General Motors will reportedly announce Monday that it is shuttering a major Canadian assembly plant, putting thousands of jobs at risk.
As initially reported by CBC News, then Bloomberg, GM will end production at the plant in Oshawa, Ontario. The company has been making cars there for 65 years, and is still pumping out models such as the Chevrolet Impala.
More than 2,200 jobs could go, unions fear, although the precise number of lost jobs is yet to be determined. In part thanks to the impact of the Trump administration’s steel tariffs, GM has been trying to get thousands of North American workers to accept buyouts. It now seems that the company may be moving to forced layoffs.
GM did not immediately return Coins2Day‘s request for comment on the reports of the plant’s closing.
Canada’s largest private-sector union, Unifor, said Sunday that it had “received notification today from General Motors that the company will make a major announcement tomorrow that will impact its global operations.”
“While the union does not have complete details of the overall announcement 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 statement. “Based on commitments made during 2016 contract negotiations, Unifor does not accept this announcement and is immediately calling on GM to live up to the spirit of that agreement.”
Oshawa has been a car-manufacturing hub since 1907, and is the headquarters of GM Canada. The company received billions of dollars in support from the Canadian and Ontario governments after the financial crisis.