Local 88, the union representing 2,900 workers at General Motors’ Ingersoll, Ontario plant (CAMI) in Canada, will need more time to reach a labor agreement with the automaker. The Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union, which elected to begin early negotiations with GM in February, wanted to deliver a tentative agreement to its members at a meeting this Sunday, but the event has been cancelled to allow more time for negotiations.
The union, which has been in talks with General Motors for several weeks, expects negotiations to continue next week, with Local 88 president Dan Borthwick saying that he is certain that a deal will be agreed upon before the current labor contract ends in September.
The CAMI plant currently manufacturers the very popular and highly successful Chevrolet Equinox and GMC Terrain crossovers; in order to produce an even higher amount of both vehicles while circumventing CAMI’s bottleneck, General Motors instituted a creative process that involves the transportation of unpainted Equinox bodies to GM’s Oshawa, Ontario plant, which then completes the assembly of the vehicles.
Earlier in March, General Motors announced plans to invest $250 million in CAMI that will update flexible body shop equipment and tooling for future vehicle production. The investment will convert the plant to a flexible manufacturing facility that will provide the ability to produce a wider array a vehicles and body styles at a lower cost, according to General Motors.
GM Authority expect these new global vehicles to include the replacement for the current Chevrolet Equinox, which is expected in 2015. Compared to the current Equinox that is currently only available in North America, the next-generation Equinox will become a global model utilizing GM’s upcoming D2 global vehicle architecture shared with the 2015 Chevrolet Cruze compact sedan, among a plethora of other like-sized vehicles.
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