The national president of Unifor will be in Detroit Thursday to meet with top officials with General Motors.
Jerry Dias will be asking executives with the automaker to cancel the planned closure of the assembly plant in Oshawa.
GM plans to close the plant next year, putting 2,500 people out of work.
Unifor Local 444 President Dave Cassidy expects Dias will point to the deal GM has with the workers.
"He wants to put the pressure on them and tell them, 'listen you have an obligation, we have a collective agreement that's in place and the collective agreement in place goes to until 2020,'" says Cassidy. "We want to make sure that you live up to your collective agreement."
Unifro Local 200 President John D'Agnolo, GM rally, December 19, 2018 (by AM800's Peter Langille)
Unifor Local 200 President John D'Agnolo says people in Windsor know well about the impact of a GM closure.
Ten years ago in Windsor, in 2008, the GM Trim Plant closed, followed in 2010 by the closure of the GM Transmission plant. At its peak, the automaker employed 6,000 workers in Windsor.
"We've seen the devastation of families we've seen families lose their homes we've seen families break up because of this we've seen families have to move to other parts of the country to survive," says D'Agnolo. "We can't have this no more and Unifor's not going to stand for it and Jerry's going to be telling them just that."
Local 1973 retirees Chair Tony Sisti says Windsor is not immune to what happens in Oshawa.
"Lakeside {Plastics} makes three components for the Impala in Oshawa, that's two-thirds of their work, and Lakeside just had that big expansion," he says. "So how is it going to impact Lakeside, where they're going to have to go look for other work from other companies to fill the gaps, how is it going to negatively impact those workers?"
Following the meeting at the GM World Headquarters at the Renaissance Centre in downtown Detroit, Dias will return to Windsor and hold a news conference at the Unifor hall on Turner Rd.