Conversion: Alternatives for the GM Shutdown

Details: Published on Tuesday, 12 February 2019 02:24; Written by editor

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 1760 ... February 12, 2019
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Conversion: Alternatives for the GM Shutdown

Peter Stoett and Scott Acquanno

GM’s announcement that it will halt production at its award-winning assembly plant in Oshawa, Ontario was hardly a surprise, though it still managed to stun the federal and Ontario governments. This was not the first time large-scale layoffs affected the GM workforce in Oshawa. Many former workers have completely dropped out of the labour market while others have re-entered the workforce in lower paying, less standardized or non-unionized service sector jobs after the retraining programs promised to them proved insufficient and underfunded.

Some felt betrayed by a company that had received generous assistance from the Canadian government in the past. Many observers saw it as an inevitable, if painful, symptom of a long-term... process of industrial decay linked to impersonal corporate strategies. Others viewed GM’s decision as a function of high energy costs, imminent carbon taxes and other oppressive corporate regulations and used the closure to extol the trickle down economic logic of low taxes, deregulation and privatization that has led to repeated financial catastrophes and growing inequality.