Union blasts NAFTA after GM announces Canadian layoffs

Company to eliminate 625 jobs at Ingersoll plant and move the work to Mexico

The head of the union representing Canadian General Motors’ workers says the company’s decision to eliminate 625 jobs at an assembly plant in southwestern Ontario and shift the work to Mexico shows the need to retool or even abandon NAFTA.

Unifor national president Jerry Dias said the decision demonstrates how the trade pact has favoured the lower-cost Mexican jurisdiction at the expense of autoworkers in the U.S. and Canada.

“The announcement is a shining example of everything wrong with NAFTA. It must be renegotiated,” Dias said.

GM told the affected workers at the CAMI assembly plant in Ingersoll, Ont., west of Kitchener on Friday morning that their jobs would be gone by July. The plant employs 2,800 Unifor workers.

Dias said spinoff losses among parts suppliers will take the toll of unemployed into the thousands.

Dias said the trade pact has cost hundreds of thousands of auto jobs in Canada and the U.S. since it was signed into law by Mexico, Canada and the U.S. in 1994.

GM Canada in a statement said it provided Unifor “advanced notification of labor impacts related to product changeovers and transition” at the CAMI facility.

The Ingersoll plant builds the Chevrolet Equinox and the GMC Terrain. The company recently announced it was shifting production of the GMC Terrain to Mexico.

A GM Canada spokesperson said the cuts announced Friday related to the changeover of production from older model Equinoxes to the nextgeneration Equinox.

Dan Borthwick, head of the Unifor local representing the affected workers, said the cuts came without warning. He said company officials told the union that they now intend to end production of the current Equinox model a year earlier because it is competing with the newer model.

GM said it will still operate three shifts a day in Ingersoll building the new Equinox, but the units per hour will decrease.

Navdeep Bains, Canada’s minister of innovation, science and economic development, said GM only informed him of the cuts Thursday night, calling the move “very disappointing.”

He said the government is “con- cerned about the impact of job losses on workers and their families and our thoughts go out to those affected.”

Bains added that Ottawa remains fully committed to supporting the auto sector, noting that its supply chain is deeply integrated across the U.S. and Canadian border.

Newly elected U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to tear up NAFTA and slap a punitive tariff on companies that make cars outside the U.S. in jurisdictions including Mexico, which assembles about two million vehicles a year bound for the U.S. market.