Oshawa CAW local backs NDP

Prime Minister Paul Martin may be sporting a Canadian Auto Workers’ jacket, but that doesn’t mean auto workers and GM retirees in Oshawa are jumping on the Liberal bandwagon.

Chris Buckley, president of the union’s largest unit, Local 222 in Oshawa, says he will be voting NDP, and the union’s retirees yesterday came out in full support of local NDP candidate Sid Ryan.

Ryan, 53, lost out to Conservative Colin Carrie, 43, by just 463 votes in the nation’s tightest race of the 2004 federal election. The two square off again in the Jan. 23 election, along with returning Liberal candidate Louise Parkes, 46, who was 1,305 votes behind Carrie last time. The retirees’ endorsement of Ryan comes despite CAW president Buzz Hargrove’s backing of Paul Martin at a CAW national council meeting in Toronto on Friday, during which he helped him into a union jacket and said a Liberal-NDP alliance offers the best hope for Canada’s automotive future.

“ We take our union crest very seriously and we don’t think Buzz had any right to place it on a prime minister who has done very little for the Canadian worker,” said 79- year- old Ken Cobb, who has been retired from GM for 22 years. Cobb and about 150 fellow GM retirees yesterday presented Ryan with his own CAW jacket.

Joe McClosky, 76, who retired 26 years ago after 30 years at GM, said Hargrove’s public endorsement of Martin is a “ slap in the face” for auto workers across the country who have long supported the principles of the NDP party.

There are 7,500 GM retirees among the 22,000 members of CAW’s Local 222 in Oshawa. McClosky, who sits on the union’s national council and was at the weekend convention, said the strategy of moving votes from the NDP to the Liberals backfired in the last election.

“ Surprise surprise, the Liberal candidate ran third and the Conservatives won,” McClosky said.

Buckley yesterday was trying to put a positive spin on Hargrove’s actions on the weekend.

“ It is in our best interests to have another Liberal minority government with the NDP holding the balance of power,” Buckley said in an interview.

Ryan, president of the Ontario branch of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, said he has personally received a strong endorsement from Hargrove in the Oshawa riding and doesn’t think that giving Martin a union jacket will hurt him on Jan. 23.

“( NDP leader) Jack Layton has received resounding support from the Oshawa union local for his automotive plan for the next parliament,” he told the GM retirees yesterday.