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CAMI, a unionized Suzuki-General Motors auto plant in Ontario, attempted to construct a workplace characterized by worker commitment and cooperative labor-management relations. These efforts failed. There was a 5-week strike in the Fall of 1992 at the plant. While CAMI was in the start-up mode, labor-management relations were relatively harmonious and the working environment relaxed. With the onset of full production all this changed, and the meaning of "lean" production became clearer. Workers regularly contested the dictates of lean production at CAMI. Interest and participation in quality circle and suggestion programs declined. Proponents of lean production are likely to define CAMI as an aberration by involving the partial implementation thesis or stressing the militancy of the union. In one respect only are they right. The strike does distinguish CAMI as exceptional, at least until there are similar manifestations of industrial conflict in other transplants. However, the conditions that produced the strike appear in unionized as well as non-unionized transplants.