Quinte Fishing

So...with the General pulling out of Canada, who is no longer buying a GM product? One of my hockey buddies just bought a Ford for the first time in his life and knowing he was A GM guy i asked him whats up?. He said with them pulling out he's done. I suspect he wont be the only one

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Sad when you have to get a Honda or Toyota to have a car built in Ontari

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Jobs leaving the country is never good but the GM workers have had it pretty dam good for a long time compared other plant workers ..

The reason I hate to see governments hand out corporate welfare it never seems to have a lasting effect.

what's your boy going to do if Ford closes the oakville plant? They're getting heavy pressure to preserve jobs in the US. Even with our dollar weak as it is our high taxes, high utility costs and high labour costs make a Canada facility not that competitive vs. a US facility. When the Canada assembly plant results in GM or Ford or Chrysler having pressure put on it from the US government, it becomes an easy decision for them.

What I heard was that GM Oshawa had about 2500 jobs. Half of the employees working there were retirement/pension eligible. Now they'll get 60% of what they were making (and benefits) to do nothing, and can go work somewhere else if they want. That leaves 1250 or so out of luck, many of whom are skilled trades/licensed electricians etc so with a reasonable economy like we're in, many of them should be ok. Also GM is supposedly hiring about 500-600 people for engineering josb at their new tech facility in Markham.

So it sucks, but it's not as bad as it looks at first glance/big picture. That sugar coating means nothing if you're affected though.

Yup... I had signed paperwork back in November to order a 3500 the way I wanted it.. I cancelled order after I found out I'd be getting a mexican truck.. going to keep what I have, at least for now..

GM's and all other american cars aren't any good in my experience. I'll only buy Japaneses.

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Fishing is not a hobby. A hobby is something you do in your spare time!

I worked in automotive for 24 years.
During that time I watched the CAW (now Unifor) accept TPT's into the workforce.
A TPT is a temporary part time worker that can only work a maximum of 24 hrs a week at barely above minimum wage. Tell me how much a TPT worker that works along side a full time worker whom is working for the longevity of their job and pension cares about the quality of the products... Hence why the quality of the vehicles assembled here has gone down.
Totally agree with unchained in regards to our costs to manufacture here... Thanks to too many years of Liberal reign our Country and Province suffers.
This is the part that kills me.... CAW in 2008/2009 seen the writing on the wall with automotive; hence why they went out and recruited the likes of Sobeys/Great Blue Heron and other companies outside of automotive to keep their fat cat union leaders at the buffet. Then they decided to amalgamate unions and call themselves Unifor.
Another thing that burns my a$$ is that unions spend everyone's dues towards their political agenda on what the union thinks is best.

Anyways... To answer the question, I will no longer buy a GM vehicle.
In 2002 I bought a brand new Oshawa built truck, it was awesome... towed the *** out of it and put 400k on it before I decided to buy a new one. GM has missed out... cause I bought 2 brand new Rams. One in 2016 and one in 2018, if the truck plant was in Oshawa, I would of bought 2 GM's.
That's only part of my rant...
Teppy

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O2BFSHIN

I'm with the OP, after our tax dollars bail you out the thanks is to pull out. Won't see another Greed Motors car in my driveway

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Dan Elliot - A bad day on Quinte is better than a good day at work !!!
http://www.quintefishing.com

Would never have bought a GM to begin with....

Bob

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"I know exactly where the fish are. I marked it on the bottom of me boat!"

I will add I am from Oshawa and most of my relatives and a lot of friends worked there. When they moved the trucks to Mexico and closed the plant that was always #1 in quality that should have been a statement as to what quality meant to GM. There are a number of good points here, our utility costs are off the scale for any business.

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Don't count the day's Make the day's count
Off Shore Tackle Team Canada
Limestone City Fishing Charter
www.limestonecityfishingcharters.com
YouTube Jim Lyon Fishing

Dunno how familiar you guys are with Big Three Pension Deal?

We grew up 9 miles from Oshawa (Bowmanville), and our Family owned the local Weekly Paper there for roughly 150 years. While working at the Family Paper in the 70s we got into a discussion over Benefits the GM Workers had, and were stunned to discover the Pension Deal's innards.

(Anybody 'enjoying' their own Pension Plan is well aware of the tremendous cost hit on current earnings. It's tough to accept long term benefits, when you watch the enormous bite those pension deductions take - assuming you split the cost 50/50 with the company - out of your paycheck.)

Not so for the GM Folks. Their Pensions are FULLY PAID by GM!! We still have trouble swallowing that.

Disclaimer: a LONG time has passed since we learned that, so it's possible things may have changed.

Rgds, Wordpecker

I don't think it has changed about the pension, my dad had 10 brothers and 8 worked at GM , all are well into their 80s and still getting that pension and benefits. Those pension and benefit costs must be huge but doubt they were a closure factor as I am sure the costs are the same in the US. In my mind Unifor should have worked with GM to do something about this ie possibly a "Grandfather" clause for the new hires. Even at 50 percent funded pension would have made a huge impact. My father retired from the Oshawa Fire way back and had years of sick time saved up which he wanted upon retirement which the city didn't want to pay out of course, he either sued or something and won his case and they then changed the banked sick policy for new hires.

_________________
Don't count the day's Make the day's count
Off Shore Tackle Team Canada
Limestone City Fishing Charter
www.limestonecityfishingcharters.com
YouTube Jim Lyon Fishing

I met a guy from one of the middle east countries who flatly said Canadians make junk & "we" don't buy Canadian junk . Maybe he's right . I retired from GM 25 yrs.ago , no bonus $$$ , just a pension with benefits & cola . Ten yrs. ago , after the "bankruptcy" GM took much of our benefits away & we fall behind every year , even though they made billions in profit . Toyota pays well with benefits , about $30 per hour , but it's ok as they are
not unionized , yet... GM had about 200,000 retirees to pay , Toyota had none .
Nobody mentioned the biggest part of the layoffs....the 7-8 jobs that are tied in with GM . Most are not union jobs but would take the hit ....the truck drivers who supply the plants , the restaurants where truckers eat , and hundreds of other businesses that those workers patronized . The spin off is huge . Labour costs have been about 7% & coming down as GM started using robots in the 80's .
So GM owes us money ? How much income tax have those 50,000 workers plus the spin off workers paid over 10 yrs. ? How much sales tax has the gov't grabbed from them (like $4000 per vehicle average) . Remember this about unions , they need a vote of over 50%
to be certified , unlike our governments who can control the country with less than 40 % . Right to work legislation ? Yes , reap the rewards the union guys fought for , same wages & benefits ? It would never work in the same plant. The union haters would rather see higher wages go down than get a raise themselves ?? Someone has to lead labour . If anyone making $14 thinks their job can't go to Mexico or China , it can ! Want to boycott GM ? Go ahead & put many more "other" people out of work, then you can complain some more when they take more U.I. and tax from your wages . The snowball effect can come back to bite us all .

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When you retire........there's never enough time to fish !!

The government should never prop up a poorly run business like auto manufacturing, trains or planes.... We screwed up 10 years ago and should have let it die then. By now we would have recovered...


Bob

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"I know exactly where the fish are. I marked it on the bottom of me boat!"