# In spite of gov't bailouts at taxpayers expense, GM closing plants in Oshawa



## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

GM starting to shut down plants on different lines of cars, inspite of being bailed out in 2009 by the fed/prov gov't.
Probably see more of that as time rolls on. I know that these are specifically tailored lines to specfic cars and once
that market is not profitable, it's cheaper to shut down the plant, throwing unionized workers out of work and
restarting production somewhere else in the US with a new plant for a new line. 

<quote from article below>
GM also has a flex assembly plant in Oshawa that is getting a share of the production of the new Chevy Impala,* which is also being built at GM's Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant in Michigan*. 

However, Buckley said the union isn't giving up on the plant, arguing both the federal and Ontario governments should get involved because* they remain major shareholders to the tune of $8 billion as a result of government bailouts of the auto industry.*
<endquote.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/caw-says-gm-ahead-closure-one-oshawa-plants-143144063--finance.html


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## GoldStone (Mar 6, 2011)

We (taxpayers) got GM shares in return for our bailout money, didn't we? As a shareholder, I want to see GM costs go down down down. If that means shutting down unionized (read: expensive) plant, so be it.

I have very little sympathy for the plight of the unions. Why? Because of the stories like this...

*Tim Hortons loses $265K at hospital, union won't budge. Workers paid $26 an hour to serve coffee and donuts.*
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/winds...dr-tim-hortons-windsor-regional-hospital.html


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## Daniel A. (Mar 20, 2011)

Many companies receive special treatment the issue is not one of union but a business decision.
GoldStone so how much money do you think went into the pockets of the top people likely millions do you have a problem with that?

To many times people wish to bash based on simplistic ideas, the fact is many good paying jobs have been put on notice.


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## Four Pillars (Apr 5, 2009)

The problem with bailouts is that it's hard to know if they are necessary for the greater good or are just delaying the inevitable.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

GoldStone said:


> We (taxpayers) got GM shares in return for our bailout money, didn't we? As a shareholder, I want to see GM costs go down down down. If that means shutting down unionized (read: expensive) plant, so be it.
> 
> I have very little sympathy for the plight of the unions. Why? Because of the stories like this...
> 
> ...


I am curious about that story you linked to, as I have seen it elsewhere.

Can it be assumed that if the workers were paid 13 dollars an hour...............the business would still lose 130,000 a year?

What if they worked for $6 bucks an hour?..............only a loss of 60,000 a year?

How about they work for $3 dollars an hour?............still a loss of 30,000 a year?

Work for free..................still a loss of 15,000 a year?

Sounds to me like there is a whole lot more to that story.

Wonder how much "rent" they pay to the hospital?


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## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

carverman said:


> GM starting to shut down plants on different lines of cars, inspite of being bailed out in 2009 by the fed/prov gov't.


Gee, what a surprise.
A company moving production to another country for cheaper labor.
Where have we heard that before.

As for the bailouts - let's be clear - the government did not bail out the companies.
The bailouts were for the unions.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

The bailouts helped the union workers keep some work for awhile, but it also bailed out Ontario's liability under the Pension Guarantee Benefit Plan.

The company also was bailed out. They survived............debt free...........and can now move production anywhere they want.


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## jet powder (May 29, 2012)

It could be debated that the Tim Hortons union workers are doing everyone a favour because I do not think thier food is that healthy & to be seveing it @ a hospital makes me wonder.

Maybe Tims thinking is so what if we lose a little money if the masses know that we serve food where people go to fix their health it cant be that bad.

The goverment destroys the money world. The goverment is foolish if it thinks it can stop creative distruction.


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## hystat (Jun 18, 2010)

that Tim Horton's article is hilarious... a health care facility overwhelmed by diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and other illnesses worsened by overfed, underactive fatso canucks is crying that a place that serves food of near zero nutritional value can't make money????
GOOD! shut it down!

and shut down the auto industry- seize the plants, sell the equipment and use any future bailout bullcrap funds to support public transit. 

The auto sector has been pulling that same scam for 35 years.... governments are like the baby falling for the "got your nose" trick over and over and over when it comes to domestic automakers. 
Too bad that whole bailout thing ever happened. 
I'd rather live in a world where that $ went to fund innovation in mass people transit for urban areas.


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

To HaroldCrump: 

Yes, I agree with what you are saying. The writing is on the wall for the unions, and auto unions especially. 

I will put my money on the line and say that within the next 10 years, GM will have pulled out of Oshawa, lock, stock and barrel back to the good ole USA, build modern robotic plants subsidized by "right to work" state gov'ts (Tenneesee for one). 
and the US gov't handouts. 

The auto unions and their pension plan will be in BIG TROUBLE here in Ontario. 

I don't know if the Ontario Guaranteed pension fund will be able to handle the demand for subsidizing auto-union (GM and maybe Chrysler...don't know about Ford..they seem to be doing ok for now) pensions.

Being an Nortel retiree with the Nortel DB plan going bust and still in the process of windup, at least the Ont Guaranteed Pension plan is kicking in $300 for me, but I still had to take a $300 loss on my pension and I'm still paying $300 a month support to the ex until I die. 

So the next 10 years will definitely be "interesting" financially for me...but I all can say is that if GM pulls out of Ontario (remember they pulled out of Quebec a few years ago?), the DB pension plan will be in deficit, and at that point..the Ontario taxpayers will probably be shelling out some more..in more taxes or some other way!


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

hystat said:


> that Tim Horton's article is hilarious... a health care facility overwhelmed by diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and other illnesses worsened by overfed, underactive fatso canucks is crying that a place that serves food of near zero nutritional value can't make money????
> GOOD! shut it down!


Are you talking the hospital (badly run financially) or the TH kiosk? If it's the latter, how are the overfed, underactive canucks going to
get their fix of Timmy's coffee/lattees and a nice honey cruller, or a sugar rolled deep fried donut will a zillion calories?

<Fly on the wall..in a typical hospital with lots kiosks>

"Martha..push my wheelchair over to Timmy's would you?, I'm so big, I can't get out of it and I don't have the strength to do it myself.but I need my Timmy's morning fix!" Oh wait!..I can get my rehab doctor to write me a prescription for a $10k power wheel chair where I can wiggle the joystick and roll over there myself! I can buy the power chair right here in the same
hospital where there is a kiosk that sells them and other aids.Thanks to the Ontario gov't adaptive devices program..and you..the Ontario taxpayer!"



> and shut down the auto industry- seize the plants, sell the equipment and use any future bailout bullcrap funds to support public transit.


Ah but then the Koreans take over with their cars, because local gov'ts can agree on funding for public transit and guess what..you
will need to learn Korean to see the symbols on the car's dashboard and manual. 



> The auto sector has been pulling that same scam for 35 years.... governments are like the baby falling for the "got your nose" trick over and over and over when it comes to domestic automakers.
> Too bad that whole bailout thing ever happened.
> I'd rather live in a world where that $ went to fund innovation in mass people transit for urban areas.


You want to live in Utopian world, where everything works out as it should. Well dream on my FFF (fine forum friend).

Before that happens, there will be lots of unemployment in the auto sector areas, real estate plunging, more crime, everyone applying for
EI, which as you know has been changed to make the qualifications stricter, and many more economic issues in the downturn.
How can a municipality that will be going broke 'invest" in mass transit when the principle "deep pockets"..taxes on industrial land/buildings
dries up and the local municipality can't find a buyer..because the Koreans can make their cars a lot cheaper in Korea and ship them
over here in massive container ships!


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## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

carverman said:


> The auto unions and their pension plan will be in BIG TROUBLE here in Ontario.
> I don't know if the Ontario Guaranteed pension fund will be able to handle the demand for subsidizing auto-union (GM and maybe Chrysler...don't know about Ford..they seem to be doing ok for now) pensions.


The state of the pension plan should not change based on whether the company decides to close its plant and lay off the workers.
The tax payers will be on the hook if the company goes bust (as in your case of Nortel).
If it is a planned re-structuring, and the pension plan is funded/stable, it should be ok, no?

Unless I am misunderstanding what the tax payer liability is in this case.


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

HaroldCrump said:


> The tax payers will be on the hook if the company goes bust (as in your case of Nortel).
> *If it is a planned re-structuring, and the pension plan is funded/stable, it should be ok, no?*
> 
> Unless I am misunderstanding what the tax payer liability is in this case.


I don't know in GM's case. If it's a DB plan and they pull out all operations out of Ontario, are they still required to top up and
shortfall in the GM pension plan from the US? I know that for Nortel, the pension plans were separate and nothing to do with
each other as far as Canada and the US. The Nortel plan was based on number of employees working full time when they were
in business. 

There may be no taxpayer liability for the GM pension plan, if the plan is stable, but IF there is a shortfall in plan assets, besides
the GM retirees getting a pension reduction, the Ontario Guaranteed Pension Fund may kick in some relief. Who funds the PBGF? 



Obviously the gov't who collects money from the taxpayers had to lend GM some money last time, so what is to say it doesn't
happen again in the future GM decides to pull out of Canada...Like Caterpillar in London, etc. 

Of course today, with the deficits Ontario is running..500mil is just pocket change. :rolleyes2:



> _The government had to lend money to GM Canada for its pension on the condition employees don’t make a claim on the PBGF, and had to put $500 million into the fund to cover a claim by Nortel pensioners._


http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/851783--ontario-to-shore-up-pension-guarantee-fund


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## GoldStone (Mar 6, 2011)

carverman said:


> because the Koreans can make their cars a lot cheaper in Korea and ship them over here in massive container ships!


I believe that all Sonatas and Elantras sold in Canada come from Hyundai plant in Montgomery, Alabama. KIA has a plant in Georgia. Both are not unionized, so far.

Hyundai Teaches UAW Best Factory Job Doesn’t Need a Union
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...st-factory-job-doesn-t-need-a-union-cars.html


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

Hyundai has actually been steadily improving for some time while the others have let too many marketing types creep into their engineering meetings. Korean electronics are on a roll as well

Canada is the only country to unionize a Walmart, which is the first and so far the only Walmart in the world to fail


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## Daniel A. (Mar 20, 2011)

I think the pension issue is likely the driving force given that GM can't make the same kind of deals south of the boarder here.
Then again the total pension obligations for GM in relation to the size of its active work force remind me of the steel industry problems back in the 90s.

