GM issuing temporary layoffs
General Motors is temporarily laying off 255 workers at its Glendale Avenue plant in St. Catharines due to an ongoing strike in Ingersoll.
Workers at the CAMI assembly plant in Ingersoll took strike action on Sept. 17 after GM and Unifor failed to reach a new collective bargaining agreement when the old one expired that day.
The Glendale plant supplies CAMI with transmissions.
GM unit chairperson for St. Catharines Unifor Local 199 Tim McKinnon said workers at Glendale Avenue were notified of the layoffs Thursday morning.
The layoff notices take effect this coming Monday.
“We stand behind CAMI in their strike and their issues,” McKinnon said. “We hope the strike is over with soon, but we fully support them.”
The layoff notices affect 255 of the St. Catharines plant’s 1,300 workers. McKinnon said temporary work was found within the plant for some workers.
McKinnon said 90 per cent of the work in the St. Catharines transmission department goes to CAMI.
“When they go back to work, we’ll go back to work,” McKinnon said, adding there will be a bit of lag time because GM has built up some stock.
GM Canada said it also made “production adjustments” Thursday south of the border at operations in Spring Hill, Tenn., and Flint, Mich., as a result of the labour dispute.
The company said it is working to minimize short-term impacts.
“While General Motors of Canada and our Unifor partners have made very positive progress on several issues over the past weeks, the company is disappointed that we were not able to complete a new agreement,” GM said in a statement.
“We encourage Unifor to resume negotiations and to continue working together to secure a competitive agreement.”
CAMI’s Unifor Local 88 said its membership’s three major issues are job security, economics and contract language.
The union posted on its website that its master bargaining committee would formerly reach out to the company with the intention of continuing to negotiate toward a new collective agreement.
Unifor 199 members in St. Catharines ratified their last collective agreement covering hourly employees in September 2016.
The St. Catharines propulsion plant makes V6 and V8 engines and front-wheel transmissions. CAMI makes the next-generation Chevrolet Equinox.