Voting to elect a new union at the GM plant in Silao will be in February

Workers at a plant General Motors (GM) in Silao, in the state of Guanajuato, the focus of a recent labor conflict, will elect a new union representation on February 1 and 2 to negotiate their next collective contract, according to an official statement released this Friday.

Unionized factory employees General Motors in Silao they rejected the current collective contract in August at the polls, the first great challenge to the new North American trade agreement, T-MEC, signed by Canada, the United States and Mexico.

According to the government Federal Center for Conciliation and Labor Registration, which calls for the new suffrage, four trade union organizations registered between December 7 and 22 to run as the next workers’ representatives.

One of them, the National Independent Union of Industrial Workers, is an independent group that grew out of last year’s efforts among employees who rejected the previous collective bargaining agreement.

The silao plant is a linchpin of the company’s pickup truck strategy in North America and produced about 339,000 units Chevrolet Silverado Y GMC Sierra in 2019, more than a third of the total of the 906,000 that the company sold.

The vote in August last year was seen by employees as a way of throwing off the yoke of the then-current union, which they accused of protecting the company’s interests over their own.