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Dias said the coronavirus pandemic has “thrown a curve into the auto industry” but may have helped secure the agreement with GM.
“Canada has always been a loyal customer for General Motors and they know that,” he said.
The Oshawa plant was once the dominant employer in the Ontario city east of Toronto, and, though fewer people had worked there in recent years, the 2018 announcement that the plant would close was devastating,
Dias said Unifor negotiated agreements with Chrysler and then with GM, covering operations in Woodstock and St. Catharines, Ontario, before taking on the “gorilla in the room” in Oshawa.
He said Thursday’s agreement was possible only because GM had agreed last year to maintain the “integrity of the shop” that had been reduced to making after-market parts and employing only about 300 union members.
“GM agreed to hit the pause button,” he said, adding that the initial work at the plant will include refurbishing the existing paint shop and building a new body shop.
The first shift is expected to start work in January 2022.
Navdeep Bains, the federal minister of innovation, science, and industry, was pleased to learn of the tentative agreement between GM and Unifor, according to his senior communications adviser John Power.
“Our Government has always been at the table to support Canadian auto workers — from investing in the sector to secure tens of thousands of jobs since 2015, to negotiating the new NAFTA, to creating a policy vision toward an all-Canadian electric vehicle supply chain from mining to battery manufacturing,” Power said.
“We have demonstrated that we are prepared to support the future of our auto sector.”
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