I'm always reminded monthly that one reason my pension check may keep coming is that there were no extra big ticket items like extended medical on mine.
I have a basic DB pension with the provincial medical paid and its up to me if there is something else I need.
My plan is 100% funded and has few active retirees.

I watched every time the Steel & Auto guy's negotiated for over 30 years and it never made sense, its fine to ask for the moon but to actually get it is another matter. 
I'm sure there is plenty of fault all the way around with why things are the way they are.
We are now dealing with world markets and I'm sure more shocks are in the works.


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

Daniel A. said:


> I think the pension issue is likely the driving force given that GM can't make the same kind of deals south of the boarder here.
> Then again the total pension obligations for GM in relation to the size of its active work force remind me of the steel industry problems back in the 90s.


and it's the defined benefit pension obligations that may drive them out of Ontario. It's a lot tougher for the Big Three to sell here and make the obscene profits like they did in the 70s. 80s, and into the 90s selling their junk.
The Japanese auto makers are well established here now and they don't have union labour. 
I'm sure the Koreans, Hyundai, Kia, Daewoo, and the Japanese models, Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Subaru
are becoming the type of vehicles that the buying public are turning to.

GM and Chrysler sat on their corporate "a**es for the last 20 years, pumping out inefficient fuel consuming "junk" that they reliied on their extensive dealer network to support and paid the auto-unions whatever they negotiated. Now times have changed, the worldwide economy, the high price of oil as well as competition has come home to roost for GM, Chrysler and the auto-unions.

While GM has come up with their Chevy Volt electric hybrid, so have the Koreans and Japanese,because they understand that the writing is on the wall with high oil prices, and the current wave of consumerism when it comes to buying replacement vehicles.

GM is closing the Chev Impala line in Oshawa..because sales are slowing down on this old technology model that doesn't have the fuel efficiency required by the public these days. Here in Ottawa, a GM dealer that sold GM lines (Chev/Cadillac) exclusively for many years, during the GM bailout bankruptcy crisis and GM cutting back on the dealers in Ottawa, 
bought a Hyundai dealership and doing well selling them. 

The same thing happened to the other former GM dealers that GM cut out..they acquired KOREAN lines!
GM cut their own throats with that action because now there are more Korean brand dealerships in Ottawa than GM.

The writing is on the wall for GM..the plant closure in Oshawa is just the beginning of their poor corporate decisions and not investing in their plants to become more competitive with the new marketplace. 
I don't feel sorry for them or their unions. The next financial crisis will be the last for them, because there will be no more gov't bailouts to the Ontario gov't in serious deficit. 



> I'm sure there is plenty of fault all the way around with why things are the way they are.
> We are now dealing with world markets and I'm sure more shocks are in the works.


More "aftershocks" in the NA auto industry coming up.:hopelessness:


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## Spidey (May 11, 2009)

IMO problems arise when unions, or any other entity for that matter, create a large distortion in the market place. There is probably room for a little distortion. For example, if good workers are widely available at $20 per hour and the union negotiates a contract at $23 then that difference may be insignificant in the scheme of things. But when that difference including benefits is about double what the marketplace could provide, then something eventually has to give - especially in an increasingly global economy. Unfortunately, this problem looks unsolvable given the entrenchment of ideology and much of the Canadian auto-sector will buckle under global competition.


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

Spidey said:


> IMO problems arise when unions, or any other entity for that matter, create a large distortion in the market place. Unfortunately, this problem looks unsolvable given the entrenchment of ideology and much of the Canadian auto-sector will buckle under global competition.


The auto unions have shot themselves in the foot, because they don't want to back down from their demands and the world economy as far as car production is passing them by. There will be a mass exodus of auto manufacturing lobs out of Canada as the economy slumps, and the asian competition heats up.

Just here in my area of Ottawa, there is only 1 Chrysler dealer still left and a GM dealer that is plugging Hyundai in a differnt
location from their GM dealership in the center part of Ottawa. With GM and Chrysler dumping dealers back in 2009/2010,
can you blame them for telling GM/Chrysler..the hell with you..we will sell Asian? 

The Chevy Volt, GM's answer to the future, is a drop in the bucket for a large corporation like GM. I'm not sure yet if even this is "too little-too late", but it's a step in the right direction for GM's family car offerings and financial survival in the future. They invested heavily in modernized Chevy Volt production in Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly plant, not Oshawa, because they already see the writing on the wall. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Volt

If they decide to close more obsolete vehicle plants in Oshawa, they will retract to south of the border and continue operations there. At that point the auto-unions will be screwed, because there will be no more jobs, (other than Chrysler and Ford) and it's doubtful that Chrysler will keep going here within the next 10 years, as they don't have a hybrid as yet. 
Sooner or later as the price of gas keeps rising, there will be a big fallout here. 

I don't think there will be any gov't bailouts the second time around for obsolete technology.


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## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

Spidey said:


> IMO problems arise when unions, or any other entity for that matter, create a large distortion in the market place.


Bingo, and "large" is the keyword here.
There is only one way any kind of large distortions in the market can persist over extended periods of time - government support/intervention.
Our governments over long periods of time have been more than happy to support this distortion, both in their own sector (govt. jobs) as well as through direct intervention in the private sector (bailouts, union support, etc).


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## Mall Guy (Sep 14, 2011)

sags said:


> Wonder how much "rent" they pay to the hospital?


Yes internal accounting can skew the numbers, but in the end, the hospital is the franchisee, and TDL is the Tenant, operated by the franchisee, who is the hospital as discussed, who receives rent, and pays royalties . . . whatever the accounting, it should be a profit centre, if not for all the union issues. If the hospital just leased out the facility, it would be. I think its great the head of the union would rather see it, and the cafeteria close, then do something constructive.


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## Sampson (Apr 3, 2009)

Incredible.

Who would have thought that Ontario would be losing jobs to American's and robots. Globalization is rampant and those American's are stealing our jobs.

I mentioned this in another thread, but I think the manufacturing sector in Canada is in big big trouble. We don't produce anything considered World-class (and only possible to be made in Canada) and that is a big problem.

We are truely doomed to become a country that only exports raw materials.


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

Sampson said:


> Incredible.
> 
> Who would have thought that Ontario would be losing jobs to American's and robots. Globalization is rampant and those American's are stealing our jobs.


These are American firms that set up business to manufacture cars for sale here years ago. Later on with free trade, they decided to set up specific lines for specific models, and that's where part of the problem lies..besides the unions that is.



> I mentioned this in another thread, but I think the manufacturing sector in Canada is in big big trouble. We don't produce anything considered World-class (and only possible to be made in Canada) and that is a big problem.
> We are truely doomed to become a country that only exports raw materials.


Well we still do make world class consumer items. Bombardier, BRP, the small challenger jet,....beer, cheese, and meat products, but the car manufacturing sector is starting to dry up.


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## Cal (Jun 17, 2009)

The CAW always seems to rub me the wrong way whenever they have their press conferences. I am not saying we should lose those jobs....just that I do not care for the attitude that they give the public.


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

I think there is more distress for CAW on the horizon. GM can take the same approach as the "Caterpillar-Locomotive" plant in London this year. Either take a pay cut or we close the plant...
In the Caterpillar case, the union wouldn't accept the pay cut, so they closed the plant, and moved to Muncie? Indiana, where they can employ American workers and get subsidies from the state and US gov't. 

Same thing is going to happen here, if GM start seeing sales plummet. In hard times, it boils down to self protectionism...no matter what the agreements were before.


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

After billions of dollars of bailout money, given by taxpayers to GM, they are closing yet another plant. Oshawa, employing more than 2500 people
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/gm-oshawa-plant-1.4920241

GM executives pay themselves figures like $22 million and $8 million salaries. First they hold "jobs" hostage and demand money from the government. Then the jobs disappear anyway.


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## doctrine (Sep 30, 2011)

Unfortunately, the business case for the investment of a new investment dollar for a company like GM is pretty straightforward - it is far better in the United States, especially for production destined for the United States. 

"Buy local" is a thing - we export 80% of our vehicle production to the United States. Those vehicles don't "have" to be made here.

If you want to prioritize the environment and socialism and have high taxes, like Canada does, how can you be surprised when a manufacturing company, whom exports vehicles to the United States, closes shop? It just makes sense. 

With the introduction of anti-globalization and anti-trade tarrifs in the United States and the massive cut to US federal corporate tax rates, expect more of this in the future. Bombardier was another good example. Tens of thousands of jobs will continue to be cut, and tens of thousands will simply not be created, because companies are just not making investments in Canada due to the unfavourable investment climate. None of this should be a surprise.

Foreign direct investment in Canada is down like something over 50% in the last 5 years. Other countries aren't investing here. And neither are Canadians - we're also investing our money outside Canada. Maybe someone should make a law to prevent Canadians from investing money outside the country.


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## kcowan (Jul 1, 2010)

I am sure glad that NAFTA 2.0 made our auto sector secure!


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

doctrine said:


> Foreign direct investment in Canada is down like something over 50% in the last 5 years. Other countries aren't investing here. And neither are Canadians - we're also investing our money outside Canada. Maybe someone should make a law to prevent Canadians from investing money outside the country.


I don't think that's true. Not for 2017 anyway, as reported by Bloomberg:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...nt-in-canada-is-only-really-slowing-in-energy

Foreign investors have reduced investment in the energy sector, but there continues to be foreign investment increases in all other sectors. Net foreign investment across all industries appears to be positive in that Bloomberg chart.


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## Onagoth (May 12, 2017)

GoldStone said:


> We (taxpayers) got GM shares in return for our bailout money, didn't we? As a shareholder, I want to see GM costs go down down down. If that means shutting down unionized (read: expensive) plant, so be it.
> 
> I have very little sympathy for the plight of the unions. Why? Because of the stories like this...
> 
> ...


I'm with ya.

We're going through union negotiation at work right now (I'm not part of the union) and the arguments that they come up with to defend the insanely high salaries are beyond my comprehension.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

This decision to close the Oshawa plant makes no business sense to me at all.

The plant has won 26 JD Power awards, is profitable and is set up to build bigger vehicles.

GM says they are rotating out of big vehicles and into electric and hybrid vehicles.

We own 2 GM vehicles, a Chevy Cruze and a GMC Acadia. We rent a townhouse with no outside access to hydro. Electric or hybrid cars are of no use to us.

