By Shivansh Tiwary and Jyoti Narayan
(Reuters) -About 4,300 unionized workers went on strike at three General Motors facilities in Canada from Monday midnight after a deadline to negotiate a new deal lapsed, piling pressure on the automaker grappling with an industrial action in the U.S.
The walkout by workers came after the union said GM was "stubbornly refusing" to match the contract the labor group agreed with Ford Motor, which offered wage increases of up to 25% in Canada.
"The company continues to fall short on our pension demands, income supports for retired workers, and meaningful steps to transition temporary workers into permanent, full-time jobs," Unifor National President Lana Payne said.
The union had set a deadline of Monday midnight for a new deal with GM after the previous collective agreements with the Detroit Three automakers expired on Sept. 18.
GM said it will continue talks with Unifor but the walkout adds to the headache faced by the automaker in the U.S. where it was racking up millions of dollars in losses per week due to the United Auto Workers (UAW) strike.
GM has lost 34,176 vehicles of production since the start of the UAW strike in September, according to an estimate by Deutsche Bank. The automaker, however, said last week it had 442,586 vehicles in stock.
Unifor said it would go on strike at GM's Oshawa assembly complex, St. Catharines powertrain plant and the Woodstock parts distribution centre, but members at the CAMI Assembly Plant in Ingersoll, Ontario, will work as they are covered by a separate agreement.
GM now faces a likely disruption in production as workers at the St. Catharines plant make engines for a variety of vehicles, powertrains for the Chevrolet Equinox and Corvette, as well as engine component parts.
At the Oshawa plant, workers build light- and heavy-duty Chevrolet Silverado trucks, one of GM's most profitable models, while the plant's stamping operations supply various parts for GM North America.
Unifor has used the "pattern bargaining" approach in its talks, reaching a deal first with Ford and then expecting GM and Stellantis to match. The UAW, on the other hand, broke with that approach under its new leadership.
Unifor represents about 18,000 workers at the Canadian facilities of Ford, GM and Chrysler parent Stellantis.
Unions have been increasingly resorting to strikes across sectors from airlines to automakers, buoyed by a tight labor and favorable public opinion in the U.S., even though union memberships have fallen.
(Reporting by Shivansh Tiwary and Jyoti Narayan in Bengaluru; Editing by Christian Schmollinger, Jamie Freed and Arun Koyyur)
