The cost of doing business in Oshawa
Dear Editor,
The hourly cost of production in Oshawa is competitive with the UAW plants in the U.S., yet our local MP is erroneously blaming unionized workers’ wages at the GM Oshawa plants for the loss of jobs.
Here are the facts.
Our existing members’ rate is $34.48/hr. The Canadian dollar at US$0.85 makes that US$29.30 /hr.
The Canadian health care cost advantage is $5/hr, bringing the cost down to US$24.30/hr.
There is a five-to-10 per cent productivity advantage at GM Oshawa, which puts our existing wages in the US$22 /hr range. The UAW’s existing wage is over US$28 /hr.
New members start at $20.49/hr. The Canadian dollar at US$0.85 makes that US$17.41/hr.
The Canadian Health Care Cost advantage is $5/hr, bringing the cost to US$12.41/hr.
The five-to-10 per cent productivity advantage at GM Oshawa puts our new member wages below US$11/hr. The UAW new worker wage is US$14/hr.
The all-in cost of Unifor Local 222 members (including wages and benefits) is about US$10/hr lower for existing members and about US$15/hr lower for new members than in the American plants, at current exchange rates.
The UAW is entering bargaining, which is strongly expected to increase the hourly cost in the U.S. Meanwhile, the demographic of the workers in Oshawa allows for two thirds of our workforce to be retirement-eligible by the end of 2015, thereby lowering our production costs even further.
During the 2008 auto bailout package from the Canadian government, our union agreed to reduce our overall cost by thousands of dollars by changing job rules, reducing time off, reducing benefits, etc. It is a distortion to compare Canadian wages to those in China and Mexico. All-in cost (including wages and benefits) in Mexico is under US$6/hr and the average industrial wage in China is US$4/hr. Can anyone reading this live on that?!
The federal government was the largest single shareholder of GM stock and awarded a member on the GM board of directors, yet they made no effort to use the GM shares, bought with your tax dollars, to allocate product in Oshawa. Why?
The Oshawa MP’s boss, Stephen Harper, ordered the sale of the GM stock at a loss of over three billion taxpayer dollars to balance his budget, while he handed over $2 billion a year to the richest 15 per cent of Canadians. Why?
The Business Development Bank of Canada recently loaned over $500 million to Volkswagen, who builds in the southern U.S. and Mexico, but does not build in Canada. Why?
We are losing 1,000 good jobs at GM Oshawa, which will result in 5,000 to 7,000 jobs gone from our community. This is a time for unions and governments to cooperate. We are a transparent union and are happy to inform the public and politicians of the facts. Unifor Local 222 has made responsible decisions to protect jobs and we will continue to pursue new products and job opportunities for our community and our country.
Ron Svajlenko
President of Unifor Local 222