There are a lot of people in the same position living in townhomes, apartments, condos, and GM is going to write off that entire segment of potential customers ? 

GM made stupid management decisions before and it looks like they are making another one.

The bean counters must be running the company again. They bankrupted it last time they were in charge.

Back to the days of poor quality due to cheapness, and building colossal failures like the Aztec ?

Shame.........it took decades for the "car guys" to get GM's mojo back.


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## ian (Jun 18, 2016)

It is not simply the GM jobs that may disappear. I have read that for every GM job there are three more jobs that are created.

Traditional manufacturing has been leaving Ontario for the past several years. Partly because of the new economy. Governments seem to have done little to prepare for this. The seem entirely focused on the here and now, and the next election.


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## Just a Guy (Mar 27, 2012)

The socialists are too funny...first they get mad if a company makes profits, (when they decry the fact and demand companies pay more in taxes, raise pay, hand out more benefits, etc.) then they get mad when the companies lose money and shut down (when they decry the fact and demand the companies continue despite the fact that they lose money on every sale). 

Meanwhile they think that government money is “free” and should be handed out like candy at the expense of the “rich”, until the rich decide to leave and then they decry the facts and demand more “free” money from governments...

Ian, maybe the unions and other socialists should consider your information instead of always demanding more when they approach the trough.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

The management "car guys"........"let's engineer and build top quality vehicles that people will like and buy".

The management "bean counters".........."let's eliminate all blue pens in the workplace and use red ones. People are taking the blue ones home".

Whomever in GM management made the decision to transition from big vehicles into electric vehicles must be a bean counter.


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## OptsyEagle (Nov 29, 2009)

I suspect that GM simply wanted to downsize. Consolidate some of their manufacturing.

Now if you were GM and Donald Trump was in the White House would you shut down a plant in Oshawa or Tennessee?

That's what bugs me. If you don't think DT is putting pressure on industry leaders, behind the scenes, you have not been watching things very closely.


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## ian (Jun 18, 2016)

Yes. I read something in the US media that Trump is particularly fond of mentioning Chevy Impala to auto executives in the US when he is discussing bringing jobs home.

Could be also that GM is testing the waters for yet another Government handout. The routine is all too familiar. Cry and threaten to leave, create some political pressure, and then score a bag of free money.


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## agent99 (Sep 11, 2013)

sags said:


> The management "car guys"........"let's engineer and build top quality vehicles that people will like and buy".


Too bad they didn't get that done.


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## Just a Guy (Mar 27, 2012)

<munch>,<munch>,<munch> No need <munch>,<munch>,<munch> to count beans...<munch>,<munch>,<munch> there’s always more <munch>,<munch>,<munch> just pass the pixie dust. 

Hey, any more beans???

Who turned out the lights?


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## doctrine (Sep 30, 2011)

sags said:


> The management "car guys"........"let's engineer and build top quality vehicles that people will like and buy".
> 
> The management "bean counters".........."let's eliminate all blue pens in the workplace and use red ones. People are taking the blue ones home".
> 
> Whomever in GM management made the decision to transition from big vehicles into electric vehicles must be a bean counter.


Did you check GM's latest results? They sold 15% less cars this year than last year. Quality is important, but they need to close their least profitable plants as soon as possible. They can't just "build cars" because they can. And they are not going to invest $billions in Canada when we have higher taxes, higher wages, and severe risk of being hit with auto and steel tarrifs anywhere in the world, but particularly in the United States.


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## ian (Jun 18, 2016)

GM are not stupid.

What else happens in 2019? A federal election. What area is critical in terms of votes/seats for any political party? 416/905. Plus perhaps a few 705 constituencies. Coincidence? Perhaps not.

It does not take much imagination to read the tea leaves on this. All three parties will be outdoing themselves to point fingers, commit to billions of dollars in handouts. Anything to either gain or retain power. GM are experts in playing the game.


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## Gumball (Dec 22, 2011)

OptsyEagle said:


> I suspect that GM simply wanted to downsize. Consolidate some of their manufacturing.
> 
> Now if you were GM and Donald Trump was in the White House would you shut down a plant in Oshawa or Tennessee?
> 
> That's what bugs me. If you don't think DT is putting pressure on industry leaders, behind the scenes, you have not been watching things very closely.


Why does that bug you? GM is am AMERICAN company, trump is doing what in the best interest of AMERICA, so naturally he'd put pressure on the company to keep jobs in AMERICA...
Now, in the case of the news of the Oshawa plant closing once again the CBC has only fed us part of the story...there are also two US plants slated for closure...

https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/general-motors/2018/11/26/ontario-plant-closure/2112539002/


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

Ford/GM were never "cool" to my generation. We learned imports were generally more reliable and efficient at some point and that stuck

The stats are really bad for domestics. Both Ford and GM are feeling the heat again and need to make drastic changes. Ford is cutting all their cars

Electric vehicles are the future like it or not. It's a matter of time now. If GM doesn't do something they will be crying for bailouts again


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## OptsyEagle (Nov 29, 2009)

Gumball said:


> Why does that bug you? GM is am AMERICAN company, trump is doing what in the best interest of AMERICA, so naturally he'd put pressure on the company to keep jobs in AMERICA...
> Now, in the case of the news of the Oshawa plant closing once again the CBC has only fed us part of the story...there are also two US plants slated for closure...
> 
> https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/general-motors/2018/11/26/ontario-plant-closure/2112539002/


Because I am a Canadian.

Unless there are 10 American plants to close, for each Canadian one, then we are being singled out. If we can get a tariff on some of those GM cars, it would be nice. At least a theat. Perhaps a tax on GM dealers or directly to the consumer. This is the kind of thinking I would like to see our government do. Not the exact idea but something. Tit or tat. This sitting back and hoping the US plays fair is just the kind of dreaming I wish they would stop doing.


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## AltaRed (Jun 8, 2009)

OE, tariff issues aside which affect vehicles both ways, the problem is our relative lack of manufacturing competitiveness due to costs of operation, whether that be energy, or payroll benefits, or..... It is sad how the ON Liberals in particular destroyed ON competitiveness. Add in the carbon tax and one can forgive companies for fleeing to greener pastures. It does piss me off though how much taxpayer money went up in smoke to buy votes the past 10 years.

The writing has been on the wall for some time with 'domestic' autos, cars specifically. On our private lane of 11 houses, and 23 vehicles, there are 3 Ford pickup trucks, 2 GM SUVs and 1 Corvette. Everything else is Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mercedes, Audi and Porsche. Hasn't been a 'domestic' car here in the past 10 years that I am aware of. Domestic cars have been terrible for a long time. I've had 2 from car rental agencies the last 5 years (Impala and Charger) and hated them both.

Both Ford and FCA have been scaling back their car lines for some time and I somehow wondered why GM was not doing the same thing. Proliferation of models certainly couldn't be helpful. I think Ford will eventually only have their "world" Focus and their Mustang. FCA needs to simply stop making everything in their 'car' lines. Both will re-invent some kind of EV 'car' along the way.


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## ian (Jun 18, 2016)

The only so called domestic vehicles that we have had in the past twenty years or so have been company cars. Those that we have owned or purchases have all been Toyota or Honda products. When we have shopped for vehicles we did not even bother going into the Ford, GM, Chrysler dealerships. It was the product as well as the service. Our Honda was assembled in Canada and I think that the Toyota was as well.


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## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

What's that saying about we never learn from the past and so are doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

Like it or not, we live today in a WORLD economy. A business of any size can no longer survive if it cannot compete with the rest of the world. That's just the way it is. I haven't owned a US automaker made car since 1989. Why? Simply because there are better cars being built by automakers from other countries and they provide me better value for money.

I liken it to the shipbuilding industry. Time was when many countries built ships. But today, the majority of ship building is done in Korea and China. They have around 75% of all ship building done in the world. Much of what is left being built in other countries, is Navy ships for obvious reasons. Look at the UK which was once had the largest ship building industry in the world. Nothing left but Navy ships. The same is true here in Canada. Look at Collingwood, Ontario which used to build Great Lakes freighters, gone. 

Why is it that people never seem to be able to see 'the writing on the wall'? The fiasco in 2009 should have shown anyone with half a brain, US car companies are finished, it's just a matter of dragging out the process for as long as possible. One US automaker might survive by changing and adapting but that all 3 major US automakers will, is highly unlikely. 

So my advice to Canadians who work for a US automaker, is, look for another job. One with a more likely future.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

If GM management is right and the immediate future beyond 2019 is in electric vehicles..........Canada can forget about pipelines and kiss the oil industry goodbye.


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## Just a Guy (Mar 27, 2012)

Justin seems to be ending the oil industry all by himself...ending what his father started. Good luck to the rest of Canada when the golden goose is dead...who’ll pay for Quebec’s day care then?


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

This board seems to have a ton of Liberal haters that try spinning everything into an anti-Liberal, anti-Trudeau message and there's always some kind of comment about 'how screwed Canada is'... where do you guys pick up this behaviour? Talk radio? You're way off.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gm-c...h-america-halt-models-132847206--finance.html



> GM plans to halt production next year at three assembly plants: Lordstown, Ohio; Hamtramck, Michigan; and Oshawa, Ontario. It will also stop building several models now assembled at those plants, including the Chevrolet Cruze, the Cadillac CT6 and the Buick LaCrosse. The Cruze compact car will be discontinued in the U.S. market in 2019.
> 
> Plants in Baltimore, Maryland, and Warren, Michigan, assembling powertrain components will have no products assigned to them after 2019 and are at risk of closure, GM said. It will also close two unidentified factories outside North America.


These are cuts everywhere including across the US. More closures in the US than Canada. This is not a Liberal or Trudeau story... grow up. Both US and Canada gave automakers big bailouts, the point is that taxpayer money to these big corps is like flushing money down the toilet.

Spinning this into an anti-Liberal, anti-Canadian message is pretty juvenile... but I understand that's popular with conservatives.



sags said:


> If GM management is right and the immediate future beyond 2019 is in electric vehicles..........Canada can forget about pipelines and kiss the oil industry goodbye.


Yup, could be another non-viable industry as a whole. Energy has been in a bear market for quite a bit of this last economic recovery. Not only that but the oil sands produce a very low quality crude that the market does not find desirable. Of course instead of thinking independently and seeing these realities, conservatives just want to blame Trudeau.


