GM cut the third shift. Is Oshawa still a car town?

Oshawa Assembly closed in 2019, reopened in 2021 to build the Silverado, and ran three shifts around the clock until the end of January. Then the third shift went.

GM announced the cut in May 2025, citing forecast demand and the evolving trade environment, which is the corporate phrase for a 25 per cent American tariff on Canadian-built vehicles. It postponed the layoffs once, then made them on January 30: about 700 hourly workers at the plant, another 300 at suppliers, and Unifor’s count of up to 1,200 across the supply chain. In the same breath the company added 250 temporary workers at Fort Wayne, Indiana, which builds the same truck.

The question is what the city is now. Oshawa was the fastest-growing part of the region last year, up 11,000 people while the Toronto census area stood still, on the strength of a university, a hospital network, a GO line being extended past it and a nuclear industry hiring for a decade. That is a city. Whether it is still a car town is a question for the people whose parents worked the line.

Sources: CP24, the third shift ends · Unifor, GM cuts Oshawa jobs as profits rise · CBC, the layoffs delayed to January · Statistics Canada, subprovincial estimates, 2025