Union chief addresses Rotary Club of Oshawa
January 29, 2008 - 04:14
By Charles McGregor
OSHAWA -- Canadian Autoworkers chief Buzz Hargrove challenged some of the region's most influential individuals to go after federal finance minister Jim Flaherty and pressure him to do more in the battle to save the auto industry.
"I met with him two months ago," Mr. Hargrove told the Rotary Club of Oshawa, "and pleaded with him - and I'm not known much for pleading -- but I told him to look in Durham Region alone and at the auto parts workers laid off and the loss of a shift coming up at GM of Canada."
Mr. Hargrove said in a best-case scenario, one parts plant could be gone by the end of the year.
"Johnson Controls is laying off people and Lear is threatening to close two facilities. This is in his own riding, where our industry is in trouble and every time we speak he says this is just the norm as our economy transforms from manufacturing to service. What utter nonsense. This is not inevitable. It doesn't have to happen," he said.
"We have unfair trade. In addition to Japan and South Korea, India and China and Russia are going to be major players at some point. (We have) a government, up until now, that's been unwilling to deal with this issue, including Mr. Flaherty, who represents this area," he said.
Mr. Hargrove told Rotarians to tell Mr. Flaherty, who is also the federal member for Whitby-Oshawa and the Minister Responsible for the GTA, that it would be in everyone's best interests -- CAW members, the community's and the country's -- for the feds to put some serious cash to save the auto industry and manufacturing.
"The manufacturing sector in Canada is taking a beating. Not a day goes by that I don't get notices of layoffs in the auto and other industries. And it's not just Ontario, it's Quebec and all across Canada," he said.
He added that there have been 350,000 manufacturing jobs lost in Canada since 2002.
Mr. Hargrove said that in 1979 GM of Canada had around 35,000 hourly-rated autoworkers, members of the CAW. CAW Local 222 peaked at around 21,000 members.
"Today, in the industry -- in what the media now call the Detroit Three, not the Big Three -- the total number of assemblers is 35,000 people."
In addition to a serious imbalance in auto trade, another contributing factor has been the rise of the Canadian dollar to parity with the U.S. greenback.
Further negative factors he cited include the current U.S. economic situation, new environmental regulations and laws in the U.S., the steady rise of the price of gasoline and the way the Auto Pact now works against Canada.
However, he said "I'm very, very confident they're going to put product in. General Motors doesn't invest $2.5 billion in a facility and then say 'sorry, we're not giving you a product.' They wouldn't be in business very long if that was their strategy."
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