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## Jimmy (May 19, 2017)

james4beach said:


> This board seems to have a ton of Liberal haters that try spinning everything into an anti-Liberal, anti-Trudeau message and there's always some kind of comment about 'how screwed Canada is'... where do you guys pick up this behaviour? Talk radio? You're way off.


They aren't the only reason but they sure are a factor here. No mystery ON Libs gouged cos w the highest energy rates in NA. Plus red tap, carbon cap & trade bs etc etc A general disdain for business. Same for Trudeau w payroll and carbon taxes and no tax relief to match the US

Then you have the Libs in PQ subsidizing Alcan so shocker we get aluminum tariffs driving up input costs of back & forth auto production trade.


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## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

Gumball said:


> ... once again the CBC has only fed us part of the story...there are also two US plants slated for closure...
> https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/general-motors/2018/11/26/ontario-plant-closure/2112539002/


Perhaps you are referring to yesterday's CBC article?

The CBC one from today talked about US plant closings and other ones to come for outside north america.


Cheers


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## Just a Guy (Mar 27, 2012)

James, you seem to have a habit of mixing up topics. The Justin comments came out of his lip service to the oil patch about how they’ll build pipelines and help the oil industry. It’s all garbage because the liberal caucus only limes the money out of the oil industry, they hate everything else. He’s got no intention of getting the pipelines built...it’s not like it’s bombardier after all. 

No one blamed him for the gum plant closing. Maybe he can dress up as a GM car and tell us how he’ll change things...he’s all talk, no action.

For the record, I’m not anti liberal, I am a fiscal conservative and I’m also anti idiot. Mr. Dressup isn’t my ideal leader. Leaders make hard decisions, not play lip service and avoid conflict.


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## accord1999 (Aug 9, 2013)

sags said:


> If GM management is right and the immediate future beyond 2019 is in electric vehicles..........Canada can forget about pipelines and kiss the oil industry goodbye.


Except really what's happening is that GM management is acknowledging the current and future beyond 2019 are slightly less fuel efficient crossovers and trucks.


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## ian (Jun 18, 2016)

I suppose Justin Trudeau is also to blame for GM's closing of two plants in Ohio, one in Maryland, and a fourth in Michigan???

Plus world hunger, global warming, and Putin's aggression.


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## condor (Jun 15, 2014)

Liberal or Consertative...simple fact is the present government has overtaxed...over regulated any new or existing business in Canada. GM announcement came after the Liberals announced a fiscal outlook paper...was it a factor??
I predict down the road some leaked document from..... GM will mention the hostile business climate for leaving...time will bear me out...watch for it!!!!


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

Actually, Canadian GDP is projected to be stronger in the next couple years than other G8 countries (ex US).

And if you weren't paying attention, the US deficit and debt ballooned tremendously after the Trump tax cuts. That's a huge, permanent cost to their country. Canada is being more sensible.

The country is not hostile to business at all, the lobbyists are just trying to push for the same ridiculous kinds of corporate welfare as in the US. Just because the US cut corp taxes so dramatically doesn't mean Canada should do anything of the sort. Corporate welfare doesn't do us any good in the long term.

Corp taxes in Canada are already competitively low. I really hope the govt doesn't do something stupid like cutting them further.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

The situation was pretty clearly laid out today at the union press conference.

GM is forecasting their future of 190,000 cars made in Canada and 900,000 made in Mexico. 

The Canadian and US jobs are going to Mexico, where auto workers earn $2 an hour and have no benefits or safety.

Canadians and Americans buy all the production. Mexicans can't afford to buy the cars they build.

That isn't business. It is corporate greed and theft.

We will see how Trump reacts to the loss of 4 more GM plants to Mexico.


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## OhGreatGuru (May 24, 2009)

Yes, GM is also closing 4 plants in the USA. They are either "resizing" or moving production to Mexico (or elsewhere).

Premier Ford's predictable attempts to blame the Oshawa closing on 15 years of Liberal mismanagement are without any credible evidence. And don't add anything constructive to the discussion.

Notwithstanding Ford Corp's much-ballyhooed cancellation in 2017 of plans for a new plant in Mexico, car manufacturers still have the following plants in Mexico:
Ford - 3
Chrysler - 3
GM - 4
Mazda - 1
Honda - 2
Nissan - 3
Toyota - 2
Volkswagen - 2

https://offshoregroup.com/industries/automotive-manufacturing-in-mexico/


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## Prairie Guy (Oct 30, 2018)

m3s said:


> Electric vehicles are the future like it or not. It's a matter of time now. If GM doesn't do something they will be crying for bailouts again


The auto makers (not just GM) are not against electric cars, they're just treating them just like they would do with any product that has a small share of the market. If demand increases then they'll start making more of them. They're in the auto business, not the gasoline powered auto business.

GM, like any other business will try to squeeze Trudeau for all they can get. It's not a deep secret that Trudeau couldn't negotiate his way out of a wet paper bag.


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## agent99 (Sep 11, 2013)

ian said:


> GM are not stupid.
> 
> It does not take much imagination to read the tea leaves on this. All three parties will be outdoing themselves to point fingers, commit to billions of dollars in handouts. Anything to either gain or retain power. GM are experts in playing the game.


But what is their game? Close one Canadian plant and 4 in Michigan and more elsewhere. How does that relate to a Canadian election?


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

OhGreatGuru said:


> Yes, GM is also closing 4 plants in the USA. They are either "resizing" or moving production to Mexico (or elsewhere).
> 
> Premier Ford's predictable attempts to blame the Oshawa closing on 15 years of Liberal mismanagement are without any credible evidence. And don't add anything constructive to the discussion.
> 
> ...


In addition, auto assembly plants don't warehouse parts and use a "just in time" system, so the multitude of suppliers for every part of a car, from steering wheels, to seats, to tires, is trucked in from Tier II suppliers located nearby. They arrive at the docks, are driven to the line locations by forklift drivers just before they are needed. It is a ballet of auto parts in an assembly plant, which the auto makers have lessened to a degree by including more popular options on the base models.

For 20 auto plants in Mexico, they must have hundreds of thousands of people employed in the industry.

If someone in Mexico earns $2 an hour on the assembly line, how much does a custodian, floor sweeper or cafeteria person earn ?

How much do suppliers pay their Tier II employees, which would be less than the $2 an hour paid by GM, Ford and other Tier I assembly plants.

It starts to get ridiculous when you consider those kinds of wages, but Mexicans survive on it which wouldn't be possible in Canada.


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## OnlyMyOpinion (Sep 1, 2013)

2500 jobs. Yawn. It's a non-event. 
However with the federal election next year, I'll be interested to see if Trudeau tries to buy Oshawa & Durham support. The Libs haven't held seats there since 2004 (the new-in-2015 riding of Whitby is Liberal), but they're more likely to spend our tax dollars there trying to wrest Oshawa from the CPC (in spite of an unemployment rate of only 5.8%) than they are in say Calgary (with an unemployment rate of 8.2%). 
Oshawa used to be hardcore union, forever NDP - Ed Broadbent's riding. But the NDP died nationally with Layton's passing. In those days GM employed more like 23,000.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

If gas prices spike to $1.50 a liter, GM will be following the same path as they had when they went bankrupt.

All the GM executives who ran the company back then are retired and gone. The new executives have no experience with that bit of GM history and are making the same mistakes.


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## Just a Guy (Mar 27, 2012)

Your insider knowledge is amazing. You’re not like all those other people sitting in their basement making things up to suit their agendas.


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## ian (Jun 18, 2016)

It is not just 2500 jobs. It is far more. There are many local manufacturers feeding that plant with parts. Not to mention the local economy. And those are well paying union jobs. Takes a lot of service industry jobs to replace that payroll.


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

Lengthy article with history of government subsidies for GM and other companies:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/national-today-newsletter-gm-oshawa-medical-implants-1.4920729

This older article says Canada has paid $684 billion in total corporate subsidies over 30 years, and Fraser Institute says the effect has been marginal at best:
https://business.financialpost.com/...-business-subsidies-over-20-years-study-shows



> “These businesses have competitors. We are stealing from one to subsidize another. We are redistributing and not actually creating new jobs or tax growth as is sometimes claimed.”


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## OnlyMyOpinion (Sep 1, 2013)

ian said:


> It is not just 2500 jobs. It is far more. There are many local manufacturers feeding that plant with parts. Not to mention the local economy. And those are well paying union jobs. Takes a lot of service industry jobs to replace that payroll.


Ya, I get that. Some report possible impact on 15,000 auto-parts jobs, etc. Still less than 1/3 of the job losses they've experienced in the West over the past few years, and to my point - far more likely to see the Liberals piss away money to try to buy a few seats.


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## marina628 (Dec 14, 2010)

My friend who has worked at GM for 18 years commutes from his home in Port Hope every day ,he said many GM workers live in Cobourg /Port Hope and thinks based on his coffee shop talk today many are going to start selling their homes sooner than later and that could be the spin off story for 2019.He is 53 still has 16 years to pay his house off and it seems many of them have similar stories.


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

marina628 said:


> My friend who has worked at GM for 18 years commutes from his home in Port Hope every day ,he said many GM workers live in Cobourg /Port Hope and thinks based on his coffee shop talk today many are going to start selling their homes sooner than later and that could be the spin off story for 2019.He is 53 still has 16 years to pay his house off and it seems many of them have similar stories.


Sorry to hear that. My ex gf and various friends lived in Oshawa and surrounding areas. This is really bad news for the city and region.


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## OhGreatGuru (May 24, 2009)

sags said:


> ...
> If someone in Mexico earns $2 an hour on the assembly line, how much does a custodian, floor sweeper or cafeteria person earn ?


It's not as low as $2, but certainly lower than Canada or USA. Latest figure I found on Google ( for about May 2018) was "under $8" (which I would interpret to mean $7 plus change) for auto assembly; and "under $4" for parts assembly. Still good wages for Mexico. 

Trump doesn't like to talk about it, but the good socioeconomic benefit for the USA is that the number of illegal Mexico immigrants has been declining steadily for several years since the economy has improved in Mexico and its citizens can find work at home.


