Outrage won’t find new jobs for GM workers in Oshawa

No one, absolutely no one, has channelled the public anger over General Motors’ decision to axe its Oshawa plant better than union leader Jerry Dias.

If his defiant outrage were encapsulated in two words, they’d be the “middle finger” Dias is urging the federal and Ontario governments to flash at the giant automaker.

Given that he’s national president of Unifor — which represents 2,500 workers at the Oshawa plant — his call for punishing tariffs on GM’s Mexican-made vehicles, public cash to keep the factory running and enlisting Donald Trump to hit back is no surprise. Dias is doing what he’s paid for, even if his rhetoric’s over the top.

The question is: Will his incendiary tactics save the plant? And should Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Doug Ford join the “hell of a fight” he’s trying to start?

In this case, while Canadians can respect Dias’ goal, his fury is generating more heat than light. This crisis shouldn’t degenerate into a Trump-like vendetta, along with all its threats and attempted coercion. We don’t need to get mad as much as we need to get those GM workers new jobs.

When it comes to the response from Queen’s Park and especially Ottawa, this means revolutionizing how they help workers who are displaced or threatened by future layoffs.

Does this amount to abandoning the people at the Oshawa factory, which along with four others in the U.S. was marked for closure by GM this week? Not at all. But there’s more going on here than Dias’ caricature of a greedy corporation casting loyal employees into the gutter to earn higher profits.

The Oshawa factory has been in decline for years. Once one of the world’s biggest automakers, it employed more than 23,000 people in the 1980s. Today, it’s the smallest of Canada’s eight vehicle assembly plants with 20,000 fewer workers than its heyday.

To state the painfully obvious, consumers have turned away from the sedans that roll out of the Oshawa plant. They want crossovers and SUVs, like the Equinox GM assembles in Ingersoll.

The tariffs of up to 40 per cent Dias wants slapped on GM’s Mexican products won’t alter these realities. Such tariffs could be illegal. They would surely fly in the face of the continental trade deal Canada, the U.S. and Mexico are in the process of ratifying.

And just as Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs cost American carmakers and consumers money, Dias’s tariffs would bring unintended, harmful consequences. Tariffs won’t sell more made-in-Oshawa sedans, either.

The better course of action is to help the displaced GM workers move on with their lives. This is where governments should focus.

Statistics Canada reported nearly 500,000 unfilled jobs in the country earlier this year. There are employers across the nation that simply can’t find the workers they need, even as more and more people are being displaced due to automation and other disruptive changes shaking industries worldwide.

More than ever, governments in this country must do a better job being reactive to job losses. Improved retraining programs and enhanced efforts to match workers with new employers are required.

In tandem, governments must be more proactive in the face of all the impending threats to the workforce with better, ongoing adult education. To repeat, this response means revolutionizing Canada’s industrial strategy.

If the federal Liberals want to meet one of Canada’s most urgent needs, this is where they should spend their energy. And if they need a winning cause in next year’s federal election, this is it.