GM’s planned 2019 closure could impact up 2,500 unionized jobs at the Oshawa plant alone. A study commissioned by Unifor, the union representing GM workers, found that a plant closure could result in 50,000 job losses when accounting for spinoff industries like auto parts. In addition to deploying the training program, Ford said he had called on the federal government to extend employment insurance eligibility for impacted workers by five weeks. NDP labour critic Jamie West (Sudbury) said the retraining program was underfunded from the previous government, but told the Star it was not the right response to the GM crisis anyway. “There’s a hundred years of GM in Oshawa and the premier ignores all this and talks about retraining,” he said.

Source: thestar November 28, 2018 22:00 UTC