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## doctrine (Sep 30, 2011)

OnlyMyOpinion said:


> Ya, I get that. Some report possible impact on 15,000 auto-parts jobs, etc. Still less than 1/3 of the job losses they've experienced in the West over the past few years, and to my point - far more likely to see the Liberals piss away money to try to buy a few seats.


Trudeau certainly didn't tell Calgarians "we will do everything possible" last week in Calgary to the oil patch workers, did he? More like "hey I guess it's not all good here, good luck with that".

This move is 100% about Donald Trump's pressure to move jobs to the United States. Yes, they closed US plants too. So they had to close something in Canada as well or risk tarrifs on the remaining Canadian production. Donald Trump would have raged all over GM if the cuts were not shared. 

And you can bet anything that the new plants making electric and autonomous cars will not be anywhere near a Canadian border.


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## OnlyMyOpinion (Sep 1, 2013)

Globally, the firm, which employed about 180,000 salaried and shift staff at the end of last year, is aiming to reduce the number of salaried employees by 15%, including 25% fewer executives.
General Motors (GM) plans to halt production at five factories in North America and cut more than 14,000 jobs. The US carmaker has also announced it will close three plants outside North America by the end of 2019. The moves follow rising costs and slower car sales and come as the firm focuses on its line-up of trucks, electric and self-driving vehicles.
buyers in North America have turned away from smaller cars to bigger vehicles such as SUVs and trucks, which now make up nearly 70% of total US car purchases. Ms Barra said GM wants to invest in electric and autonomous vehicles, which are expected to drive future industry growth. 

News in October: Honda will contribute approximately $2bn over 12 years to self-driving vehicle initiatives, which together with a $750m equity investment in General Motors' self-driving unit, GM Cruise, brings its total commitment to the project to $2.75bn, the two firms said in a statement.
Analysts have said that GM is among the leaders in the development of self-driving vehicles.
Earlier this year, Japan's Softbank invested $2.25bn in GM Cruise. Honda's investment in GM Cruise, together with Softbank's recent investment, values the firm at $14.6bn.


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## Pluto (Sep 12, 2013)

sags said:


> This decision to close the Oshawa plant makes no business sense to me at all.


Makes a lot of business sense. Workers there were paid too much, reportedly $46 an hour for watching robots make cars.


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## OnlyMyOpinion (Sep 1, 2013)

GM had committed 16% of manufacturing to Canada until 2016.
Sept 2016-17 Oshawa assembled 160,000 cars
Sept 2017-18 Oshawa assembled 110,000 cars (Impala, Cadillac, Silverado or Sierra) - 5% of total Canadian car production. Anyone buy one of these last year?

Where was the union when these numbers were showing up? Seems Jerry Dias was too busy adding his 2 cents and 5 minutes of fame to the NAFTA negotiations.
Too little, too late bud.


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

doctrine said:


> Trudeau certainly didn't tell Calgarians "we will do everything possible" last week in Calgary to the oil patch workers, did he? More like "hey I guess it's not all good here, good luck with that".


Trudeau bought the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project for $4.5 billion. The federal government has spent a ton of money supporting the oil & gas industry.


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## AltaRed (Jun 8, 2009)

Per OMO's post, it certainly seems like the right thing to do as much as it hurts Canada's job and GDP numbers. Consolidate to vehicles that sell the most going forward, minimize the plants to build each model in, and focus capex expenditures on the new generation of vehicles and technology. The plug had to be pulled sometime on dinosaurs like the Impala, Malibu and the various models of Cadillacs GM has been trying to find a strong winning model with. Much of their current car lineup just has to die a death with no further investment into them.

Added: Link to CNN article on the 6 vehicles GM is dropping https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/26/business/gm-cars-dropping-production/index.html


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## Just a Guy (Mar 27, 2012)

james4beach said:


> Trudeau bought the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project for $4.5 billion. The federal government has spent a ton of money supporting the oil & gas industry.


No, they bought a pipeline and are basically not doing anything with it. They, so far, wasted 4.5 billion and gave the money to a pipeline owner who’s bailed. The pipeline has no indication that it will ever be expanded. So there is no support for the oil industry only a rich former pipeline owner. Probably buddies of his it’ll turn out.


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## OnlyMyOpinion (Sep 1, 2013)

Keep in mind that _"The existing Trans Mountain pipeline made $300 million in revenue last year, with a 9.5% return on equity, according to University of Calgary economics Prof. Trevor Tombe."_
So this particular purchase, while it may not have been a stellar investment, was at least an investment, and in theory has kept the door open to the p/l's much needed expansion. It was not a case of simply pissing money away in support of the industry.


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## twa2w (Mar 5, 2016)

Yes but what was the net return. The article doesn't state what the equity was - not very high I think. 300million in Revenue is not a lot. What were the operating costs?

Only time will tell if this was a good deal but remember, this is a 65 year old pipeline with all the risks that entails. What did KM pay for the pipeline originally - less than a billion from what I hear so they made out like bandits.

If the new pipeline is built, will it ever ship at capacity and how much will the discount on the Cdn crude still be.


Remember that the US can ship light crude out of the Gulf in ships 4X the size that can be used for the dilbit that would come through the TM. And better quality to boot.

Ships at the Louisiana Oil Port can be loaded at the rate of 100,000 barrels an hour and hold 2 million barrels. Ships through the Burrard inlet can only be at 80% capacity and only hold 550,000 barrels

So if you are a buyer - do you send 4 ships with associated costs to Canada to buy lower quality stuff - and slower to load or do you send a tanker to the US where you can load much faster and transport higher quality stuff.


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## doctrine (Sep 30, 2011)

james4beach said:


> Trudeau bought the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project for $4.5 billion. The federal government has spent a ton of money supporting the oil & gas industry.


It remains to be seen whether any shovel ever enters the ground for Transmountain expansion project under the Trudeau government. $4.5B might just be the cost of burying it.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

This is history repeating itself.

Before GM went bankrupt they were selling a lot of big vehicles until gas prices spiked and then sales of big vehicles collapsed.

Today, gas prices have been relatively low for awhile. They will spike again and people will go back to smaller vehicles.

The auto manufacturers are always chasing consumer sentiment, driven by gas prices.


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## AltaRed (Jun 8, 2009)

james4beach said:


> Trudeau bought the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project for $4.5 billion. The federal government has spent a ton of money supporting the oil & gas industry.


They bought the existing pipeline based on a cash flow multiple basis. Straight forward economics on an acquisition in the marketplace. Whether slightly higher or lower than a TRP or ENB would pay, we don't know, but it is more than reasonable for KM to book a profit on a sale of a depreciated/amortized line. That is the way it always is (and was when I was in the O&G acquisition and divestment business).

The existing pipeline has decades of service left in it even if the TMEP does not go ahead. No idea why pundits and media cannot get that straight. The existing line and TMEP cannot be separated operationally so whoever does the expansion needs to own the existing system as well.

If TMEP goes ahead, the Feds will do very well on the overall investment. The incremental capacity will more than provide a return on that new investment AND bring operating efficiencies to the existing line bought at $4.5B through economies of scale. It will make the existing line even more economically attractive for resale into the marketplace. The taxpayer will win. If TMEP does not go ahead, then the Feds can still sell the existing line back to the industry, likely for same or additional money to any one of 2-3 buyers. In the meantime, they will collect the dividends (profits) spun off by the existing system. I don't see any taxpayer risk in this transaction at all.


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## ian (Jun 18, 2016)

What is transpiring at GM should be no surprise. Similar changes have been made by many manufacturers in Canada and the US. In Canada the sizes may have been smaller but the path is, and has been, the same. Extraction industries are also changing.

I do not know if GM is being wise or foolish. Last time they got caught out because they failed to respond to the market AND make significant changes to their business model. They got criticized for it and penalized in the form of bankruptcy. So perhaps they do not want to repeat that history and are making the business changes that they believe are critical to their long term survival. I don't know. I am not an auto industry expert. But one thing is for sure...the auto industry will continue to make more cars, with far less people on manufacturing floor. That trend will not change anytime soon. But they will employ people in other areas that previously did not exist. Not as many though. No different than any other manufacturer.

Jerry Dias can yell and scream, jump up and down, but he cannot change manufacturing economics, the fact that previously emerging nations/economies are maturing, or consumer trends. He can have input into Canadian Gov't economic policies but has zero input when it comes to US policy or the economic policies of other nations.


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## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

Some people really do seem to have a problem staying on topic or even near the topic. I really wish a moderator would remove all the 'oil' posts and 'politics' posts from this thread and keep it focused on at least the auto industry if not just specifically on the Oshawa closing. It seems to need a moderator as obviously those posting can't control themselves and stick at least 'near' to the topic.

I watched the news this morning and a GMC Oshawa worker was being interviewed. He said (paraphrasing), 'I have a mortgage to pay, debts to pay and a family to support and all I know is I will be unemployed in a year.' 

When I heard him saying that, I was not surprised but I thought to myself, so what? How is he any different than say someone who works in a store in the small town where I live who gets told by the store owner, 'sorry, people are all driving to the big box stores to buy these days and our sales just aren't enough to justify paying you any more. So I am giving you 2 weeks notice.' What makes the Oshawa guy any different than anyone else who has a job and then doesn't?

Yet somehow, whenever there is a bigger number of jobs involved whether it be an automaker or somewhere like Leamington, Ontario where Heinz closed their ketchup plant, it suddenly becomes more important. The guy who gets 2 weeks notice that he is losing his job in a store, knows what he has to do, find another job. Yet this GM worker says, 'I will be unemployed in a year'. HOW does he know he will be unemployed in a year? Obviously, the thought isn't entering his head that, 'hey, I have a year to find something else. Thank goodness I didn't get 2 weeks notice like that guy in a store.' 

I do not know of any business that says to you when you are hired, 'we guarantee you your job for as long as you want to work for us.' Do you? But somehow, autoworkers (as well as other workers in other industries) seem to think they are special somehow. I heard others being interviewed on the news and several referring to 'we are a GM family and have been for several generations'. As if that is somehow meaningful. So what does it mean? To me it means nothing. Your Dad or your Grandfather worked somewhere all their life and so somehow that means you are ENTITLED to do the same? Ridiculous.

