“A serious fightback will only develop through action initiated by the rank-and-file workers”
GM Oshawa workers speak out against plant closure
By
A WSWS reporting team
8 December 2018
The WSWS Autoworker Newsletter is holding an emergency meeting this Sunday, December 9 at 2 p.m. in Detroit to organize a fight against the plant closures. We urge all autoworkers to make plans to attend and organize delegations from your factories. Let us know you are attending and share the event on Facebook with your friends and co-workers.
The World Socialist Web Site spoke to autoworkers this week at the General Motors plant in Oshawa, Ontario who expressed frustration and anger both with the company and the Unifor union.
The Oshawa facility, which has been involved in auto production for a century, has been marked as one of five plants in the United States and Canada set for closure in the company’s latest round of restructuring. Some 2,500 workers are threatened with permanent layoff in 2019 as part of 15,000 jobs axed in the overall plan.
Since the 1980s, when the plant was one of the largest auto assembly complexes in the world, about 21,000 workers have lost their jobs in a series of production cuts and wholesale line and plant shutdowns. Over the same period, one concession contract after another has significantly reduced the wages, benefits and pensions of the remaining workers while increasing the pace of work and instituting second and even third tier employment.
World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter reporters distributed a statement denouncing the role of the Unifor union in enforcing these cuts and concessions, and urged GM workers to form independent action committees to oppose the plant shutdown. “A fightback cannot be carried out through…