TORONTO — General Motors and Unifor on Wednesday are set to detail plans for the automaker’s Oshawa assembly plant in Canada following weeks of negotiations.
The automaker and the Canadian labor union will hold a press conference Wednesday at 11 a.m. EDT in Toronto. The parties have been engaged in talks since March, when Unifor suspended its high-profile media campaign to pressure GM to reverse plans to stop vehicle production in Oshawa, about 40 miles from Toronto, by the end of 2019.
Details of the agreement were not released, though increased stamping work appeared to be on the table during negotiations. Oshawa Assembly does stamping for GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant, which faces an unclear future with production due to cease in January 2020.
Unifor Local 222 President Colin James, when asked if Unifor had discussed stamping as a solution, told Automotive News Canada in April that there is “some work that would make sense just because we have the guys there and the stamping facility.”
The agreement was not expected to save the jobs of all of the plant’s 2,600 workers, as James conceded in April. Unifor previously said GM has made it clear to its leadership that it will not extend vehicle assembly at the plant. Oshawa builds the Cadillac XTS and Chevrolet Impala sedan and does final assembly on previous-generation Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup bodies.
GM said in November it would stop allocating production to Oshawa, as well as two assembly plants in the United States, as part of a larger restructuring of its global operations. In response, Unifor waged an aggressive media campaign against GM, staging protests at the 2019 Toronto and Detroit auto shows, airing commercials during high-profile Canadian broadcasts of the Super Bowl and other events and taking out advertisements in Detroit’s local newspapers. Workers also staged protests at Oshawa Assembly and at its suppliers, briefly halting production at the plant.
Unifor ended the campaign in March as negotiations with GM began. The two sides are set to negotiate again in 2020 as the union’s four-year collective bargaining agreements with the Detroit Three expire.
