GM Canada to cut 1,200 jobs

GM eliminates a shift from
its only three-shift plant in Canada.

TORONTO (AP) — General Motors of Canada Ltd. will cut 1,200 jobs at an Ontario truck plant in January, a move the Canadian Auto Workers Union says shows the effect of slumping U.S. housing and credit markets on the already struggling auto industry.

GM Canada spokesman Stew Low said the layoffs were part of the company’s plan to keep its inventory in line with production and offset some of the value that was lost as a result of incentive plans.

“The Oshawa plant is the only one that’s currently running on three shifts, and given that we want to tightly control inventories to market demand and we want to ensure that all plants are running at or near 100 percent capacity, that’s the rationale behind removing the third shift at Oshawa,” Low said.

The layoffs, he added, are permanent and effective Jan. 1, 2008.

CAW president Buzz Hargrove said he was “shocked” to learn from GM the automaker planned to cut a shift producing Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks in Oshawa during one of the union’s regular meetings with the company in Detroit on Wednesday.

The move, he said, will reduce output from the plant to two shifts from three for the first time in more than a decade.

The cuts are another blow for Canadian auto workers, who have had to contend with plant closings in Windsor, Ontario, earlier this year and the permanent shutdown of dozens of auto parts plants in Ontario that supplied Detroit’s Big Three.

In 2005, GM had announced plans to cut more than 3,600 jobs in Ontario by 2008, as it worked to close nine North American plants and eliminate 30,000 jobs over three years, most in the United States.