An auto plant that General Motors Co (GM) has operated for 65 years in Canada could be on the verge of shutting down, although the union that represents thousands of workers at the factory is still holding out hope.
The company was to announce yesterday that it was ending production at its plant in Oshawa, Ontario, two people familiar with the plans said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Unifor, the union representing autoworkers, said it has been told that there is no car production assigned to the factory beyond next year, raising the prospect of talks to preserve jobs.
“We have been informed that, as of now, there is no product allocated to the Oshawa assembly plant past December 2019,” Unifor said in a written statement on Sunday night.
“Unifor is immediately calling on GM to live up to the spirit” of a contract agreement reached in 2016, the union said.
The Oshawa plant employs about 2,200 people and was once one of the largest automaking facilities in Canada, the union said.
David Paterson, a spokesman for GM in Canada, declined to comment.
Any closure would mark the end of more than a century of automaking in Oshawa. Detroit-based GM started operating the massive plant in 1953.
The survival of the factory was a key issue in the automaker’s 2016 labor talks with Unifor. As part of that settlement, GM had agreed to spend about C$400 million (US$303.28 million at the current exchange rate) in the Oshawa operations, Bloomberg News reported at the time.
Unifor said that it does not yet have complete details, but would speak with GM representatives.
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