between the union, Unifor Local 195, and the Szecsei family which has owned Titan for two generations now. For over a decade, workers have described how in contract after contract they’ve given the company concessions on wages and pensions. They’ve given so much that their wages effectively have remained the same since their 2012 contract.
One worker described how Titan demanded steep concessions that amounted to $4 million: “The next year they bought a plant in the States. I wonder where they got the money for that – I thought they said they were struggling.”
The cruel irony is that while labour generated enough wealth over the decades for the company to expand and acquire two additional factories, the workers were rewarded not with shared prosperity but with consistent wage suppression and cuts to their pensions and benefits.
Unifor President Lana Payne has underscored the direness of the moment, stating in a recent press release on the automotive industry: “This is the fight of our lives, [and] we may need to be prepared to lay it all on the line. We’re up against a US President who has been very clear about what he wants – he wants auto jobs and is willing to use extortion and threats on a daily basis to get them. And it is us – collectively – that is standing in his way.”
Under the pretext of Trump’s tariff war, Titan predatorially decided to move a significant portion of their tooling to their US plant. The Windsor workers refused to see their jobs roll out the door and declared a blockade, demanding the return of their work. The company’s justification, according to union lawyer Anthony Dale, was that “the tooling was being removed because of quality concerns.”
As has become consistent with this country’s courts and labour boards, the presiding judge granted an injunction that deemed blocking the shipments a criminal act. One picketer noted that the judge wrote no expiration date for this order.
This seeming “oversight” is now being used to limit the number of plant entrances the union is permitted to picket during the lockout, effectively curtailing their democratic and labour rights. This maneuver allowed the company to ship raw materials out of the plant, further eroding the workers’ leverage in their struggle for fair treatment from a hostile employer.
The workers witnessed the materials being moved to the US, while some work was shifted to Futura Tools—a company located just across the driveway from Titan Tool and Die, and also owned by the Szecsei family.
It’s apparent that the recent hostility towards the union is an attempt to further erode previous gains to the point where they are level with the Szecsei family’s two non-union plants – using their non-union workforce effectively as strikebreakers.
What’s also clear is the methodical campaign to weaken the union’s leverage step by step: thirty-three workers were laid off before the previous collective agreement ended on July 31, leaving only 27 of the original 60 to defend the picket line. Titan Tool and Die made little attempt to bargain, choosing instead to simply lock the doors.
Regardless of which major political party is in power, companies and governments are collaborating to trample worker rights. We saw it with CN Rail in 2024, CUPW in December 2024, Air Canada last month after a mere 12 hours on the picket line, and now with the Titan Tool and Die workers.
For far too long, workers have seen their rights trampled, their wages suppressed, and their pensions cut. We need an active, independent, and united labour movement to push back against this assault. Going to work, paying taxes, and hoping that electoral politics will save us is not going to cut it – and it never has.
Since 2008, we have witnessed a consistent erosion of the standard of living for working people in Canada. Meanwhile, the share of the country’s wealth held by the top 1 percent has ballooned – soaring from 8.1 percent in 1980, to 13.3 percent in 2008, to an estimated 24.3-29 percent today.
This trend will not stop on its own. The only ones who can stop it are the people who actually create the wealth in the first place: workers. The unity and militancy of the Titan Tool and Die workers shines a light on the way forward.
[Photo: Unifor]
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