The effects of the closing of General Motors has far more reaching impact than the city of Oshawa.
Sixty-two-year-old Roy Eagen has worked in the automotive industry for 40 years and lived in Port Hope for the last two decades.
For the last eight years he’s been with Ceva Logistics which is sub-contracted company from GM and works out of the GM facility.
Eagen estimates that upwards of 80% of the parts on a GM vehicle are from where he works.
On Monday morning General Motors announced that all production will cease to exist at the GM plant in Oshawa as of December 2019.
A total of 2,500 hundred jobs will be lost from the closure of the GM plant in Oshawa which has been operating for 100 years and at the peak had 40,000 employees.
“I was floored. I still don’t know what I’m going to do,” said Eagen at a downtown Port Hope restaurant on Monday afternoon.
One thing that infuriates the long time union representative is he learned of the closing through the media, not through the company.
“It’s sad to say but they are treating it like a nonchalant thing and it’s not.”
Eagen called it “corporate greed” shutting the plants down in Canada and the United States a month before Christmas.
Since the new truck plant opened in January in Oshawa they were working six days a week and it was upped to seven days a week throughout the summer months. They are still operating at six days a week and are months ahead of production.
“By March or April we were three or four months ahead. Detroit was ecstatic the way we were producing the truck, winning six out of nine JP Power Awards for quality.”
“I don’t think the public realize how many people either work for suppliers or General Motors itself until all of a sudden, there is money.”
For every one GM employee that loses their job, there are seven more that will lose their jobs at feeder plants said Eagen.
“We keep hearing there are 2,500 that work at General Motors, that’s correct, but by the time the steamroller effect is finishing it’s going to be 29,000 to 30,000 in Ontario will lose their jobs.”
“A lot of us coming from small communities that we won’t have money to spend in our communities.”
Eagen said even the local corner store will see a difference.
“I’m trying to get the word out to communities. Don’t believe there are only 2,500 people that are effected.”
As a person in his early 60’s, Eagen is at a loss who would hire him.
Since a major hiring this year, Eagen estimates about 90% are young people looking forward to a future.
“A lot of young people that are working for us, they have no where in the future to look. Even at the wage they start at they can’t afford to buy a home. They can’t afford to start a family.”
There have been generations of families that have dedicated themselves to producing General Motors vehicles and worked hard to build the best possible product only to have that all destroyed within the year.
Eagen said, many people are unsure of what their future holds, but he’s not holding his breath for either the provincial or federal government to help.
“Doug Ford is already talking about how the ship has left the dock.”
“If we have to rely on Doug Ford and Trudeau to bail us out, I think we’re sunk.”
General Motors Press Release http://media.gm.com/media/us/en/gm/home.detail.html/content/Pages/news/us/en/2018/nov/1126-gm.html
Author: Pete Fisher
Has been a photojournalist for over 30-years and have been honoured to win numerous awards for photography and writing over the years. Best selling author for the book Highway of Heroes - True Patriot Love
