GM Canada says it will bring back pickup truck assembly work to its plant in Oshawa, Ont., if a new labour deal with its largest union is ratified.
Unifor had set a midnight deadline on Wednesday to reach a new, three-year labour deal with GM and had a mandate to strike from its members if the deadline passed.
But the union said just before the deadline that its master bargaining committee had had a breakthrough and wanted to keep talking. About four and a half hours after extending the deadline, a tentative deal was reached. A ratification vote will happen on Sunday.
Unifor said the deal is being unanimously recommended for 1,700 members working at GM plants in the southern Ontario cities of St. Catharines, Oshawa and Woodstock.
In a statement, the Detroit automaker said the deal would see more work for all three of its plants in Canada, including the return of assembly work to its facility in Oshawa, Ont.
“Subject to ratification of our 2020 agreement with Unifor, General Motors plans to bring pickup production back to the Oshawa assembly plant while making additional investments at the St. Catharines propulsion plant and Woodstock parts distribution centre,” GM Canada president Scott Bell told CBC News in a statement.
The company says the deal would bring between $1 billion to $1.3 billion of new investment to Oshawa with the expected hiring of 1,400 to 1,700 hourly workers. That would bring the plant’s work force back up to about 2,000 people.
GM Canada and Unifor extended a strike deadline that was set to expire at midnight last night and struck a deal in the early hours of Thursday. (Tijana Martin/The Canadian Press)
The deal would also bring about $109 million worth of work to the St. Catharines engine and transmission plant, and about $500,000 to the Woodstock facility, GM said in a statement.
The popularity of pickup trucks is key to the deal. GM CEO Mary Barra told analysts on a conference call discussing earnings on Thursday that demand for profitable models like the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra is so strong that the plants that make them are operating “around the clock.”
“The fact is we simply can’t build enough,” she said, “and because we expect demand to remain strong we must increase capacity.”
The first pickups are expected to roll off the line in Oshawa in 2022. The company didn’t specify what pickup trucks would be made in Oshawa but Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association, says he suspects they will move some Silverado and Sierra work there.
A worker attaches a steel and aluminum door to a pickup truck at GM’s plant in Fort Wayne, Ind. Finishing touches on those trucks used to happen in Oshawa, but soon the Canadian plant will assemble the entire vehicle from start to finish. (John Gress/Reuters)
When GM cancelled assembly in Oshawa, it didn’t shut the plant down entirely, and Volpe says it was telling that the company kept about 300 workers on hand to keep making parts there.
“That was a signal that the plant would be in play if there was a product for it,” he said.
Previously, the Oshawa plant had been putting the finishing touches on Silverados and Sierras that came up mostly completed from a plant in Fort Wayne, Ind. Now they’ll be completely assembled in Oshawa, breathing new life into Canada’s oldest continuously operating car plant.
The facility has been owned and operated by GM since 1953, but has been making cars since 1908, and was at one point the company’s biggest factory in the world, cranking out 750,000 vehicles a year.
“This is a generational commitment to Oshawa car making,” Volpe said.
The union says the deal could mean up to 2,000 new jobs when assembly starts in January 2022, with a second shift added in March. There are plans to add a second vehicle in May, and if a third shift is potentially added in July 2022, that could be another 500 jobs, Unifor said.
3rd deal with Big 3
The stunning news came after Unifor warned that GM had not offered concrete commitments on future product plans, and was falling short of earlier agreements struck by Ford Motor and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
