General Motors executives are preparing to meet with representatives from Unifor this week, the worker’s union representing employees at the automaker’s doomed Oshawa Assembly Plant in Ontario, Canada.
According to Automotive News, GM will meet with the union this week to discuss the automaker’s plans to stop producing cars at the Oshawa site, which has been building GM products since 1908. It’s not clear which GM execs will be attendance, with the automaker saying it meets with Unifor often and does not “discuss those meetings externally.”
The Oshawa site builds the Cadillac XTS and Chevrolet Impala – two aging full-size sedans that GM recently announced would be put out of production.
Employees at the plant also complete final assembly on Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups destined for sale in the area, which arrive at the plant half-finished from GM’s pickup plant in Indiana. The pickup program is slated to end next year as well.
But while the outlook is bleak, Unifor isn’t giving up. Unifor leader Jerry Dias vowed to stop GM from leaving Canada and also said he would make the automaker regret leaving the country. “GM is leaving Canada, and we’re not going to let them,” Dias told Canada’s CTV News. “We are going to waste General Motors over the next year. Waste them.”
GM Canada president David Paterson recognized union members had “strong opinions” about the automaker’s decision to leave but also said the company’s focus was on helping workers where it could as the automaker prepares to shut down shop in the southern Ontario town.
“We have an obligation and duty to work with our union to determine — in addition to our pensions and the income supplements our employees will get — what things we can provide,” Paterson told CTV.
He also said GM wanted to help displaced workers find new employment, with two companies, Ontario Power Generation and local construction firm Aecon, approaching GM Canada looking for skilled workers.
“They have huge needs in terms of millwrights, boiler makers, electricians and a number of areas where our employees are especially suited to that type of work and have great experience,” Paterson said.
Unifor has set up a webpage and started a campaign called ‘Save Oshawa GM‘ to help further its cause. The website says there is “no justification whatsoever” for closing down plants like Oshawa and that “any plans that result in Oshawa being ‘unallocated’ next year are completely contrary to the binding commitments made by GM in our 2016 negotiations with the company.”
The GM-Unifor meeting is schedule for December 20th. Stay tuned to GM Authority for more Oshawa Assembly Plant news as the discussions approach.
(source: CTV News, Automotive News)
Comments
Unions and President Trump agree, GM and Miss Mary “Machete” Barra are losers of the highest degree and running the company into the ground.
No wonder Michigan and several other Mid-West States’ union members voted Trump in a majority. And this year saw the Canadian Liberal party in Ontario defeated in a landslide by the Pro-Trump Conservative Party.
Karma for firing so many hardworking Americans and Canadians and destroying their families’ Christmas holidays this year and for many more to come.
THANK YOU UNIFOR AND PRESIDENT TRUMP FOR STANDING UP FOR THE AVERAGE PERSON, NOT THE ELITIST GLOBALIST PIGS.
I WILL NOT BUY GM AGAIN EVEN THOUGH I WORKED IN OSHAWA FOR 15+ YEARS! ONLY IF THEY REINSTATE CANADIAN AUTO PRODUCTION THEN I MIGHT RECONSIDER.
You and your buddies, ‘not buying’, are a significant reason for this situation. Going from almost a million vehicles on 3 shifts to ??a couple of hundred thousand?? on 1 shift, does not indicate a shortage (there is room for more vehicles, in the picture/lot!).
The ‘burger stores’ have had flat/+ 2% improving sales – is this a growth business? They also have labour unrest.
GM’s ‘error in business’ is not having vehicles with the features/quality/price, of the better selling vehicles. Total vehicles sold have general increased over recent years.
(over the years, I have saved money on a factory order – couldn’t order a (o/s) colour, on a hatchback that was popular on the sedan!
You may want to check your files. Oshawa began as a GM partner in 1908. The plant assembled Buick knock down kits that were ex[ported from Michigan. Later, the plant also built Chevrolets in the 1930’s onward. The plant has two lines.
Line 1 ;for front wheel drive cars
Line 2 for rear wheel drive trucks and cars.
GM heritage of producing GM cars and trucks for over 110 years. Plant benefitted with the 1965 Auto Free Trade agreement
with US and Canada.
You’re right, Ed. I was aware of the plant’s history, but the plant was officially consolidated as an official GM plant on November 7th, 1953, as per GM’s info here:
https://plants.gm.com/Facilities/public/ca/en/oshawa/news.html
I’ve updated the story to be more clear, however. Thanks for pointing this out.
And the trucks we build are not half completed when they arrive in Oshawa. They are just empty metal bodies shells and bare frames!! Shame on gm!! The jobs they say they have found us are also just part time contract work and are not full time jobs with benefits! It was just a “pr” stunt to try to save face to the Canadian public who will no longer be purchasing gm vehiceles until a new product has been allocated to oshawa!!
Here is the harsh reality. Canada in the big picture matters little.
The country is smaller in sales than many states. They hold little advantage in mfg there due to the added cost of goverment programs. Also the militant demanding unions there have pretty much sealed their own fate with unreasonable demands.
The truth is Oshawa should be a signal to the other plants they are expendable to a company that has so much capacity they can find cheaper places to consolidate models in American plants as the will do.
Lordstown has a chance yet because they had a union that worked with GM. But they got caught with the wrong product at the wrong time. I expect they will go the same way as Springhill with a few years down and back with a CUV.
The news of losing these cars was well known on the web and from the last few years of inaction it was no shock to most of us of the Oshawa closing.
Unifor had time to work this out but yet they failed their workers.
Also you want job security do not work assembly lines. Been there done that lost my job too. The union cost me my job. But they did me a favor as I am 25 years in on a job I really went to d hook for and make better money with no union.