Canada’s main automotive union Unifor has secured its members’ support for a three-year collective agreement with GM, while the US-Canadian trade relations that underpin the two countries’ highly integrated auto sector remain frayed and unsettled.
Unifor’s announcement it had secured a tentative deal with GM came on August 22, just one day after the Canadian government pulled negotiators from trade talks with the U.S. This was partly over new U.S. demands that Canada-made pickups sold in the U.S. would be saddled with tariffs.
In votes announced on August 30, the 4,600 Unifor members at the GM’s Oshawa Assembly Plant, St. Catharines Propulsion Plant, Woodstock Parts Distribution Center and CAMI Assembly in Ingersoll, all in Ontario, voted overwhelmingly in favor: 96.5% in support at the currently mothballed CAMI plant and 80.5% at the other three plants.
Pay and conditions largely reflected the pattern agreement Unifor secured with Ford in July, including a 3% annual wage increases, with laid-off CAMI workers given “income maintenance plan” support until May 1, 2028.
A key hope for CAMI is a promise from the Canadian government to consider this plant first should it move ahead with plans to build armored military vehicles. Meanwhile, GM has promised not to close or sell the plant during this three-year period.
Overall, GM pledged more than CA$1.4 billion ($1 billion) in Canadian investments. This included returning its next-generation GMC Sierra Heavy Duty production to Oshawa and building a new single source next-generation transmission at the St. Catharines Propulsion Plant.
Commenting on the vote, Unifor president Lana Payne said: “GM is making these investments in both its highly skilled Canadian workforce and facilities at a crucial time, as our domestic auto industry is under siege by the Trump Administration.”
GM Canada president Jack Uppal said: “GM Canada's presence is built on a broad ecosystem that spans vehicle engineering, software development, sales and customer care, parts distribution, and corporate operations.”
Unifor now moves onto talks with Stellantis, which began yesterday, Sept. 1, where a key concern will be the company’s declaration that it is considering selling and closing its Brampton Assembly Plant.
GM deal removes uncertainty
Speaking to WardsAuto, Ross McKenzie, former managing director of the Ontario-based Waterloo Centre for Automotive Research, said there was benefit to both Unifor and GM in striking a deal.
“The ability to both parties to have certainty during all the uncertainty that’s surrounding the industry is a good thing,” said McKenzie. “It’s easier to predict the weather with a weathervane than predict the future of U.S. and Canadian trade policy.”
The labor union is closely connected to the policy process. Unifor president Lana Payne serves on Prime Minister Mark Carney's Advisory Committee on Canada-U.S. Economic Relations.
That includes gathering intelligence on the position of the U.S. government. During an August 22 press conference about last-minute tariff changes, harming Ford’s retooling of its Oakville plant to build F-250, F-350, F-450 Super Duty pickups, and GM’s manufacture of the Chevrolet Silverado at Oshawa: “No rationale — just for exclusion,” commented Carney.
Greig Mordue, associate professor at the W Booth School of Engineering Practice and Technology at McMaster University in Hamilton, and a former general manager of Toyota Canada, said GM and the union "had made best efforts to make best efforts.” Mordue notes that the result “probably provides an out for Unifor and GM” at CAMI, should the mooted armored-vehicles deal not emerge.
While the GM deal gives CAMI members hope, the best prospect, Mordue said, was “for GM to be upfront and for Unifor to push them to be upfront” about the future.
Will Canada shift regulatory allegiances?
One role the Canadian federal government can play, he said, for CAMI’s future and other mothballed plants, such as Stellantis’ Brampton operations, is to allow automobiles sold in Canada to follow UN World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations safety rules. These apply in Europe and are largely followed in Japan and South Korea.
If Canada allowed these vehicles alongside those following U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration rules, Canadian manufacturers could make autos for Canada and non-U.S. export markets, said Mordue.
“You don't have to choose between one or the other standard; I don't think that driving in the Dolomites is less safe than driving in the Rockies,” he said to WardsAuto."You don't want to build two different types of cars that look the same but have different architecture.”
“You can put 10,000 cars on a train and ship them to Halifax and then put them onto a roll-on-roll-off ship and to Europe and it costs you CA$1,500 to $2,000,” he added. “It's a pretty efficient cost operation.”
Barrie Kirk, president of the Canadian Automated Vehicle Initiative, suggested the federal government could explore the potential of using perhaps temporarily underutilized auto manufacturing capacity in Canada for valuable R&D projects. That could include developing autonomous vehicles, in trucking, supply logistics, defense and more.
“We have a convergence of factors that are promising,” Kirk told WardsAuto, “In Canada, you have silos of experts but nothing overarching. We need synergies. You need a strategy — government with private sector and academia.”
Such work needs time, said Kirk, for example, to assess issues such as whether autonomous trucks should be converted from regular models or built and designed as driverless.
Mordue doubts the Trump administration will abandon aggressive trade policies, even if the Republicans lose the midterm elections.
“They can read the tea leaves like anyone else,” he said. “They know the popularity of their approach and haven't altered it.”
