GM to cut 625 auto jobs in Canada, move to Mexico: union

TORONTO General Motors Co will cut 625 jobs at its auto assembly plant in Ingersoll, Ontario, by the end of July and move some production work to Mexico, the president of Canada’s largest auto workers union said on Friday.

“This came right out of left field,” said Jerry Dias, the president of the union, Unifor, in a phone interview. “This is NAFTA, this has nothing to do with Trump, but it has everything to do with NAFTA.”

U.S. President Donald Trump met with the chief executives of the Big Three U.S. automakers earlier this week, urging them to build more cars in the United States while investing less in Mexico.

He has vowed to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Unifor’s Dias said that GM will move assembly of its GMC Terrain sports utility vehicle to Mexico and slow the pace of production of its Chevrolet Equinox crossover.

A spokeswoman for General Motors Canada said the company had provided the union with advance notice of the labor impact, as it phases out older models and the Ingersoll plant begins production of a new Equinox model.

(Reporting by Susan Taylor, writing by Alastair Sharp; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Tom Brown)