Sparks fly as more than 1,100 robots on the floor of General Motors’ assembly plant in Oshawa, Ont., weld and seal parts to join the chassis, cab and box of new pickup trucks.
Within a year, the plant delivered its first Silverado Heavy Duty in November 2021, making it one of the fastest plant launches in GM’s history. In January 2022, GM added the Silverado 1500 light-duty truck to the production line.“All of this equipment had to be purchased, designed and installed into a building in a year, and 3,000 people had to be hired. We had old equipment to take out at the same time.
Production in Oshawa has increased to three shifts, six days a week, with 3,200 hourly workers, about half of whom are women, Koseck said. For comparison, at its peak in the 1980s, about 23,000 people worked at the plant. The plant employed about 2,500 unionized workers in 2018 when it closed.