General Motors announced that they would lay off about 750 workers earlier in May 2025 at its Oshawa Assembly plant, as they made changes to shifts due to U.S. tariffs, according to the president of the union representing the workers.
The plant, which employs roughly 3,000 people, has moved from a three-shift to a two-shift operation starting this fall, according to a news release from Unifor, which represents workers there.
“We will not allow GM to barter Canadian jobs to gain Donald Trump’s favour,” Lana Payne, Unifor national president, said in a news release.
Payne called the move a “reckless decision that deals a direct blow to our members and threatens to ripple through the entire auto parts supplier network.”
About 750 workers will be laid off at the plant, in addition to 1,500 people who work in other places throughout the supply chain
GM spokesperson Marie Binette confirmed in an email the shift change “will impact approximately 700 workers,” though she did not refer to the move as layoffs back in May.
However in an update released on Monday September 9, some 2,000 workers will be laid off when GM cuts a shift at its Oshawa plant in January 2026.
The layoffs also come as the national unemployment rate reached its highest pandemic-excluded level since 2016 last month, with Ontario leading the decline, shedding about 26,000 jobs.
The Oshawa Assembly directly employs around 3,000 GM workers, with an additional 2,000 supply-chain workers from eight different companies inside the plant daily, said Jeff Gray, president of Unifor Local 222, which represents workers at the plant, as well as some suppliers.
Earlier this month, GM workers and its suppliers were granted a four-month reprieve when the planned shift cut was postponed to the new year from its initial November date.
GM workers at the plant are afraid for their livelihoods, says Chris Waugh, the Unifor chairperson for the Oshawa plant.
“I have members selling homes, selling their vehicles, getting ready to be laid off,” he said.
For its part, GM says it “will continue to take proactive, strategic steps to respond to evolving market conditions and production needs to support a sustainable manufacturing operation at Oshawa,” company spokesperson Ariane Pereira said in an email to CBC News.
“GM has been building vehicles in Canada since 1918, and we are implementing a plan to keep building here for Canadians for another 100-plus years,” the email read.
Oshawa’s jobless rate currently sits only behind Windsor — another auto city dealing with uncertainty caused by the U.S. President Donald Trump’s auto tariffs. Trump levelled a 25 per cent tariff on auto parts that aren’t CUSMA-compliant and the non-U.S. portion of assembled vehicles in April.
A month later, GM Canada announced it was cutting its third shift amid what it called an “evolving trade environment.”
But GM has also increased production at its Fort Wayne, Ind., plant, hiring roughly 250 temporary workers south of the border. Both the Fort Wayne and Oshawa Assembly build the light-duty Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck.
Source- CBC