To me it is simple. The 'Big Three' US automakers are simply not competitive with the rest of the world's automakers. They haven't been for a long time. As some posters including myself have already said, more people are buying 'foreign' vehicles because they are BETTER vehicles and provide BETTER value for money. It's as simple as that and if I had worked at GM Oshawa, I like to think I would have been smart enough to realize that years ago and have found another job/career long ago. It isn't 'time to leave the shinking ship', it was time long ago.

By the way, I also saw a GM Vice President (Canada) being interviewed who said that 50% of those being let go will be eligible for a full GM pension. Most of the others will get a 65% of their annual salary severance package. Try asking the guy who lost his job in a store and got 2 weeks notice if he got a 65% annual salary severance. You know the answer. Why on earth should we the taxpayers think we should do more for GM Oshawa workers than for anyone else who loses their job? We the taxpayers pay for Employment Insurance for which they will be eligible. Why should the government be talking about perhaps extending the benefits for these people? We the taxpayers pay for 're-training programs' of all kinds as well. So why should a guy be sitting there moaning about GM closing this plant when he has a 65% annual salary severance coming, a year to consider his options and look for a new job and if that isn't enough, we the taxpayers will pay Employment Insurance to him and pay to re-train him in something else. And why on earth should this guy be saying, 'I will be unemployed' as if that was inevitable, as if he would never be able to get another job, as if somehow he is the only person that ever lost a job and has to find something else? 

That sentence, 'I will be unemployed' as it was said and with what it inferred makes me very angry indeed.


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## SixesAndSevens (Dec 4, 2009)

...in other news, Maple Leaf Foods is opening a new plant in London, ON worth $660M that will bring in 1,500 jobs....

can those people blaming Doug Ford, Trudeau, Wynne, (insert your favourite political villain here), also please give the same credit to the same politician for this news....


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## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

SixesAndSevens said:


> ...in other news, Maple Leaf Foods is opening a new plant in London, ON worth $660M that will bring in 1,500 jobs....
> 
> can those people blaming Doug Ford, Trudeau, Wynne, (insert your favourite political villain here), also please give the same credit to the same politician for this news....


Actually they are also closing three others with a net loss of 300 jobs. They are also getting $34.5 million from the Ontario government and $28 million from the federal government. So we the taxpayers are subsidizing them to help keep 1450 jobs while 'only' losing 300. It's all in how you look at it isn't it.
https://torontosun.com/news/local-n...lion-london-plant-shutter-3-others-in-ontario

Nor is there any sudden outcry from those who will be let go in their St. Marys, Toronto and Brampton plants. Some might presumably be able to move to the new London facility but obviously not all will and there will be still 300 left out. 

So I will ask again, what makes GM Oshawa workers so special that it should be any different for them?


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## Prairie Guy (Oct 30, 2018)

Longtimeago said:


> To me it is simple. The 'Big Three' US automakers are simply not competitive with the rest of the world's automakers. They haven't been for a long time. As some posters including myself have already said, more people are buying 'foreign' vehicles because they are BETTER vehicles and provide BETTER value for money. It's as simple as that and if I had worked at GM Oshawa, I like to think I would have been smart enough to realize that years ago and have found another job/career long ago. It isn't 'time to leave the shinking ship', it was time long ago.


Actually, they are competitive if you count all vehicles and not just cars. The number 1 selling vehicle in the US is the Ford F-150 and has been for decades. #2 is the Silverado, #3 is the Dodge Ram. Foreign vehicles do make up spots 4 - 10, though:

1. Ford F-Series (up 9. 3 percent)
2. Chevrolet Silverado (up 1.9 percent)
3. Ram pickup trucks (up 2.3 percent)
4. Toyota RAV4 (up 15.7 percent)
5. Nissan Rogue (up 22.3 percent)
6. Toyota Camry (down 0.4 percent)
7. Honda CR-V (up 5.8 percent)
8. Honda Civic (up 2.8 percent)
9. Toyota Corolla (down 13.0 percent)
10. Honda Accord (down 6.5 percent)


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## Jimmy (May 19, 2017)

You can really lay most of the blame at the feet of Unifor and the other unions the rest w the anti business climate from Libs at 2 levels of govts. . The J3 simply produce better cars. You just have to take a glance at the reliability reports from Consumer reports. There are a few good domestic models but every J model has superb repair records over 10 yrs. 

Seems the unions want to just fight w the company and still position them as an adversary vs working w them to build better cars. You could hear it in them bloviating again yesterday about telling the company what to do. 

I think they even have unions over in Japan at some plants but they are not anti co militant and have all their pensions in the company so they are in effect stakeholders and shareholders as well.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

Foreign manufacturers sell almost nothing in the pickup line. 

They are also very dependent on the same small car market which GM and Ford are moving out of, so time will tell which companies have forecast the future correctly.

*Note that in the list...........the small foreign car sales are trending down.


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## accord1999 (Aug 9, 2013)

twa2w said:


> So if you are a buyer - do you send 4 ships with associated costs to Canada to buy lower quality stuff - and slower to load or do you send a tanker to the US where you can load much faster and transport higher quality stuff.


But if your destination is Eastern Asia, it takes longer to get there. Especially if your much larger tankers can't fit through even the expanded Panama Canal.

And many modern refineries have been built to refine heavier oils and need some as input regardless of how available light oils are.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

The Union gave up concessions in 3 rounds of negotiations. Pensioners and employees all lost significant amounts of money over the past 10 years.

In return GM agreed to and signed a contract keeping the plants running until 2021.

Do contracts mean anything or can we all just skip out on our obligations ?


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## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

Longtimeago said:


> Some people really do seem to have a problem staying on topic or even near the topic. I really wish a moderator would remove all the 'oil' posts and 'politics' posts from this thread and keep it focused on at least the auto industry if not just specifically on the Oshawa closing. It seems to need a moderator as obviously those posting can't control themselves and stick at least 'near' to the topic.




here's my hypothesis: russia shooting & jailing ukraine sailors, russia capturing 3 small ukraine naval ships in the kerch strait of the black sea, is a salvo aimed at donald trump ...

oops

i _really_ digressed OT just then, dint i?

where i'd meant to post was in the airBnB thread, because russian aggression over crimea is destroying the local airBnB business in sevastopol

this is helpful to the single ladies of joy who until recently were thriving in the antique sevastopol port district, serving the expanded russian navy 

but airBnB started hurting their business, just like in lisbon, forcing the ladies out to the burbs of sevastopol where rents are higher & sailors on leave are fewer

now every time russia shoots off a weapon or its mouth, the ladies of joy watch the airBnBs folding & the number of sailors increasing in the old downtown port of sevastopol. They say they can't wait for war to break out


(signed)
les filles de joie du collectif sevastopol


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## AltaRed (Jun 8, 2009)

sags said:


> Foreign manufacturers sell almost nothing in the pickup line.


That is due to brand loyalty in America, a fairly unique set of owners unlike anywhere else I believe. Even if the stuff was crap, they'd still buy it I think. The Tundra is an awfully good pickup but tends to attract only the enlightened urban buyer.



> They are also very dependent on the same small car market which GM and Ford are moving out of, so time will tell which companies have forecast the future correctly.
> 
> *Note that in the list...........the small foreign car sales are trending down.


If you go anywhere else in the world, there still is a high percentage of car owners, and cars of all sizes, mostly small. The biggest problem in North America is the 'big vehicle' syndrome and cheap gasoline. At $3-4/litre, that could change quickly. There will always be a strong global market for those so-called small cars. North America is an anomaly.


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

sags said:


> Foreign manufacturers sell almost nothing in the pickup line.


Ford F series is the best selling vehicle worldwide but Toyota trucks are split into multiple platforms, non-truck platforms are fragmented even more...

Most of the world gets the Toyota Hilux (even diesel!) built in Japan. There is a 25% import tax on pickup trucks to the US. So we get the made in america Toyota trucks.

Ford has been discontinuing its other NA platforms to bring its European platforms to America. The Ford Focus is one of the few platforms Ford isn't discontinuing, German designed

GM tried to make and sell for example the Cruze around the world under different names with little success. Even in the USA Cruze sells less than the usual imports and the Focus.

They must see some writing on the wall and see electric as a potential savior. Volvo is adding electric to all its platforms already


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## ian (Jun 18, 2016)

I do not know the t's and c's of the union contract. Did GM say they were closing the plant completely or did they say that there would be no assembly past Dec. 2019?

Look around. How many newer Chev Impalas do you see on the road? How many SUVs ?

GM Oshawa is apparently operating at 35 percent of capacity. That was probably one of the key things that sealed their fate. Same with the other 3 or 4 plants in the US that were included in the same closure advice. GM needs to spread fixed costs in plants over 80 or 90 percent capacity, not 30 or 35, in order to reduce the per unit cost. In the grand scheme of things the 150,000 or so vehicles assembled per year in Oshawa is not large. That is the challenge for GM.


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## OhGreatGuru (May 24, 2009)

Yes. "“The plant has been underutilized for about three years, with production only at 36 per cent of max capacity this year compared to 76 per cent in 2014,” he (a bank analyst) said.

Which means the union should have seen the writing on the wall for the last 3-4 years. And GM has likely not hired too many new people there either, as their production has been in decline. Which explains why (reportedly) a good portion of the workers will be retiring with good pensions. (See post by Longtimeago somewhere further up). It would be interesting to see a demographic of their current Oshawa work force and their related years of service.


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## OhGreatGuru (May 24, 2009)

marina628 said:


> My friend who has worked at GM for 18 years ...He is 53 still has 16 years to pay his house off and it seems many of them have similar stories.


This will sound hard-hearted, but the thought that immediately comes to my mind is: "You were planning to still be making mortgage payments at age 69? What were you thinking?"


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## ian (Jun 18, 2016)

In some ways the GM workers in Oshawa are fortunate compared to other laid off workers. Not saying that the closure is a good thing because it is not. What I am saying is this. They have a one year notice to consider and make plans. It is not as though the announcement was made and presto, it is over. After that they will have a settlement from GM. After that they will have at least 38 weeks of EI-perhaps more. All told, that is over two years to financially prepare themselves for this.

I have to believe that most workers in GM Oshawa saw this coming. They had to, given the over capacity and the drastic drop in production over the past few years. The writing was in the sky on this one. Politicians like Trudeau or Ford or Horvath may feign surprise but the only surprise to them is when it happened, not that it happened. And there will be more, perhaps not in the same numbers, but there will be more. The days of coming out of high school and getting a well paying manufacturing job for life are long gone in Canada. This has hardly been a state secret. One would have to have blinders on not to see the writing on the wall.

