In Canada, lights out at venerable GM factory

After churning out General Motors vehicles for more than a century, the automaker’s assembly plant in Oshawa, Ontario, has reached the end of the line.

Workers put the finishing touches on the final vehicle — a 2019 GMC Sierra LD pickup — Wednesday, ending auto assembly at the venerable factory for good. The line stopped producing vehicles at approximately 4 p.m. EST, according to tweets that appeared to originate from within the plant.

A GM Canada spokeswoman said she didn’t know the exact time production ceased but confirmed about an hour later that output had stopped earlier in the day.

One of the final trucks assembled — a 2019 GMC Sierra SLE double-cab light-duty pickup — was raffled off among employees, who raised $117,000 for Durham Region Children’s Aid Foundation. It was one last charitable act by union members.

The factory remained on a life support for more than a year after GM announced its closure. The automaker shipped unfinished outgoing models of GMC Sierra and Chevrolet Silverado pickups to the factory from a plant in Indiana. Employees in Oshawa would complete final assembly of the vehicles, the majority of which were shipped back for sale in the United States.

On Tuesday, people who identified themselves as GM Oshawa employees posted photos on Facebook of what they said was the final frame shipped to Oshawa from Indiana. Members of the UAW in Indiana sent a message of support along with the frame: “Thanks Sisters and Brothers at Oshawa…All The Best! EH!!!!” read a banner on the rank carrying the frame.

GM will now start the process of converting the plant into a stamping operation for its other factories. A test track for autonomous and connected vehicles will also be built on the Oshawa property, northeast of Toronto.

The company said in a statement this week that new operations are “targeted to begin toward the end of Q1 next year.”

Thousands affected

The closure will throw about 2,300 employees out of work and affect thousands more in the supply chain. About 300 GM employees will remain at the plant to perform stamping work.

Roy Eagen is one of the workers out of a job.

“It was rough, it was pretty depressing,'' he told The Canadian Press of watching the last truck frame go down the line. “The people all kind of gathered together in there, we kind of held each other together and just proudly stood there and watched it go down the line.”

“This is a tough week,” Unifor President Jerry Dias said in a statement. “This is a tough week for our members that work at General Motors; it’s a tough week for our members that work for the parts suppliers; it’s a tough week for non-union workers; and it’s an incredibly tough week for the community of Oshawa.

"The timing couldn't be worse. We're less than two weeks before Christmas."

General Motors Canada has been assisting employees who don’t qualify for full retirement packages in finding work.

"The employee base that we've had over the years has accomplished so much, and we owe it to them to help them transition as best we can," David Paterson, vice-president of corporate affairs at GM Canada, told The Canadian Press.

Oshawa Mayor Dan Carter tweeted that “we will get through this together as a community.”

“We thank our employees for the pride and commitment that has gone into every vehicle that’s rolled off the Oshawa Assembly line,” GM Canada said in a statement. “We wish you well in retirement and new careers and look forward to working with those who will continue in the new parts operation that is poised for growth.”

'Tough week'

“This is a tough week,” Unifor President Jerry Dias said in a statement. “This is a tough week for our members that work at General Motors; it’s a tough week for our members that work for the parts suppliers; it’s a tough week for non-union workers; and it’s an incredibly tough week for the community of Oshawa.

"The timing couldn't be worse. We're less than two weeks before Christmas."

Dias took to Twitter on Wednesday to offer more on the closure during a video statement. He wants the automaker to ensure "the integrity of the plant remains intact" so it can one day assemble vehicles.

"There's always we'll have another vehicle to assemble in that plant," Dias said. "We haven't thrown in the towel."

'A FACTORY TOWN'

When Peggy Stapleton was growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, almost every household in her Oshawa, Ontario, neighborhood had a family member who worked at General Motors of Canada. 

“In our classroom at school, if your father didn’t work for GM, it was, ‘Whoa, you’re special.’ It really was a factory town,” said Stapleton, whose father, David Newton, worked on GM’s assembly line. 

By the time Stapleton, now 65, joined GM in the early ’80s, Oshawa was home to one of the largest automotive plants in the world, with 23,000 employees. At its peak, the plant produced nearly 620,000 vehicles a year. 

But at the end of December, the last vehicle will have rolled off the line, ending an era for the city that cars built. 

“Oshawa was the crown jewel of the auto industry around the world. It had a bigger complex than VW in Germany and Ford [Motor Co.] in Dearborn, [Mich.]” said Buzz Hargrove, a former national president of the Canadian Auto Workers union, which represented GM’s hourly employees in Canada. “It was a real moneymaker for GM. It was a real boon to Canada in terms of trade. It was a boon to everybody,” Hargrove said. “That’s all changed now, 20 years later. It’s hard to believe how fast it has changed.” 

