Unifor says GM to consider Oshawa plant options and respond by Jan. 7

WINDSOR, Ont. — Unifor President Jerry Dias said Thursday he remains “optimistic” that General Motors will cancel recently-announced plans to close its Oshawa assembly plant at the end of 2019.

Dias said he and Unifor officials spent two hours outlining for some of GM’s top executives in Detroit a series of options and solutions to keep the Oshawa plant operating beyond 2019.

Dias said GM executives did not “unilaterally close the door on keeping the plant open.” The meeting didn’t include GM CEO Mary Barra, Dias said.

Key players at the meeting for GM were Alicia Boler-Davis, head of global manufacturing; Gerald Johnson, head of North American manufacturing, and new GM Canada president Travis Hester.

“They said they had listened to our proposals and would get back to us one way or the other by Jan. 7,” added Dias during a press briefing at Unifor Local 444/200 offices across the Detroit River in Windsor. “I am optimistic that they understand the importance of the Canadian market to their global operations.”

Dias said those proposals include launching GM’s new Blazer in Oshawa rather than Mexico, extending truck production in Oshawa, extending two existing passenger vehicle programs and bringing product back to Canada from Mexico.

“If those products can go from Canada to Mexico, they can certainly come back,” said Dias. “The ball is now clearly in GM’s court.”

GM said in November it would stop the truck shuttle program that sees the automaker ship unfinished outgoing models of the GMC Sierra and Chevrolet Silverado to Oshawa from a plant in Indiana. The automaker also said it will stop building the Chevy Impala and Cadillac XTS.

Dias pointed out that Canadians produce more than 300,000 GM vehicles every year and that Canadians consumers buy just as many.

By contrast, he said, Mexico produces more than one million GM vehicles but Mexican consumers buy less than one-quarter of that amount.

Blaming declining sales of passenger vehicles across the automotive industry and a switch in focus to autonomous and electric vehicles, GM announced Nov. 26 that it would no longer allot product to its Oshawa assembly plant after December 2019, throwing 2,500 Unifor members out of work.

The plant, which once employed 23,000 workers at the height of its production in the 1980s, has been a major part of the Oshawa economy for 100 years.

The scheduled closure will also affect thousands of spinoff jobs in the nearby parts supply industry which rely upon producing parts for the massive plant which dominates the city’s landscape, Unifor said.

GM’s Oshawa announcement came 10 years after the Canadian, Ontario and U.S. governments delivered US$62 billion in bailouts to the company after the automaker filed for bankruptcy protection in 2008.

Unifor calls GM’s decision to stop production at Oshawa a betrayal.

In its Thursday news release, GM Canada appeared to hit back at the union, saying it had “repaid all of its loans and has fulfilled or surpassed all the terms” of the federal and provincial bailouts.

“The government support enabled GM to continue its Canadian operations after 2009 and helped manage the Canadian economy through the 2009 financial crisis,” the news release reads.

GM Canada also said it was “committed to Canada and we are not going anywhere,” pointing to continued operations at CAMI Assembly in Ingersoll, Ont., and at its engine and transmission plant in St. Catharines, Ontario.

“There are no plans for operating changes at those operations at this time,” the release reads.

Unifor officials also said that during collective bargaining negotiations in 2016, GM committed to keeping Oshawa open for the duration of the four-year agreement which expires Sept. 21, 2020.

GM, which is implementing a massive company-wide restructuring plan designed to save $6 billion by the end of 2020, also announced it is closing assembly plants in Lordstown, Ohio and Hamtramck, Mich. Another undisclosed assembly plant outside North America and a U.S. propulsion plant will also close.

As a result of the closures and a downturn in passenger car sales, GM said it would stop making vehicles such as the Chevrolet Volt, Impala, Cruze and Buick Lacrosse as well as the Cadillac CT6 and XTS models.