Catherwood LibraryILR School

Amidst tense negotiations between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada as the member countries of NAFTA debate how to best modernize their trade agreement while preserving their respective national interests, Ontario workers at GM’s CAMI plant are watching GM relocate their manufacturing jobs to Mexico. The union representing these workers, Unifor, has refused to back down on demanding that GM makes the CAMI plant the primary manufacturer of the Equinox, a popular GM sport utility vehicle. All of management’s actions, however, point to GM heavily investing in cheap Mexican manufacturing while pulling away from Canada’s higher costs. Given that GM has just eliminated about 200 jobs at their Detroit plant and there has been an influx of about 1,000 workers in their Mexican plant over the past year, it appears evident that there is a serious long-term threat to not only Unifor members’ job security, but also American GM workers’ employment.