I realize this is a disaster for many families. It will be an even larger disaster for those with no financial protection or warning who subsequently loose their jobs or income because of the fallout from the GM closure. Many others are currently going through this in various parts of the country. People who work in construction, in the oil patch, in retail, etc. seldom get more than a few weeks notice, if any. They get told, and then walk.


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## agent99 (Sep 11, 2013)

With 14,000 or so auto workers to lose jobs in USA, they need to do something. The US has a huge market for autos, so perhaps they have a big enough stick to get something done.

What passed my mind, was instead of arbitrary tariffs, they could impose import duties on cars and car parts. The duties could be tied to the manufacturing cost (mainly labour) in the country of origin. Cars and parts made in Mexico, China, Korea and other low cost countries, would end up costing almost same in USA as they would if built in USA. Maybe not quite enough, so that labor costs in US are kept down and to provide incentives for improving manufacturing efficiency and design.

This would perhaps also benefit Canada seeing costs here are same or higher than USA.


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## AltaRed (Jun 8, 2009)

^ Excellent post by Ian above. Puts it into real perspective relative to other situations rather than misguided emotion.


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

ian said:


> In some ways the GM workers in Oshawa are fortunate compared to other laid off workers. Not saying that the closure is a good thing because it is not. What I am saying is this. They have a one year notice to consider and make plans. It is not as though the announcement was made and presto, it is over. After that they will have a settlement from GM. After that they will have at least 38 weeks of EI-perhaps more. All told, that is over two years to financially prepare themselves for this.


The laid off Canadian workers are much better off than their colleagues in the US. In the US, laid off workers will lose their healthcare coverage and will then have to seek their own health care. This can be very difficult and expensive, especially when you have no income. And if Obamacare is repealed (as the Republicans seem to want) then some people will *never* be able to get health insurance due to their pre-existing conditions. In addition, Canadian EI is more generous and permissive than what many states offer.

Canada has a better social safety net, including better welfare programs to support those in need. I know this may be small comfort, but at least Canadian workers can be thankful they're not in the US and facing the same situation.


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## marina628 (Dec 14, 2010)

OhGreatGuru said:


> This will sound hard-hearted, but the thought that immediately comes to my mind is: "You were planning to still be making mortgage payments at age 69? What were you thinking?"


There are many people with boatloads of equity in their homes planning on paying mortgages til 69 lol ,my neighbor just bought a 2nd home at age 59 and took out a 30 year mortgage but they are 2 people living in a 3100 sq ft home .


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

agent99 said:


> What passed my mind, was instead of arbitrary tariffs, they could impose import duties on cars and car parts. The duties could be tied to the manufacturing cost (mainly labour) in the country of origin. Cars and parts made in Mexico, China, Korea and other low cost countries, would end up costing almost same in USA as they would if built in USA. Maybe not quite enough, so that labor costs in US are kept down and to provide incentives for improving manufacturing efficiency and design.


The good idea fairy stuff always seems to have unexpected consequences. There are always loop holes too (Ford imports some euro vehicles and then converts them to get around tariffs)

US and Canada should focus on manufacturing other things. I just bought a few good made in USA items on black Friday. One was a ultralight backpack made in Maine in an abandoned cotton factory built in 1800s. They found some old seamstresses to teach the younger generation to sew. Asia isn't making anything of comparable quality. I have some niche motorbike parts/accessories and audio equipment made in US or Canada.

The internet makes it possible to tap into niche markets to crowd source product development and then you can sell direct to them, even custom, with far better warranty support. Asia doesn't compete this way.


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## twa2w (Mar 5, 2016)

Longtimeago said:


> Some people really do seem to have a problem staying on topic or even near the topic. I really wish a moderator would remove all the 'oil' posts and 'politics' posts from this thread and keep it focused on at least the auto industry if not just specifically on the Oshawa closing. It seems to need a moderator as obviously those posting can't control themselves and stick at least 'near' to the topic.
> ....


FYI, I am not a moderator on this forum but do so on several others. A thread is a conversation, not a business meeting that must be kept to the topic at hand. Conversations drift and move on an informal forum like. My advice is get used to it. Forum users take as rudeness when one party tries to control a thread - even if it is one they started.

I will move a portion of a thread conversation to another or new thread if it is a topic that deserves it but I believe the majority of posters enjoy the twists and turns threads take just like a conversation across the table at your favourite coffee shop or between friends.

This conversation to some may be only about GM, but to most it is a broader subject involving the government and bailouts and etc etc.

As moderator, I try to keep conversations civil, every one is entitled to an opinion, whether or not other posters agree. They are free to counter with their own ideas providing they do are not rude or partake in personal attacks. It is very hard to infer emotion and intent in some posts.

This forum is one of the best moderated in my opinion, with discussions kept civil. I believe many people benefit form the advise and conversations on here. Many of my positions and ideas have been challenged on here and I have changed my mind on a few as a result of the wide ranging discourse here - including yourself. People on here are from many walks of life with very different experiences than me. Still disagree with a few on some points though

Please don't take this the wrong way - just my take as a moderator. Cheers.


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## moderator2 (Sep 20, 2017)

Moderators on this forum previously tried separating some posts from a thread (the off topic parts), but there was push-back. The feedback we received was that threads should not be chopped apart. As a result, we either keep the threads intact, or if they really go off the rails, they go into Hot Button or get locked.



twa2w said:


> A thread is a conversation, not a business meeting that must be kept to the topic at hand. Conversations drift and move on an informal forum like. My advice is get used to it.


I generally agree. This thread is reasonably on-topic. There is discussion of the plant closure, implications for workers, and manufacturing in general. Thanks for the comments twa2w

- M2


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

marina628 said:


> There are many people with boatloads of equity in their homes planning on paying mortgages til 69 lol ,my neighbor just bought a 2nd home at age 59 and took out a 30 year mortgage but they are 2 people living in a 3100 sq ft home .


There is that, and there is also the fact that many auto workers are forced to move from plant to plant to keep working towards their pensions..

With 3 previous layoffs, the 18 years of seniority mentioned may be the bottom of the seniority list and suffered many layoffs during their years at GM.

One of the common questions asked in an auto assembly plant is "where are you from"......meaning which other plant.

I was lucky. I only worked at 2 GM plants. We only had to sell homes twice to move to the job. Also spouses are uprooted from their jobs and it becomes expensive to keep moving.

Some of my friends worked all over Ontario to get their 30 years of seniority and pension. Their spouses had to go from job to job as well and not usually for the same company.

I would also point out that senior hourly GM employees earn a decent wage, but new hires in the past few years work for greatly reduced wages.

One guy interviewed said he will make out alright as he is heading towards a pension, but a lot of other guys were earning a lot less money and were going to struggle.

I suppose it might be easier for them to find a replacement $18 an hour job than a replacement $33 hour a job............maybe not a silver lining but just a thought.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

One of the places I worked for GM there were 600 full time GM employees with full wages and benefits.

Today, they are all retired and all the jobs are contract workers who work for a temp agency.

When people think of GM workers they may think of good wages and benefits. It has changed a lot over the years.

I talked to a supervisor I used to work with and he said on a Friday night they were supposed to have 50 people in his department and only 15 showed up for work.

When people earn minimum wages, they don't have a lot of loyalty invested in their jobs.


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## Just a Guy (Mar 27, 2012)

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I find it sad, in this day and age, that people still go around looking for the same job to do from birth to death. “My grandfather was a coal miner, my father was a coal miner, and I need to be a coal miner despite the fact that the coal industry has been dead for years”.

No wonder the poor are poor with such thinking.

I remember going to school and learning electronics. I was one of the few people who got a summer job in the industry. During hat time I was one of 7 technicians working at a broadcast tower where, when something broke down, we pulled it out and replaced it with a new one. No electronics training required, a trained monkey could do the job.

Fortunately, I was smart enough to realize it was a dead end career choice, even though it was unionized, and went down a different path. I avoided years of union strife, demanding jobs in a dead end industry that didn’t need trained people, and employment uncertainty...I found opportunities in other industries and financial freedom quite early in life instead.

My kids aren’t going to “look to the mines”, or assembly line, or any other dead end union lifestyle...when they are given a hammer, they build a forge and build something new out of scraps...


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## ian (Jun 18, 2016)

My daughter and her husband have two businesses in the construction industry in Ft. Mac. There are workers coming, some commute some move, to Ft. Mac from all over Canada. These people move to where the jobs are. Exactly the same all over the oil patch. Uprooting families and moving is not so uncommon as one might think today. As added pressure is the significant drop in home value/home equity they experienced when jobs disappeared. Lots of family issues, personal bankruptcies, etc.

I am retired now. But we pulled up stakes and moved four times. Toronto to Ottawa, Calgary, Vancouver, and back to Calgary. And yes, my spouse gave up her job. Most of the time we did not know anyone where we were moving to. Also five employers. The last move was the hardest. Our children were teenagers and we had just finished a major home reno. But, I saw the writing on the wall and realized that my job was going away. I had two choices. Do nothing and wait for it to happen or be proactive. Fortunately I chose the latter and it turned out to be a wonderful choice in many ways. It was a difficult decision however I felt that we had no choice.

My heart goes out to those contract workers. Chances are they will get little notice as the final day approaches, zero severance, and less than the maximum EI payouts.

The GM employees have two things going for them than many do not, or have not had. The first is significant advance notice and financial assistance. The second is that they live in an area where there are other job opportunities either in their city or within a few hundred miles.

It is a considerably harder when your job suddenly disappears, there are no jobs where you currently live, you have to sell your house at a loss, and you need to make a decision as to where to move-often hundreds or thousands of miles away. In the case of Ft. Mac many people simply leave all their furniture, etc behind because the cost of moving it is too great. So they literally get pennies on the dollar when they try to sell it to raise money. That has been the reality over the past four of five years for many people in the province where we live. All this plus pensions are a non existent dream for many of these workers. 

It is not good nor is it as uncommon as people may think.


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## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

OhGreatGuru said:


> Yes. "“The plant has been underutilized for about three years, with production only at 36 per cent of max capacity this year compared to 76 per cent in 2014,” he (a bank analyst) said.
> Which means the union should have seen the writing on the wall for the last 3-4 years ...


