Unifor President Jerry Dias called it “a home run.” The media headlines were all about “reopening the Oshawa plant.”
Unifor, the union that represents workers at the Detroit Three auto companies in Canada, announced a tentative agreement with General Motors Canada on November 5 that included a $1.3 billion investment to “restart” the Oshawa Assembly Plant.
GM had ended vehicle assembly there last year, eliminating the jobs of 5,000 assembly and supplier workers. The prospect of jobs returning is very welcome.
What’s missing from the news coverage, though, is the reality that GM is not really reopening the old plant. Instead the new operation will be a “pop-up” assembly plant—designed to meet the short-term need for additional production of hugely profitable pickup trucks.
The company is making no long-term commitments to the workers it will hire, nor to the community where its pickups and profits will be made. In effect, GM will open a brand new plant inside the shell of the old plant—with an almost entirely new workforce, an inferior wage scale, fewer benefits, and no job security.