The President of Unifor Local 200 says regardless of the arbitrator's decision, the dispute over the last couple of years has been worth it.
John D'Agnolo says the union is ecstatic about the ruling but also knew the importance to fight for workers in Canada losing their jobs.
He says that now that the decision has been made, they need to sit down with the company to see what's going to happen next.
"We really don't know yet until we get across the table from the company and start negotiating with them," he says. "Then we can inform the members of exactly what direction they want to go, they'll always be included. We'll obviously have a meeting with the members and say 'this is what they're looking at,' but we don't know that yet."
D'Agnolo says it's still very frustrating knowing what they had bargained, but this company has a history of moving work to places that don't pay well.
"They knew all along they were building a plant in Mexico and they reason being is that they can pay them a few dollars an hour. It's very frustrating that we don't have governments involved to stop this type of stuff," says D'Agnolo.
He says that it's not often that roles are reversed when decisions are being made.
D'Agnolo says they now have to sit down with the company and negotiate on what the next steps will be.
"If we can't come to a decision it will go back to the arbitrator," says D'Agnolo. "We've got a lot of work to do. We're going to sit down with the company and see what we can do. Obviously we'd love to see the plant stay open, we'd love to see product there."
As AM800 news reported, an arbitrator upheld the union's position Thursday that the company violated its collective agreement with Local 200 when it closed the plant in west Windsor and moved the operation to Mexico.
Nemak announced in 2019 that it was shutting down the Windsor facility and moving it to Mexico.
The plant is currently closed but before the closing the union represented roughly 200 employees.
The current collective agreement for Nemak's Windsor operation was reached in 2015 and was suppose to expire expire in 2023.
- with files from AM800's Rusty Thomson