GM Oshawa consolidated line set to be shut down
Successful contract talks with Unifor could secure the future of General Motors’ flex line in Oshawa, but the consolidated line is set to close next year, a GM Canada executive familiar with negotiations says.
The one-shift consolidated line, which employs 750 of the 2,400 hourly workers at the Oshawa facility, currently builds overflow supply of the popular Chevrolet Equinox SUV from GM’s CAMI plant in Ingersoll.
“The line is due to end production sometime in 2017,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We haven’t said exactly when, but likely mid-year when we end production of the current generation of the Equinox.”
Unifor has made new product allocation and investment at GM’s Oshawa facility a strike issue in the negotiations set to kick off Aug. 10, when the union and Detroit Three formally exchange proposals.
Union national president Jerry Dias is expected to announce a strike target — the company that will set the pattern agreement — on Labour Day weekend.
The current four-year deal expires Sept. 19.
The consolidated plant received its fifth extended lease on life last year, when GM Canada president Stephen Carlisle announced it would continue building the compact crossover until 2017.
Initially, the plant had been slated to close in 2008. Carlisle has repeatedly said that the fate of Oshawa, including the neighbouring flex plant, would depend on the outcome of contract talks.
But the source said unlike the consolidated plant, the flex line is “still state-of-the-art technology that can produce different vehicles on different platforms.”
“We’ve been clear for the last two years that with respect to the flex line and future product into Oshawa we said we won’t make an investment decision on new product until after negotiations,” said the source. “We really view negotiations as a key first hurdle that we need to get over if we’re going to find a solution for the future there, and we obviously have been clear we don’t have a designated replacement product that would go in for those products that are running there now.”
Dias said there was no reason the consolidated line could not continue to build the hot-selling Equinox. “The life of that plant has been extended a few times and I don’t expect that to change. There will be overflow from CAMI for several years.”
The GM source said the plant’s closure was not a “foregone conclusion.
“That line has the ability to come up with amazing solutions; we’re not ruling anything out, but we’ve clearly said that we’re going to end production on the consolidated line next year.”