CAW president Ken Lewenza isn't interested in following the lead by his American counterpart who will be meeting with Fiat SpA in Italy this week in bid to bring jobs to the U.S. for its suppliers.

UAW chief Bob King will tour Fiat plants as well as try to convince Fiat suppliers to move facilities to UAW-represented plants in North America to produce parts for a more integrated Fiat-Chrysler and an upcoming raft of redesigned vehicles. But Lewenza said that would only add to the overcapacity within the North American parts sector.

"Bob's obviously advocating for work for Michigan," said Lewenza. "That's fine but there's lots of capacity in the auto parts sector today. What we'd like to do and have been doing is convincing the employer to deal with their traditional, mature autoparts suppliers because a lot of them are hurting. I don't think there's going to be much growth in auto manufacturing in terms of sales and bringing Italian suppliers to Michigan might be competing with existing suppliers that already have parts capacity."

Lewenza as well as other CAW executives visited Fiat's Italian operations earlier this year to get a look at the automaker's World Class Manufacturing process.

"We talk to the Big Three all the time about the supply base because of the downward pressure they're under."

CANADIANS USING TRADE-INS

More Canadians purchasing new vehicles are trading in their old cars, according to a study by J.D. Power and Associates.

According to the report, almost three of every 10 new-vehicle transactions in Canada include a trade, up almost one full percentage point from the same period last year.

So far this year, the average age of a trade-in has been 6.4 years, with a typical odometer reading of 111,379 kilometres, representing slightly younger vehicles on average in comparison to last year's data.

Of these, 18.9 per cent have been "upside down," where the loan payoff amount on the trade exceeds the car's cash value, an increase of two percentage points from 2009.

The results indicate that dealerships are becoming more "aggressive" in their acceptance of trade-ins, the report said.

gmacaluso@windsorstar.com.