GM has settled its Canada strike - but the union might not be happy about the results

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GM has settled its Canada strike - but the union might not be happy about the results

Chevy Equinox

Business Insider/Danielle Muoio

The Chevy Equinox in built at the Canadian plant that was striking.

General Motors on Monday welcomed the ratification of a new four-year agreement by unionized workers at its SUV plant in Ontario, Canada, ending a near month-long strike.

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The US auto giant and the union reached a tentative deal on Friday. About 2,500 workers at the CAMI plant in Ingersoll walked off the job on Sept. 18 after GM rejected a union call to designate the factory as the lead production site for its popular Chevrolet Equinox model in North America.

If GM had done so, it would have been harder to shift Equinox production to Mexico, as Bloomberg's Kristine Owram reported. That "would have dictated preferential treatment over the two facilities building the key model in Mexico," she wrote.

Automakers have manufactured vehicles in Mexico for the local market and to import to the US for decades. But during last year's presidential campaign, Donald Trump made Mexico and carmakers a major political issue, attacking Ford in particular for plans to build a new factory in the country to build smaller vehicles that have been slow selling and weakly profitable in the US.

(Reuters reporting by Allison Lampert; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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