General Motors’ all-electric CAMI Assembly plant in Ontario is halting production of BrightDrop delivery vans, Unifor said Friday. Unifor is Canada’s largest private sector union, representing 320,000 workers.
The company will initiate temporary layoffs starting April 14 and production will stall for three weeks, Mike Van Boekel, plant chair for Unifor Local 88, which represents hourly workers at CAMI, told the Detroit Free Press.
Workers will return for two weeks in May for limited production, and then the factory will close for another 20 weeks. During this downtime, GM plans to complete retooling work to prepare the facility for production of the 2026 model year of commercial electric vehicles.
CAMI Assembly had run two shifts while producing Chevrolet BrightDrop vehicles. When production resumes in October, Unifor said the plant will operate on a single shift for the foreseeable future — a reduction expected to impact 450 workers.
“This is devastating for our members,” Van Boekel told the Detroit Free Press. “We are losing these shifts indefinitely.”
About 1,200 Local 88 members work there assembling Chevrolet BrightDrop EVs and constructing battery modules and packs.
“This is a crushing blow to hundreds of working families in Ingersoll and the surrounding region who depend on this plant,” Unifor National President Lana Payne said in the statement. “General Motors must do everything in its power to mitigate job loss during this downturn, and all levels of government must step up to support Canadian autoworkers and Canadian-made products.”
GM Canada confirmed CAMI is making operational and employment adjustments to balance inventory and align production schedules with current demand.
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“GM remains committed to the future of BrightDrop, and the CAMI plant and will support employees through the transition,” the company said in a statement emailed to the Free Press. “This adjustment is directly related to responding to market demand and rebalancing inventory. Production of BrightDrop and EV battery assembly will remain at CAMI.”
GM’s struggles with BrightDrop inventory come less than a year after the company folded the commercial vans into its Chevrolet brand in a bid to boost its performance.
GM has tried and failed to gain ground against competitors, including Ford and Rivian, in the electric van space, an effort further hindered by the vehicle’s high price tag. Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions, said the opaque trade environment spurred by President Donald Trump’s vacillating tariff announcements hardly aided the company’s U.S. sales projections.
