Community,Labor,and Environmental Participation in Industrial Recruitment: East Asian Automobile Investment in Canada in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

The construction of nine Japanese and one South Korean automobile assembly plants in the North American industrial heartland was a major feature in the transformation of global automobile production in the 1980s. In this article, the authors compare the community, labor, and environmental involvements in and impacts on the Canadian industrial recruitment of four East Asian assembly plants. The authors found that Canadian transplant recruitment has not lived up to its promise to ameliorate local unemployment and generate commercial and residential growth, nor have these transplant sitings in rural communities generated major environmental controversies. Instead they have produced single-issue citizen campaigning, administrative resolution, and elite accommodation. Organized labor represents workers at CAMI, the General Motors-Suzuki joint venture, but its efforts at the three other flexible production facilities will be difficult given Canada's economic woes, the overcapacity problem, and the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement.