More than half of Oshawa’s new production hires are women for the first time in the plant’s history.
General Motors on Monday began assembling Chevrolet Silverado HD pickups on a second shift, just two months after the first truck rolled off the line at the reopened Oshawa Assembly Plant.
GM first announced the $1.3-billion retooling of Oshawa in the fall of 2020.
In November, the automaker announced the hiring and training of 1,800 new employees to support two shifts of production.
“Adding a second shift of truck production so quickly after launch continues Oshawa’s long history of speed and agility and helps GM meet strong customer demand for its largest and most important market segment,” GM Canada President Scott Bell said in a statement.
GM Canada on Dec. 23, 2021 said on Twitter that the Oshawa-built truck bearing vehicle identification number (VIN) 001 was on its way to Paillé Chevrolet-Buick-GMC in Berthierville, Que., winner of the rights to purchase the first Oshawa-built Silverado.
The one-year turnaround for Oshawa’s retooling was among the quickest in GM history, Bell previously said.
As first highlighted by Automotive News Canada, more than half of Oshawa’s new production hires are women for the first time in the plant’s history, “helping to achieve GM’s commitment to be the most inclusive company in the world,” the company said, as it shined the spotlight on five women working at the factory.
“And with a new, diverse workforce that includes more women in production roles, the impact of an inclusive culture is immediately noticeable the moment you step inside the plant,” Bell said.
Canada's industry minister took to Twitter to praise the automaker.
GM Canada received more than 13,000 resumes for the available jobs. Over three months last spring, GM put about 5,000 applicants through door building.
For the time being, Oshawa is the only plant in GM’s portfolio to exclusively produce Chevrolet — and not GMC-badged — pickups. It will also be the automaker’s only truck plant capable of building both heavy- and light-duty trucks. For now, the factory is only producing Silverado HD.
The automaker builds pickups at three other dedicated factories in North America. In pre-pandemic 2019, GM facilities in Flint, Mich., and Fort Wayne, Ind., produced about 185,000 and 300,000 pickups, respectively, while its plant in Silao, Mexico, built 365,000, according to the Automotive News Research & Data Center in Detroit.
