Union Posturing:

Auto industry union bosses are still rumbling and grumbling for the media about the GM decision to exit Oshawa. You'd almost be led to think they have the clout to actually do something about that. 

Too late. GM has found a work site more suitable for assembling vehicles.

For years the unions have conditioned the assembly line workers to think that they owed their livelihood to the union's efforts to get them a square deal from those terrible money-grubbing industrialists.

And many of them actually got to believe that. They bought the story that they were working for the union instead of General Motors. 

A century ago, when Colonel McLaughlin decided to add motors to his carriages, he made a deal with Buick of Detroit to produce the McLaughlin Buick. He needed all kinds of tradesmen to assemble the vehicles.

That is how all those jobs were created. It was the need to produce this wonderful new means of transit that required workers. There were wages to be made by people who qualified for the jobs offered. The unions weren't there until someone borrowed, possibly from the Mafia, the concept of "protecting" the workers from those greedy employers. Naturally, the workers were required to pay for their protection.  

While the alleged greed of the people who created the jobs eventually created the need for unions, let us not forget that it was car maker Henry Ford who was first to develop the assembly line for cars, who was also the first to recognize that if he paid his assembly line workers a fair wage, they, too, would be able to buy his cars.

It is unlikely that there were any politicians or union bosses involved in Ford's decision.

But getting back to Oshawa, the decision for GM to quit and move on was no doubt made by people who crunched the numbers and found an advantage in moving their operation somewhere else. They found a place where, after the vehicles were built and workers paid, there would be enough money left over for the people who bought GM shares. 

That is how industry is able to survive to create more jobs. Job #1 is to make products of a quality and at a cost that will allow them to survive market place competition. 

Job #2 is to hire people with enough skills and a work ethic to do the jobs properly.

Job #3 is to make sure the shareholders see enough profit in their shares to keep investing and stay in the game.

Those are the priorities. Anything else would result in the company going under sooner rather than later. And if the company goes under, all the jobs go with it.

It is entirely possible that far from being the assembly line workers' over-all great benefactor, the union actually contributed to the company's exit from Oshawa. It could be they bargained too hard, making it easy for the employer to leave and go where people want jobs with fewer strings attached.

The time for union posturing is over. When GM exits, there will be no more pay checks to deduct union fees from and no more taxes deducted at the source. Union leaders and politicians trying to make political hay on lost jobs will have to find something more productive to whine about. 

Andrea Horwath will have to go back and re-focus her attention for the CTV and CBC cameras on that terrible Doug Ford.