GM strike in U.S. leads to 4,600 layoffs in Canada
St. Catharines, Oshawa plants, and parts firms
TORONTO • About 4,600 Canadian auto workers are off the job as the labour strike at General Motors Co.’ s American facilities enters its second week, disrupting operations for both GM and smaller parts suppliers north of the border.
As of Monday, General Motors Canada had temporarily laid off about half of its 5,882 hourly employees, GM Canada’s vice- president of corporate affairs David Paterson said.
Two- thirds of the 1,100 hourly workers who made engines destined for the U. S. at GM’S St. Catharines, Ont. facility were told to stay home Monday, joining the approximately 2,100 workers who stopped work last week after GM halted production at its Oshawa, Ont. plant’s truck and car assembly lines.
On top of that, Canadian auto parts suppliers have temporarily laid off approximately 1,700 workers, according to Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union.
Despite the layoffs and scaled back production at two of its facilities, Paterson said GM’S Canadian operations have been resilient.
“We’ve done extraordinarily well given the integrated nature of the whole system with the U. S. down,” Paterson said. “Our focus is to keep as many people at work as long as we can.”
GM will continue to run at full capacity at its Ingersoll, Ont. plant called CAMI, where about 2,400 hourly workers on three shifts assemble the popular Chevrolet Equinox. The remaining employees at St. Catharines and Oshawa are working to support CAMI; about 365 people in St. Catharines are producing transmissions and about 100 people in Oshawa are on the body stamping line for the Equinox.
CAMI is expected to remain open “indefinitely,” Paterson said, except for a scheduled weeklong pause in production that was planned in July. That will occur next week. Even if the strike continues, CAMI has enough inventory that it plans to resume all three shifts after the break.
The St. Catharines workers will receive about 75 per cent of their salary during the stoppage. Oshawa employees will earn their full salaries thanks to a separate agreement to permanently stop vehicle production in December so GM can change the plant into a test track and a parts manufacturer.
The changes at the Oshawa plant are part of a wider GM strategy to close some facilities and invest instead in electrification and automation. It’s this strategy that has, in part, sparked the labour action due to impending closures at several U. S. plants. The United Auto Workers members are fighting for improvements to wages and health care at a time of record profit for GM.
focus is to keep as many
people at work as long
as we can.