Ohawa GM Plant to reopen vehicle assembly as part of O 1.3b Agreement: Unifor

Unifor said it had entered into an interim agreement with General Motors to return vehicle production to Oshawa.

The union says the provisional 3 1.3 billion deal will create at least 2,000 jobs from 2021.

GM plans to invest between $ 1 billion and $ 1.3 billion in the plant, the company said in a statement. It is expected to employ 1,400 to 1,700 hours of workers.

“Subject to the approval of our 2020 agreement with Unifor, General Motors plans to bring the pickup product back to the Oshawa Assembly Plant with additional investment in the St. Catherine’s Propulsion Plant and Woodstock Parts Distribution Center,” GM Canada President Scott Bell said in a statement.

The company announced that it would shut down the assembly of vehicles at the Oshawa plant as part of the restructuring, and in December 2019 the assembly of vehicles stopped there, resulting in the loss of approximately 2,300 jobs.

Negotiations between the union and the companies are ongoing and Unifor has been able to secure a commitment that the capacity to assemble vehicles at the plant will remain intact even after production stops in 2019.

The revived plant will assemble heavy and light duty trucks such as the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra.

Construction will begin “immediately” at the plant to facilitate assembly and include a new body shop and a flexible assembly module, the company said.

Unifor President Jerry Diaz gave a slightly higher estimate of the number of jobs to be created at the plant, pegging somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500.

Dias said GM will begin recruiting workers back to the plant in August 2021. Production of the first vehicles will begin in January 2022, GM said.