GM, which had been cutting jobs and closing plants on both sides of the border in recent years, has confronted sweeping changes in the global automotive industry and pressure to invest in new technologies while also meeting tougher emissions standards and facing heightened trade wars. 

On Nov. 26, 2018, the Detroit-based automaker delivered the final blow to the remaining 2,600 hourly workers in Oshawa, announcing the plant would cease assembling vehicles at the end of 2019. 

“People were angry. They were shocked. They were disappointed,” said Dan Carter, who had just been elected mayor of Oshawa when the news broke. 

“The Motors” was no longer the economic powerhouse that Sam McLaughlin had built. 

Colonel created The General 

The son of a prominent local carriage maker at the turn of the previous century, McLaughlin had seen the potential in the new-fangled invention: the motorized car. He struck a deal with U.S. entrepreneur William Durant, owner of the Buick Motor Co. of Flint, Mich., to begin making them in Oshawa. Buick supplied the engines and McLaughlin made the frames. 

Few people even knew how to drive. 

“I really made that first car a hot one!” McLaughlin recalled years later in an interview reproduced at the Canadian Automotive Museum in Oshawa. “I imported black material from England for the top, East African mahogany for the instrument panels, fine wood for the bodies. We brought in beautiful wool upholstery from England and leather and cords. 

“Always the best.” It was his motto.

By 1915, McLaughlin had acquired the rights to build Chevrolet as well. By 1918, he and his U.S. partners had formed General Motors of Canada, with Sam as president of the Canadian affiliate and vice-president of the U.S. parent company. 

McLaughlin, officially known as Col. Sam McLaughlin — an honorary title he received in 1936 — remained president of the Canadian company until 1945 and chairman until 1967. He died in 1972 at age 100. 

“We always knew as long as Sam was around, the plant was safe,” said John Cincurak, 91, who joined GM in 1958 as a tool-and-die maker. “After he died, everything changed.” 

Unionization in 1937 eventually led to some of the highest industrial wages in the country. That year, more than 4,000 GM Oshawa workers staged a two-week strike to back demands for better wages and working conditions, including an eight-hour day, a seniority system and recognition of the newly formed United Auto Workers. 

Union ... and disunion

“It wasn’t the first plant in Canada to be unionized, but it signaled the start of unionization of that kind of industrialized mass production in Canada,” said Bill Murnighan, director of leadership development at Unifor. 

In 1984, when GM Chairman Roger Smith demanded the workers accept profit-sharing in lieu of a pay raise, the union’s Canadian regional director, Bob White, broke with the U.S. union to form the Canadian Auto Workers, which merged into Unifor in 2013. 

“There were intense moments when you had the largest corporation in the world at that time and the largest union in the United States both trying to cut the legs out from under you,” said Hargrove, one of White’s administrative assistants during the talks. 

GM invested heavily in Oshawa over the years, spurred on by a postwar baby boom and the 1965 signing of a favorable trade agreement between Canada and the United States, known as the Auto Pact. 

In 1953, the automaker opened a massive new assembly plant in southwest Oshawa. In 1984, it invested $8 billion in upgrades. In 1989, it opened a new head office. 

Robots take over

But competition from Japan and South Korea-based imports was increasing, and new trade agreements favored investment in Mexico over Canada. Robots were replacing manpower. 

“When I first started there, there was something like 500 people in the body shop using the welders,” said retired assembly-line worker Bob Boland, 66. “Then they brought in all these robots to do the same work. When I left, there was only 75 people left.” 

Much of the work performed by GM employees had been farmed out to other companies. 

“They got rid of a lot of people,” Boland said. “They outsourced all the security guards, the sweepers. After I left, they got rid of all the lifttruck drivers.” 

Then came the financial crisis of 2008-09 and a string of plant closures as well as a $60 billion bailout of GM by the U.S., Canadian and Ontario governments. 

“A lot of people are still upset that [Oshawa Assembly] is closing,” Boland said. “But there’s nothing we can do about it.” 

McLaughlin’s legacy in Oshawa is everywhere: in the name of the public library he donated to the city; on the art gallery dedicated to his father, Robert; on the street hat leads to GM’s head office; and at Parkwood Estate, the grand, Beaux Arts-style, 55-room mansion the family owned from 1917 to 1972. Now a national historic site, it’s open to the public for tours and weddings and a glimpse of a gilded age. 

Oshawa will still be home to GM Canada’s head office, an engineering center and, soon, a test track for new technologies, and a parts plant. 

But as Alex Gates, curator of the Canadian Automotive Museum, has discovered, for many Oshawa residents, “None of these can compete with the glamour of an assembly plant where you’re putting all the pieces together and watching a finished car roll off the line.” 

The Canadian Press contributed to this report.