GM axes third shift at Oshawa plant, laying off 700 workers

General Motors Co. on Friday will eliminate the third shift at its assembly plant in Oshawa, Ont. Photo by Postmedia

Article content

General Motors Co. on Friday will eliminate the third shift at its assembly plant in Oshawa, Ont., laying off about 700 people inside the plant, plus another 300 to 500 workers at parts companies that supply the facility, according to Unifor, the labour union representing the workers.

Article content

The Oshawa plant makes Chevrolet Silverado pickup trucks — one of GM’s best-selling models — but the automaker has been under pressure from United States President Donald Trump to move manufacturing to the U.S. His administration last year enacted a tariff regime to that end.

Article content

Article content

Article content

GM originally said it would eliminate the third shift in Oshawa last year, while also saying it would add a shift at an Indiana plant that also makes the pickups, but it eventually committed to keeping the third shift until early 2026.

Article content

Article content

GM did not respond to requests for comment.

Article content

The company last year also ended production of its battery electric delivery van, the BrightDrop, citing poor demand, resulting in 1,200 workers at its CAMI assembly plant in Ingersoll, Ont., losing their jobs.

Article content

In response to GM’s decision to scale back its manufacturing footprint in Canada, the federal government in October reduced the number of U.S.-assembled vehicles that GM can export here on a duty-free basis.

Article content

Unifor on Wednesday posted a video on its website criticizing both GM and the recent federal policy allowing China to send 49,000 electric vehicles to Canada at the most-favoured nation tariff rate of 6.1 per cent. (Full disclosure: the Financial Post is also represented by Unifor.)

Article content

“This union was not built by staying silent,” Chris Waugh, Unifor Local 222 chair of the Oshawa plant, said in the video. “It was built by standing up, pushing back and demanding respect.”

Article content

Article content

An article attached to the video ends with the slogan, “If you sell here, build here,” a reference to a former policy that tailored automakers’ import tariff rate to the scale of the manufacturing footprint in Canada.

Article content

Article content

A spokesperson for Unifor said as many as 1,200 of its workers are affected by the elimination of the third shift in Oshawa, but the number of non-unionized workers affected could be much larger.

Article content

Earlier this week, GM said it earned US$2.7 billion in 2025, which was below its initial guidance of US$7.7 billion to US$8.3 billion. It is projecting US$10.3 billion to US$11.7 billion in net income in 2026.

Article content

There are auto-sector layoffs elsewhere, including in Brampton, Ont., where Stellantis NV last year indefinitely paused a renovation of an assembly plant, leaving 3,000 workers inside the plant uncertain about their future as well as others who worked for companies that supply parts to the plant.

Article content

Article content