General Motors has poured out its PR heart Monday about the need to re-make the company into a lean, green electric car maker. Maybe. But as it closes the door on its 110-ten year auto-making business in Oshawa the international car maker is also facing intense pressure from the US government’s America First program. Tariffs on metals and the urgency to bring business home are most certainly a factor in the GM move even as it also closes plants in the US. GM names the Lordstown, Ohio, factory that makes the Chevrolet Cruze compact and the Detroit-Hamtramck plant, where the Chevrolet Volt, Buick LaCrosse and Cadillac CT6 are produced. Oshawa now makes the Impala, a model which some suspect is headed for extinction. The company will halt operations at transmission plants in the Baltimore area and in Warren, Michigan. Some of the affected plants could resume production, depending on the outcome of contract negotiations with the United Auto Workers union next year
“This industry is changing very rapidly, when you look at all of the transformative technologies, be it propulsion, autonomous driving… These are things we’re doing to strengthen the core business,” GM chief executive and chairwoman Mary Barra told reporters Monday. “We think it’s appropriate to do it at a time, and get in front of it, while the company is strong and while the economy is strong.” GM also said it will reduce salaried and salaried contract staff by 15 per cent, which includes 25 per cent fewer executives. The Oshawa Assembly Plant employs 2,522 workers with Unifor Local 222, according to GM’s website. Production began on Nov. 7, 1953, and in the 1980s the plant employed roughly 23,000 people.
