[ad_1]
Ryan Flanagan, CTVNews.ca, with a report by Jon Erlichman, BNN
Posted on Tuesday November 27, 2018 at 9:37 am EST
While 2,800 General Motors employees in Oshawa, Ont., Learned that their job was about to disappear, the builder is hiring for jobs 50 kilometers away.
However, there is one essential difference that indicates more significant changes in the automotive sector in Canada and around the world.
The vacant positions in Markham, Ontario, are reserved for programmers and engineers at a new research center launched by GM earlier this year. They require a skill set that is significantly different from traditional manufacturing jobs leaving Oshawa.
GM explained that part of the reason it did not intend to produce vehicles in Oshawa beyond 2019 was due to a shift in society toward autonomous vehicles and electric. This means more white-collar jobs for software developers and fewer blue-collar bademblies.
The company's president, Mary Barra, said Monday that the vehicles had become "much more software-oriented" than in the past, forcing GM to focus on the coding skills of its workforce.
Other automotive plants also at risk
Wayne Lewchuk, professor of labor studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, said the jobs offered in Canada in the auto sector were "limited" by the economic opportunities offered to Mexican car makers, where workers are significantly less paid.
Speaking on CTV's Your Morning on Tuesday, Lewchuk said Oshawa was the "jewel in the crown" of the Canadian auto industry in the early 2000s. Canadian auto production was at its peak in that time, with nearly 200,000 workers making more than three million vehicles a year, including nearly one million in Oshawa.
Figures for the country as a whole are now closer to 125,000 auto workers and two million vehicles a year. Tom Lasorda, a former president of Chrysler, said the only way to encourage automakers to reverse this trend would be for the federal government to offer incentives.
Without that, he said, several mills are in danger of closing, including one in the Greater Toronto Area owned by his former company.
"Brampton is next," he told BNN. "What will the government do there?"
Can the Oshawa plant be saved?
The official line of General Motors, backed by the provincial and federal governments, was that there was no chance for a reversal of the decision announced Monday.
Unifor, who represents workers at the Oshawa plant, has taken a different stance. Union president Jerry Dias said he was preparing for "a hellish fight" to maintain Oshawa 's vehicle production plant.
"They have to build them somewhere, and Oshawa is a place as good as everyone else," he told CTV, Your Morning.
"We can not sit still letting our industry # 1 continue to leave."
Dias argued that the current contract between Unifor and GM specified that no manufacturing facility subject to the agreement could be closed before its expiry, starting in 2020. GM did not openly declare the closure of Oshawa facilities. he. The Chevrolet Impala and Cadillac XTS models currently produced in Oshawa are in the process of being shut down, with the badembly of pickup trucks being transferred elsewhere.
Lewchuk suggested that Unifor might have some ability to leverage GM, noting that they represented workers at GM's other Canadian plants and seemed to have the ear of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. .
"I think they can exert some pressure on society," he said.
Lewchouk said that it "would not be out of the ordinary" that the announcement of the closure be an opening salvo in the contract negotiations between GM and Unifor. The current agreement between the automaker and its workers expires in 2020 and has been negotiated with the future of the Oshawa plant as a key issue.
"In every round of bargaining, the union had to negotiate for products in their factories," Lewchuk said.
[ad_2]
Source link
