GM Strike Continues to Have Ripple Down Impact in Oxford

Thursday, 3 October 2019 11:44

The General Motors Strike South of the Border continues to have a trickle down impact in Oxford County.

INGERSOLL - The General Motors Strike South of the Border continues to have a trickle down impact in Oxford County.

CAMI workers in Ingersoll are on a scheduled lay-off this week, which was planned before the strike. President of Unifor Local 88 Joe Graves says that shutdown was planned before the strike.

"It's not related to the strike at all, it was a scheduled layoff that GM had already scheduled for us a couple of months ago. In the 4th quarter, when they have to take weeks out, they will schedule it in the 4th quarter and this is one of the weeks they had scheduled."

Graves says they only have 13 days of production for the month of October and he is not certain what kind of impact this strike will have at CAMI.

"I'm going to say right now that we don't know, things will be evaluated week to week, we are being told for the month of October, with the last week of October being a layoff week, we will have production. That is not guaranteed, there could be some parts shortages come up near the second or third week, but right now we are being told there is work."

Other factories in the region are also impacted by the strike, with layoffs and shut downs.

"All of our suppliers in the area, anyone who supplies us with parts is impacted and will have to go down, similar to Oshawa, Oshawa went down very early because of some of the parts they get from the States. All of our suppliers are impacted, we have Butcher right across the street, they have 400-500 people and then some of the suppliers as well."

Linemar in Guelph says it is losing $1 million dollars day. The GM strike is currently on it's 16th day. Graves says they support the employee's south of the border.

"We support them 100 percent, it was just in September 2017, when we went down for 5 weeks with GM. UAW has ran into a similar thing, GM is making millions, millions of dollars and they are just looking for their fair share. I hope our UAW brothers and sisters get it resolved, get back to work and get everything out of their contract."

GM has already lost a Billion dollars with the strike south of the border.