Indeed ... I'm not finding it now but there was a 2014 article where a consultant warned that the Oshawa plant would like be closing around 2019.


Cheers


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## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

agent99 said:


> With 14,000 or so auto workers to lose jobs in USA, they need to do something ...


The Detroit article says that Oshawa is about 2500 with the US assembly plants making up about 3745 to have something like 6245 lost. The slightly larger group are the white collar folks for about 8000 but no breakdown of country was provided.




agent99 said:


> ... The US has a huge market for autos ...


Potential market ... but the buying public has been dropping cars to go for crossovers, SUVs and trucks. Even the muscle car sales, with the exception of the Ford Mustang have been tanking. In August passenger car sales were down to less than 30% for the first time in history.

Keep in mind that best sellers such as the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord posted double digit drops so it is an industry wide issue.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/edgars...to-lowest-u-s-market-share-ever/#638628453f00
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2018/09/04/august-us-auto-sales/1188847002/


While the import duties would likely help for what is being bought ... passenger car don't seem to be popular in the US.


Cheers


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## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

ian said:


> In some ways the GM workers in Oshawa are fortunate compared to other laid off workers. Not saying that the closure is a good thing because it is not. What I am saying is this. They have a one year notice to consider and make plans. It is not as though the announcement was made and presto, it is over. After that they will have a settlement from GM. After that they will have at least 38 weeks of EI-perhaps more. All told, that is over two years to financially prepare themselves for this.
> 
> I have to believe that most workers in GM Oshawa saw this coming. They had to, given the over capacity and the drastic drop in production over the past few years. The writing was in the sky on this one. Politicians like Trudeau or Ford or Horvath may feign surprise but the only surprise to them is when it happened, not that it happened. And there will be more, perhaps not in the same numbers, but there will be more. The days of coming out of high school and getting a well paying manufacturing job for life are long gone in Canada. This has hardly been a state secret. One would have to have blinders on not to see the writing on the wall.
> 
> I realize this is a disaster for many families. It will be an even larger disaster for those with no financial protection or warning who subsequently loose their jobs or income because of the fallout from the GM closure. Many others are currently going through this in various parts of the country. People who work in construction, in the oil patch, in retail, etc. seldom get more than a few weeks notice, if any. They get told, and then walk.


Yes, all true. The writing was on the wall for anyone who WANTED to see it but of course many obviously chose to not see it. 

I used to call on the oil companies in Calgary in the late 60s. Even back then, everyone knew that Calgary went through 'boom and bust' just about as regularly as clockwork. Nothing has changed in that regard in the last 60 years and yet some people still seem to be surprised when the oil industry is on a down swing. They can't all be blind, but they can certainly choose not to see. 

In the case of GM in Oshawa, how long do you think it has been since the writing on the walls first appeared? Well, would it help you figure it out if you knew that in the 80s, GM employed over 23,000 people in Oshawa. In the almost 40 years since then, the number of employees has gone down, down, down till now they are down to the last 2500 manufacturing jobs (GM will still be employing people in other jobs in Oshawa). I call that 40 years of the 'writing being on the walls'.

So OhGreatGuru, you are right about the current plant being underutilized for the past 3 years or so but that is far from when people should have seen the writing on the walls. The N. American automakers have been on the down side of the slope for at least 40 years. https://focus2move.com/world-cars-brand-ranking/

The fact that Ford F150, Chevrolet Silverado and Dodge Ram sales are the largest sales in N. America, doesn't change anything in terms of the worldwide automotive market. It's the only thing keeping Ford and GM(Chevrolet) in the top 10 world automakers and Chrysler has only stayed in the 10 by merging with Renault. So would anyone care to take a wild guess as to the advisability of taking a job at a Ford, GM or Chrysler plant in N. America and then signing a new mortgage?

Another guy I saw being interviewed in Oshawa said something like, 'I've worked at the plant for 3 years and I like my job, I don't know what I'm going to do if they close the plant.' MY response to him would have been, 'Duhhhh, well when you took the job 3 years ago, surely you realized that the possibility of the plant closing was not that remote a possibility so SURELY you had a plan B in the event of that happening. Right?'

Who wants to guess how many GM Windsor employees are NOT thinking about how secure their future is right now? I will hazard a guess that 50% probably think their jobs are not in doubt. The same is probably true of Ford and Chrysler employees in N. American factories. They all have their heads stuck in the sand.

Years ago, I remember having a conversation with a colleague about 'job security'. He was talking about how 'jobs for life' were no longer as likely (this was back in the 80s) as they had been in the past and he was bemoaning this 'lack of job security'. My response to him was that there is only one thing you can count on and that is what is between your ears. That is what can provide you with 'job security' for life, it just isn't likely to be all in the same job.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

There is a lot of conversation centering around cars being unpopular.

That really isn't the issue. The Oshawa plant has had hundreds of millions in upgrades that make it a "flex plant". 

It already builds GM and GMC trucks so they could easily retool out of cars in the rest of the assembly plant.

The GM owned CAMI plant began as a joint Suzuki-GM venture. They built the infamous Suzuki Sidekick.

It was stated the plant was built specifically for that small model and couldn't accommodate production of larger models.

The Oshawa assembly plant is the largest auto assembly plant in the world. It can accommodate ANY vehicle production.

It was a total BS negotiating strategy threat, evidenced by the fact the much larger Chevrolet Equinox is built there today.

GM is selling so many Chevrolet Equinoxes they shipped out overflow production of the sister vehicle GMC Terrain to Oshawa. Then they sent it to Mexico.

Models aren't the issue. Mexico has an average wage of $2.04 an hour. That is the issue, not just for auto makers but for any company.

Free trade failed the mission to lift wages in poor countries. Decades later those workers are still exploited by corporations and their own government.

I am thinking stiff tariffs are not a great solution, but the only one available.


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## AltaRed (Jun 8, 2009)

Longtimeago said:


> The fact that Ford F150, Chevrolet Silverado and Dodge Ram sales are the largest sales in N. America, doesn't change anything in terms of the worldwide automotive market. It's the only thing keeping Ford and GM(Chevrolet) in the top 10 world automakers and Chrysler has only stayed in the 10 by merging with Renault.


Chrysler was bought out by Fiat, not Renault. The stupid buying the stupid....but you can't fix stupid. Ram, Jeep and Dogde Caravan are the only 3 brands worth mentioning in that corporation. The rest of the product line is junk.

It was Renault and Nissan that went into a mutual partnership joined most recently by Mitsubishi. Nissan was near death at the time, but now it is Renault that is the weak partner. Nissan has come back strong. There will be more consolidation in the near future, most likely JVs than outright corporate buyouts. No one wants the baggage that comes with corporate buyouts any more.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

I would also caution against using "sale numbers" for any short specified period of time as proof of anything.

Not only can economic circumstances change, but the auto makers themselves have a big impact on sales numbers by use of incentives.

Large incentives in November of one year, will "pull forward" a lot of sales from January of the next year.

Sales and production numbers are also affected by "fleet sales" to rental agencies, governments etc.

Just as the oil industry is complex, so is the auto industry.


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## Just a Guy (Mar 27, 2012)

I remember CBC interviewing fishermen in the maritimes...he had voted conservative because he wanted the government to “bring back the fish”. They had overfished for years, decimating the fish stocks, then they want the government to bring them back so they can continue to overfish...generation upon generation of fishermen...

Ironically, the episode was about seasonal workers. In the maritime, that consisted of fishing and welfare. In Maine however seasonal workers consisted of fishing, snow shoveling, Xmas tree sales, etc.


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## ian (Jun 18, 2016)

The notion that Gerry Dias, his executive, all senior members of the respective Governments and Opposition at both levels did not see this coming is simply not believable. They knew it would come at some point. These are smart people. They understand the business and the economic climate and are part of the 'system'.

Now the goal of Mr. Dias and his executive team will be to get the best possible settlement for his members, some sort of EI extension commitment from the Feds, and retraining dollars from both levels of Government.

Jumping up and down is a show for the members. The real work will be done behind closed doors.


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## agent99 (Sep 11, 2013)

Eclectic12 said:


> The Detroit article says that Oshawa is about 2500 with the US assembly plants making up about 3745 to have something like 6245 lost. The slightly larger group are the white collar folks for about 8000 but no breakdown of country was provided.


Actual numbers here: http://time.com/5463338/general-motors-gm-job-cuts-layoffs/



> Potential market ... but the buying public has been dropping cars to go for crossovers, SUVs and trucks.


I think I said AUTOS which I meant to include sedans, coupes, crossovers, SUVS and light trucks. Not just cars.


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## OhGreatGuru (May 24, 2009)

I agree with Ian. I didn't think I would ever agree with anything Doug Ford would say, and his initial reaction to the Oshawa plant closure (blaming it on 15 years of Liberal mismanagement) was typical political blather. But for the last few days he's the only politician who's been telling people to face reality. "The plant isn't going to reopen; suggesting it could is only raising false hopes." And although I haven't heard him say it yet, he probably thinks (rightly) that encouraging such ideas is just another way to pressure governments into supplementing the severance packages.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

Yep, there is nothing Ford can do except say goodbye as the jobs leave for Mexico.

Question......What is the deal with boneless chickens ? I mean, how do they get around with no bones ? They must just flop on the ground and squawk.

Answer.........Ask Doug Ford.


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## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

agent99 said:


> Actual numbers here: http://time.com/5463338/general-motors-gm-job-cuts-layoffs/


Interesting that depending on the Detroit source, the numbers for assembly workers vary for Oshawa versus the US vary so much.

The Detroit Free Press article says the numbers of my post ... https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/general-motors/2018/11/26/ontario-plant-closure/2112539002/
The one from your quote has 3,300 in Canada and 2,600 in the US.
USA Today has 2,500 in Canada and 3,100 in the US. https://www.usatoday.com/story/mone...al-motors-plant-closures-job-cuts/2113275002/


Either way, the breakdown for the white collar folks affected is what I was referring to. Unless I've missed something, with the articles are sticking to NA for them, this is still an unknown.




agent99 said:


> ... I think I said AUTOS which I meant to include sedans, coupes, crossovers, SUVS and light trucks. Not just cars.


My bad ... implementing on vehicles would have more of an effect.


Cheers


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