Dear Editor;

Economic sustainability takes another hit in Owen Sound; 81 jobs will leave and will not be replaced; let me say that again, "they will not be replaced". I'm sure that Dalton McGuinty will say, much like he did when 2, 000 plus GM jobs in Oshawa left only a short time ago, "we can absorb this loss". Let's be clear on this, there is no way that we can absorb this loss; we can no more absorb this than the families who will lose their source of income can absorb this, no more than the 300 plus workers in Ontario who lose their jobs everyday to the current de-industrialization of Ontario and the rest of Canada.

Ontario's resource, mining, and manufacturing sectors are under attack, and people need to understand that there are immediate affects as the families have to deal with job loss, and long term affects, as communities lose workers and jobs that provide adequate wages to permit sustained spending and some level of economic sustainability. Maybe alternative work will show up, but this work, as honourable as it may be, will not replace those resource, mining, and manufacturing jobs that are being lost at such an alarming rate. The alternative work in almost every case is service sector work that is almost never be unionized and has little chance of ever providing the previous standard of living these families enjoyed.

This job loss always seems to be attached to some rhetoric about competition. This is as hollow as the empty houses that are often abandoned by families impacted by this lob loss. Ontario can, and must, implement a Jobs Commissioner to ensure that all jobs shipped out of country and / or offshore are investigated. Further, the commission needs the teeth of sound legislation as that found in numerous other jurisdictions throughout the world where the uninhibited destruction of jobs by sending them to the place of lowest wages and poorest labour and health and safety standards is made very painful for the company(s) engaging in such practices. Naysayers will climb on this and say we will never attract any sort of investment; this is not true in the jurisdictions where this staregy exists and it will not be true in Ontario either. A committed and trained workforce with the ability to sustain and help communities prosper will always be attractive to investment.

It is time for the McGuinty government to set a "manufacturing jobs strategy" and stop saying thing like "we can absorb this".


In Solidarity

Dave Trumble, Kincardine
President
Grey-Bruce
Labour Council