September 19, 2016
By Steve Wishnia and Neal Tepel
OSHAWA, Ontario—With contract talks racing to beat a strike deadline coming at midnight on Sept. 19, General Motors and the Canadian autoworkers' union Unifor remained well apart on whether the company would build new models at its Oshawa vehicle-assembly plant. “There's a hell of a lot of work to do and not a lot of time with which to do it,” Unifor National President Jerry Dias told the Canadian Broadcasting Company Sept. 18.
“They understand that they have to do something, but we're not really talking about anything specific.” He said the union has not yet received a contract proposal from GM. Unifor says it will not agree to a deal that doesn’t include a commitment to build new vehicles at the Oshawa plant, about 35 miles east of Toronto. GM, which has planned to close one of the two assembly lines there, has said it won’t make any decisions about products until after a deal is reached. The expiring four-year contract covers workers of GM, Fiat Chrysler, and Ford factories in Ontario, but Unifor’s two strike targets are Oshawa, which assembles the Chevrolet Impala, Buick Regal and Cadillac XTS sedans, and GM’s powertrain plant in St. Catharines. The two have about 3,900 union workers. Read more
