Workers walk out as GM confirms plan to shutter Oshawa plant

CTVNews.ca Staff</span>
Published Monday, November 26, 2018 9:08AM EST
Last Updated Monday, November 26, 2018 10:43AM EST

General Motors has confirmed plans to close its assembly plant in Oshawa, Ont., where workers say they won’t give up their jobs without a fight.

“I can assure you of one thing: that plant is not closing without the fight of our lives,” Greg Moffat, the chair of the plant’s union local, said Monday.

“The sooner they realize that our plant is not closing, the better off they’re going to be.”

CTV Toronto was first to report that GM plans to cease its operations at the facility. GM made its own announcement Monday, saying the Oshawa facility would no longer have any vehicles allocated to it by the end of 2019, along with three facilities in Detroit and one in Ohio.

Moffat told reporters that he and other Unifor leaders will meet with GM early Monday afternoon, with the union holding a press conference afterward.

This is a breaking news update. Previous story follows.

Workers at the General Motors plant in Oshawa, Ont. have walked off the job as they wait to learn more about the future of the facility.

Many morning-shift workers were seen leaving the plant shortly after 9 a.m. Monday. Several told reporters that they had been instructed to leave by their union.

“There’s people in there bawling their eyes out. We can’t get any answers,” one man told reporters.

The walkout comes following the news, first reported by CTV Toronto, that GM plans to cease operations at the assembly plant by the end of 2019. GM said Sunday night it has nothing to publicly announce.

Workers said they hoped a union meeting scheduled for 2 p.m. would provide some clarity as to the future of the operation.

“You’ve got to take a stand at one point, so that’s what we’re doing,” one woman said as she left the plant.

GM plans to pull out of Oshawa as part of a global restructuring aimed at refocusing the company on lower-emission vehicles, sources told CTV Toronto.

Unifor has said a closure would not be in keeping with the spirit of the latest collective agreement between GM and its workers, which was signed in 2016. The union will provide further comments Monday afternoon at a news conference.

The federal government loaned GM $10.8 billion in 2009, to help keep the company afloat as it stared down insolvency. A condition of that loan was that GM would not reduce its manufacturing operations in Canada for six years.

Ken Lewenza, a former president of the Canadian Auto Workers union, told CTV News Channel that maintaining the Oshawa operation was workers’ top priority during the 2016 negotiation, and the company appeared to be willing to keep it open.

“Our members felt good about their future. They felt secure for the first time in decades,” he said.

“This is, quite frankly … a betrayal of the contents of the conversations we had just two short years ago.”

A full closure of the Oshawa plant would leave 2,500 unionized workers and 300 salaried employees out of work, with indirect effects rippling across the southern Ontario auto industry and beyond.

Oshawa’s mayor said Monday that he was given no heads-up that the city’s biggest employer apparently plans to withdraw from the city.

“We still haven’t received any information at all about what’s even going to happen here today,” John Henry told CP24 Monday morning.

Henry said he learned of General Motors’ decision to close its operations in Oshawa the same way many of the company’s employees did, after CTV News first reported it on Sunday.

“When General Motors needs to find me, they tend to be able to find me and have a conversation,” Henry said.

“I’m a little disappointed that I’ve reached out and the comment I’ve got back is ‘We’re not able to talk until 9:30 today.’”

Henry said he had met with company representatives within the past month. They had talked about ideas for what to do with vacant GM-owned lands in the city, Henry said, and nothing was said to suggest that GM didn’t see a future for itself in Oshawa.

Workers arriving for morning shifts at the assembly plant seemed equally surprised by the news.

“I just wish they would come out straight and be straight with everybody,” one man, who identified himself as a 17-year employee named Clay, said.

“Don’t play dirty games. I don’t like it. I know a lot of people around here don’t like it.”

GM announced last month that it was offering buyouts to approximately 18,000 of its 50,000 salaried employees in North America. It said the buyouts, which were announced on the same day the company reported a $2.5-billion profit, were due to expected future financial challenges brought on by declining sales and U.S.-imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum.

The company has promised to reduce its structural costs by $6.5 billion per year by the end of 2018, and said in October that it was close to delivering on that pledge.

GM production in Oshawa began in 1953 and peaked in the 1980s, when the company employed 23,000 people in the city.

The company’s other Canadian production facilities – in St. Catharines, Ont. and Ingersoll, Ont. – are not believed to be affected by the restructuring.

With files from CP24 and The Canadian Press

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