Workers at the General Motors plant in Oshawa are returning to the production line after a sit-down protest against the company's decision to close the plant.
Tuesday night, workers staged a sit-down protest to express their "outrage", according to a release from their union, Unifor. The sit-down lasted about five hours.
Photo of the sit-down protest at GM Oshawa courtesy of Unifor.
Unifor spokeswoman Kathleen O'Keefe told BlackburnNews.com the morning shift staged a second sit-down Wednesday morning.
"Workers are now returning to the line with production expected to resume shortly," read a second release.
On Tuesday, Unifor National President Jerry Dias met with GM officials in Detroit to discuss options the union had submitted last month to keep the plant open. Those options included extending the production of trucks and two car models being built in Oshawa.
The company responded the suggestions were too expensive and would further deteriorate GM's competitive position.
"General Motors acknowledged that it could save the Oshawa Assembly Plant, but simply chooses not to, even though it wouldn't hurt the company's bottom line to keep the plant operational until the end of the current contract in 2020," said Dias. "The fact is, there's sufficient demand for the Oshawa-made vehicles to keep the plant operational until 2020, and beyond that, there are several strong-selling models that could be manufactured there."
In Windsor on Tuesday, Dias blamed GM's decision on greed.
He vowed Unifor would step up its current ad campaign urging the company to reconsider.
A rally is also planned for Friday at Dieppe Gardens in Windsor starting at 11 a.m.