The Canadian Auto Workers union managed to squeeze five more years of production than originally scheduled out of the General Motors car assembly plant in Oshawa, Ontario, but was told officially on Friday (1 June) the factory would close next year, eliminating as many as 1,500 jobs, according to a Toronto newspaper.
GM said the plant would cease production next June, five years later than the original closing date of 2008.
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“This is absolutely sickening,” Chris Buckley, president of CAW local 222, which represents workers at the two GM car plants in Oshawa, told the Globe & Mail.
The plant produces the Chevrolet Impala mid-sized sedan and Equinox crossover.
Impala production will shift to the neighbouring flex plant that also produces Chevrolet Camaro, Buick Regal and Cadillac XTS cars, which means some workers whose jobs will go from the closing plant could be employed next door if that plant adds a third shift, the paper said. About 2,000 people work on what is known as the consolidated line and would have first crack at the third shift jobs but GM would not confirm on Friday that it would add a third shift at the remaining plant, Buckley told the paper.
If a third shift is added, employment in what is known as the flexible plant would rise to about 2,500 from 2,000 now, he said.
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By GlobalDataBut that means direct layoffs of at least 1,500 people, plus thousands more at suppliers.
The doomed consolidated plant, considered by the company to be outmoded, built the Chevrolet Impala, an Oshawa mainstay and one of the most popular family cars in the US. The same plant handles overflow work on the popular Equinox, the Toronto Star reported earlier.
In December, GM committed to invest C$68m in its newer Flex plant to maintain some Impala production along with 350 jobs in Oshawa, the paper said.
However, Oshawa would now share production of the Impala with GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck plant. As well, some Equinox production would be extended for the first time outside Canada to a reopened US plant.
That plant, according to the Globe & Mail, is the former Saturn plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, which GM is reopening after closing it when it killed off Saturn during the chapter 11 restructuring.
Spring Hill is reopening because the US United Auto Workers union agreed to allow the company to hire a large number of workers at wages of about US$14 an hour and minimal benefits. That compares with about C$32 in hourly wages in Oshawa.
The CAW calls such wage-cutting a race to the bottom and has stood fast against wage reductions.
If the Canadian union agreed to such cuts, it would soon be asked to match the $6 an hour Mexican workers are being paid, Buckley argued on Friday.
He added that workers in Oshawa and other GM and Detroit Three auto maker operations in Canada made sacrifices in 2009 when GM Canada’s parent company went into chapter 11 protection but the Canadian unit stayed out of protection under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act.
The Toronto Star said the latest job losses would come on top of the 2,600 jobs lost in 2009 when GM closed its truck plant in Oshawa, and the closure of its last remaining plant in Windsor, across the river from Detroit, where it once employed 7,000 people.
GM had a Canadian workforce of 20,000 people as recently as 2005, but that number has dwindled in wake of its bankruptcy filing two years ago.
The Flex line currently builds the Chevrolet Camaro and Buick Regal, the latter transferred in February 2011 from Opel’s Russelsheim plant in Germany; it’s the North American version of the Insignia. In August, GM announced a $185m investment to add the Cadillac XTS luxury sedan to this line in the first half of 2012, securing 750 jobs.
