Burial at Oshawa (2019)

Oshawa 2019 (Part 6): Burial at Oshawa

When we completed Oshawa: A History of Local 222, in 1984, there were approximately 23,000 workers at the General Motors plant, one of the largest auto plants in the world at the time.

In 2019, when GM announced its plans to close the Oshawa plant, there were 2,500 workers. Over the intervening 35 years, 20,500 workers had been slowly laid-off as product lines were shut down, jobs transferred to independent contractors, and automation took over jobs. The closing down in 2019 is the end of a slow death not only of the plant but of an industrial era and it’s working class culture

In the face of the shutdown, the union negotiated the retention of 300 jobs stamping truck beds in a small facility on the plant site and a few jobs on a proposed electric vehicle test track (some workers joked: as ‘crash-test dummies’). But these jobs are for the remaining workers who qualify. The rest, numbering approximately 2,200, will be entitled to either an early retirement package or funding for retraining and job placement. Much less noted is the effect the shutdown will have on approximately 2,000 feeder plant and auxiliary jobs in the Oshawa area, some of which are in the GM plant complex itself.

In the current right-wing, anti-union, climate, UNIFOR National and Local 222 (which represents both the GM workers as well as those at many of the feeder plants) could only push so far. Both the Federal and Ontario governments basically ignored the situation, despite GM (and Chrysler) still owing $3.7 billion in a 2009 Federal and Ontario government bailout. An alternate scenario was put forward by a group in Local 222’s membership: nationalize the plant and transform it to green production (starting with the production of electric vehicles for Canada Post).

The image is loosely based on the French artist, Gustave Courbet’s, Burial at Ornans, 1849-50.