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Job security has always been a paramount concern for the trade union movement. This article explores the ways that unions used collective bargaining to gain a measure of job security for their members in the face of deindustrialization as unionized factories in North America began to close in large numbers after the 1970s. These new measures included advance notice, severance pay, plant closing moratoria, restrictions placed on plant movements, transfer rights, and expanding the scope of collective 'social' bargaining to cover training and adjustment. In some sectors, such as automotive, collective bargaining has also been extended into areas normally left to management. The price was often high. Eventually some unions, notably the Canadian Auto Workers (established 1985; part of Unifor after 2013), prioritized winning new capital investments and product lines for unionized plants in their negotiations, though often at the cost of jobs, wage freezes or reductions, and other concessions. By focusing upon auto sector deindustrialization in Canada since the 1980s, we draw lessons from more recent union bargaining strategies, and how they constitute an important element of worker responses to industrial job loss and manufacturing closure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last quarter of the 20th century, worker ownership emerged as a popular option for North American workers trying to save their mills or factories from closing. Most of these efforts eventually failed, sometimes at great financial cost to workers who gambled away their savings or pensions. Yet a few worker buyouts succeeded over the long term. This article examines two of these success stories, one on either side of the Canada-United States border, while situating them within the wider history of worker ownership in North America. When the United Steelworkers of America engineered the worker buyout of Algoma Steel in 1992, Canada's third largest integrated steel-maker, it became the largest worker owned industry in North America. Before that, Weirton Steel had been the largest since 1984 when independent steelworkers there bought the mill from National Steel. If worker ownership offered short-termed relief to workers facing plant closings, its longer-term viability is highly suspect. Many worker-owned firms shut during the next down-turn. Both Weirton and Algoma eventually reverted back to corporate ownership, albeit this time inside Indian-based multinationals, but worker ownership saved the two steel mills and helped modernize them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]