In midst of early contract talks GM Canada announces closure of last Windsor plant

The closure will cost 1,400 workers their jobs in a city that is already reeling from an 8.3 unemployment ratethe fourth highest in the country. Windsors jobless rate almost reached 10 percent last year. If it has since fallen, it is in large part because so many unemployed have left the city to seek work in the Toronto region or Western Canada.

In the past two years alone, 2,600 other autoworker jobs have been wiped out in Windsor, including more than 1,000 each at the citys Ford and Chrysler plants. With the 2010 closure of the transmission plant, GM will have no functioning plants in Canadas Motor City for the first time since 1963.

The CAW leadership has already made clear it intends to do nothing to oppose the closure.

Only last week, CAW President Buzz Hargrove vowed that his union wouldnt sign a new contract with GM unless it included new product and investment guarantees for plants in Windsor, Oshawa, and St. Catherines. In fact, he said the union was prepared to strike to win such guarantees. But on Monday, Hargrove admitted that this had been nothing more than bombast.

You strike after something you think is achievable, he told a hastily called news conference. If we thought there was a product out there that we could strike and fight and win, then you bet your boots we would be striking over it. They informed us they have no product today and theyll have no product if we strike in September. You cant pull product out of thin air.

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