Oshawa Will Lose 'Doomed' Consolidated Line in 2017: Report
There might be some light at the end of the assembly line for Oshawa — but it will come with a price.
According to the Windsor Star, the plant’s Consolidated Line, which produces the Chevrolet Equinox in an overflow capacity using bodies shuttled from CAMI, won’t get another stay of execution and will certainly close in 2017.
However, a General Motors Canada executive familiar with the negotiations says that closing the Flex Line is not a “foregone conclusion.”
“The line is due to end production sometime in 2017,” said the source who spoke on condition of anonymity with the Windsor Star. “We haven’t said exactly when, but likely mid-year when we end production of the current generation of the Equinox”
GM Canada has postponed closing the Consolidated Line five times during the last eleven years. It was most recently scheduled to shut down in 2016. An announcement last year kept the line open into 2017.
Closing the Consolidated Line will take 750 jobs with it. In total, the Oshawa Assembly facility employs 2,400 hourly workers. The end of Camaro production on the Flex Line in November 2015 resulted in approximately 1,000 layoffs.
GM Canada has openly stated it will make no decisions on its Oshawa Flex Line until union negotiations conclude later this summer. Unifor, the union that represents hourly employees at Oshawa and other Detroit Three plants in Ontario, has promised to make product allocation a strike issue during labor negotiations. Unifor also believes the Consolidated Line can be saved.
“The life of that plant has been extended a few times and I don’t expect that to change,” Unifor president Jerry Dias told the Windsor Star. “There will be overflow from CAMI for several years.”
However, dumping the Consolidated Line to get production allocation for the Flex Line might be the best outcome for hourly employees.
“(The Flex Line) has the ability to come up with amazing solutions; we’re not ruling anything out, but we’ve clearly said that we’re going to end production on the consolidated line next year,” said Windsor Star’s source.
The current four-year contract between Unifor and General Motors expires September 19. Negotiations begin August 10.
More by Mark Stevenson
Comments
Join the conversation
Okay. I'll , I've been following. First off., as others have mentioned , Mark made the rules, and the consequences perfectly clear. As far as i am concerned, thats that, and, we'll move on. So, an executive at GM leaked to the press, that shutting.,down Oshawa Flex, was not a given. Right?... I call B.S. "the leak" is all part of GM's game plan. Preliminary talks "tire kicking" as they call it, start on the 10th of August. No way, is someone at a senior level at GM going to risk his career , to talk to the Windsor Star. As late as January 2016, when asked by Prime Minister Trudeau "what the plan was for GM Oshawa," Mary Barra, wasn't willing to show her hand. However, now its August, and GM just threw that little nugget out there, to test the water. The" consolidated line " ,just as the name suggests, was cobbled together, back in 2007-08 out of the remnants of plant #2.."W" car. ...# 1 "W" car plant was gutted, back to the studs, while they put the Flex Plant together. At the time, it was figured, maybe we will get 3 years out of it ? It would be a gross under statement , to say that a "few things " might have changed at GM since the 2007-2008 era. When the last"W" fleet Impala rolled of the line in June of 16, that was the beginning of the end. Shuttling Equinox bodys, down the 401, as the sole product of an assembly line, just does nor make economic sense. So news of Consolidated being axed, is hardly earth shattering. The Flex, as once again, the name suggests , is indeed "flexible" all new and modern, with a contagious stamping plant next door. Some new, some older, retrofitted presses . The stamping plant at one point, was feeding "outer metal" fenders, doors , body sides, roofs , hoods etc, enough to run plant #1 and Plant #2, and a good percentage of Truck metal, fenders , hoods, floor pans, doors and box sides. Lots of stamping capacity, with a fairly modern automated ,storage and retrieval system. That all being said, while the Flex can produce just about anything, its not as easy as pulling a lever, and churning out a whole new configuration. A lot preliminary work involving Die sets , tooling adjustments etc requires a fair bit of lead time. Right ,so this great secret as to "is GM going to close Oshawa, or not" isn't such a great secret anymore. I'm hearing from many sources , that the activity level ,re- new product , is turning up a notch or two ????. When more than one party, knows a secret, it ain't a secret for too much longer. Wth all the behind the scenes activity going on, its stands to reason, that GM might just let a little leak out, before the Dam bursts, and all the info comes spewing out.
Thanks....I've been working,on punctuation, grammar , and sentence structure. It was getting late last night, and I just hit the submit button....Should have proof read, a little more carefully .