Unifor Sets Focus on Worker Protection Ahead of General Motors Negotiations
Unifor is expected to focus its upcoming negotiations with General Motors Canada GM-N +0.74on the issue of job security – in particular, securing a guarantee from the company that they will reinvest in the CAMI Assembly plant in Ingersoll, Ont., amid U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff war.
The plant has been idle since last May, when production of GM’s BrightDrop electric delivery vans was paused and subsequently ended, leaving the future of the Ingersoll factory uncertain. Approximately 1,200 auto workers have been temporarily laid off for more than 15 months now, and the company has yet to announce plans for the factory. 
Unifor, one of Canada’s largest private-sector unions, representing more than 40,000 auto workers across Canada, is due to begin negotiations with GM for a new collective agreement on Aug. 10 in Toronto. The current agreement expires on Sept. 20. The union will negotiate for approximately 4,600 GM workers in Ontario, including those at the Oshawa Assembly plant, CAMI, an engine plant in St. Catharines, Ont., and GM’s distribution centre in Woodstock, Ont.
“The key issue and focus for the union will be on GM’s investment commitment to the Canadian operations, and that obviously means getting CAMI up and running again,” said Jim Stanford, who served for more than 20 years as an economist and director of policy with Unifor, and who currently runs the Centre for Future Work in Vancouver.
Securing long-term investment guarantees from Canadian automakers is not straightforward given the impact Mr. Trump’s trade war has had on their operations. The Detroit Three – Stellantis STLA-N -0.54%, Ford Motor Co. F-N +1.38 and GM – have had to incur upward of $12-billion in tariff costs since early 2025, lay off thousands of workers and restructure supply chains.
In Canada alone, more than 6,500 auto assembly and auto parts workers have lost jobs as production shuttered or shifted south, according to data from Statistics Canada. GM also cut its third shift at the Oshawa plant in January this year, resulting in roughly 500 jobs lost, citing forecasted demand and an “evolving trade environment.”
Unifor went toe-to-toe in bargaining with Ford last month, locking in annual wage increases of three per cent over a three-year contract, and critically, getting the automaker to agree to a pathway to full employment at its Oakville Assembly plant by July, 2027. That plant had been closed for an electric-vehicle retooling since 2024, leaving 3,000 auto workers temporarily laid off. But Ford and other U.S. automakers scaled back from electric vehicles after the second Trump administration withdrew the EV tax credit, completely upending plans for factories that had been rebuilt to manufacture EVs.
In May, Ford received a $464-million government grant from Ottawa to produce super duty trucks and set up a metal stamping facility. Approximately 1,800 Ford workers are expected to begin working again later this year.
Two sources with knowledge of Ford-Unifor negotiations said that the guarantee from Ford that it would eventually bring all 3,000 workers back to the plant suggests that U.S. automakers are still willing to invest in Canada despite the heavy cost of the tariffs. The sources also said that the Ford deal set a strong momentum for the union going into tougher negotiations with GM, and then Stellantis.
The Globe is not naming the sources because they are not authorized by their employers to speak about the negotiations.
Unifor uses pattern bargaining for the Detroit Three, meaning that they will use the Ford contract as a standard to negotiate with GM and then Stellantis. The Ford agreement’s job security provisions included the renewal of a no-closure agreement, and commitments to include a third shift at the Essex engine plant in Windsor, Ont., by 2029.
Mr. Stanford noted that companies tended to hold investments as levers in bargaining. “It would have been surprising for GM to announce their plans for CAMI before getting to the table because they want to use the leverage of a possible investment in CAMI to have more bargaining power,” he said. “In my view, it is going to be a challenging negotiation around investment commitment,” he added.
Tony Leah, a retired autoworker from Oshawa and member of the Unifor Local 222 chapter for retirees, was skeptical that the Unifor-GM bargaining committee would be able to get the company to commit to more jobs and fewer factory closures .
“Every negotiation we see our union saying they have secured investment from the company, but every few years, we see the number of auto jobs declining. The language is always conditional,” he said.
Indeed, employment in the auto assembly sector has declined over the past decade, according to data from Unifor and Statistics Canada, a function of outsourcing and an EV transition that failed to materialize in a substantial way. There are roughly 35,900 auto assembly workers in Canada currently, down 12 per cent from 2016. This article was first reported by The Globe and Mail
