GM Threat to Close Oshawa Auto
Plant
This Must Not Stand!
Windsor rally against GM's closure of Oshawa plant, January 11,
2019.
GM's announced intention to close its Oshawa
Assembly
Plant effectively breaks the contract it signed with Unifor
in 2016. The contract committed GM not to close any Canadian
plant
before the agreement expires in September 2020. The
indignation
this has aroused and the calls to hold GM to account are
warranted.
Stirring
up anti-Mexico sentiments as a way to expose GM's greed, which
opens a
door to divide workers on a racist basis, is not warranted.
 GM was bailed out with
public funds to the tune of almost $11 billion dollars when
it
filed for bankruptcy protection in 2009. The public money
paid to
GM was diverted from necessary services and social programs such
as
health care and education. To pour salt in the wound inflicted on
Canadians, the federal and Ontario
governments made the bailout conditional on workers and retirees
making
significant concessions to those who own and control GM.
Meanwhile, the
Ontario government had already allowed GM and other large
companies
such as Stelco the right not to sustain workers' pension funds at
a
proper level. The government and big companies based this
anti-social action on the fraudulent claim of being too big to
fail.
Yet here was GM declaring bankruptcy and Stelco doing it more
than once
putting retirees' pensions at risk.
Even though GM declares healthy profits, it
refuses to
pay back $1.6 billion of the loan it received from the
Conservative Harper and Liberal McGuinty governments at the time
of the
pay-the-rich bailouts. A December article in the Detroit Free
Press
quotes Unifor President Jerry Dias citing an even higher amount,
saying
GM
still owes Canada $2.8 billion as repayment for the bailout.
No
official has explained why GM was not forced to pay back all the
public
funds despite making record profits for its private
investors.
CBC reported last October that an outstanding
loan for
more than $1 billion to GM Corp., originally made on
April 29, 2009, appears on Export Development Canada's
Account transactions. That amount does not include the interest
that
would have accrued over the almost ten years it has been on the
government's books.
Why has the government not called in this debt especially after
GM
announced its intention to break its agreement with Unifor and
its
commitment to Oshawa and Canadians not to close the Oshawa plant?
Is GM
using the threatened closure of its Oshawa plant as leverage to
have
the Trudeau government write off the remainder of the debt,
similar to the $2.6 billion Chrysler debt to Canada silently
written off last year?
 Whatever the case, GM
has
defrauded the workers and Canadians with the connivance of both
the
federal and provincial governments and this must not stand!
Governments
must now intervene in a manner that favours the workers, their
communities and Canadians. For example, if GM proceeds to close
the
plant as threatened, the government
could call in GM's outstanding loan and use the money to keep the
Oshawa plant producing until a longer term solution such as
finding new
owners could be found. To begin this process, the government
could put
a lien against GM's Oshawa facility for the amount of the
outstanding
loan. If GM refuses to change its course, it should pay a price.
That is only just.
Within the situation, the workers at the Oshawa
plant
and those at the many suppliers of material and parts should
formulate
their own demands that favour them and not wait and see what the
gods
of plague will impose as an alleged solution.
This article was published in
Number 2 - January 24, 2019
Article Link:
GM Threat to Close Oshawa Auto
Plant: This Must Not Stand!
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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