SDA regular commenter, David Murrell, shared an interesting tip about what American auto workers are saying about General Motors moving production from Oshawa to Indiana:
Rich LeTourneau is blunt as he sets down his beer on the union hall bar, located just a stone’s throw away from the General Motors plant in Fort Wayne, Ind. where he’s put in 38 years.
I respect Canadian unions, I respect the Mexican union. We didn’t raise our hand and say … ‘I’ll take what you guys got.’ That decision was made way above our head, he told CBC News.
But when the company comes to me to increase volume, I’m not gonna tell them no, either, because it’s job security for my people, and hell, if I can corner the market, I will.
LeTourneau is the bargaining chairman at United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2209, which represents GM workers in Fort Wayne. This is where GM is adding 250 temporary jobs to build Chevrolet Silverados — work that has also been happening in Oshawa, Ont. but is being scaled back.
The only reason GM et al were located in Canada at all was because of generous government subsidies and obnoxious Canadian tariffs. That is all over now.
Mr Los …. u are full of poo poo de ka ka …. the history of auto manufacturing in Canuckistan is a little more complicated than your midwit summary.
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/automotive-industry
International trade unions were always such an inherently stupid notion. Push comes to shove, a country’s workers should always back opportunities for their country’s workers to obtain work. Nationalism always trumps in the end; the only surprising thing is that my people didn’t become so more quickly and harder. They’ve been amazingly patient and long suffering; may they now have at least a little sunshine after so many years of darkness!
Seems like the people of Oshawa are going to find out about the experiences of Americans 30 years ago. Have fun with it.
The UAW’s lack of sympathy comes from Buzz Hargrove’s separation to form the CAW. The CAW then joined other unions in Kanada to make UNIFOR.
Would UAW act differently if Windsor stayed with them? We’ll never know.