Dear Editor:
General Motors has spent the last 30 years telling us they can’t make any money producing vehicles in Canada and the U.S., and they’ve been gradually moving manufacturing to other countries.
Japanese companies have spent the last 30 years creating new production facilities in Canada and the U.S.
In 2016, eight of the top 15 best selling vehicles in the U.S. were produced by Japanese owned companies. Of the top 15, GM had only two: the Silverado at #2 and the Equinox at #15.
Many of the vehicles with Japanese name plates are manufactured in the U.S. In 2017, the Nissan factory in Smyrna, Tennessee produced 628,000 vehicles, making it the top ranked production facility in all of North America!
Do you think that maybe GM’s problems are of their own making?
They are definitely not going to stay in Oshawa. They can’t afford to have over 3,000 people making less than 50,000 vehicles. In Toyota’s plant in Kentucky, about 8,000 employees produced 500,000 vehicles (mostly the Camry) in 2016.
Perhaps the best thing that Jerry Dias and all the noise making politicians could do now is to begin looking for a Japanese automaker who might want to buy a slightly used factory in Oshawa.
Of course, the employees would have to give up their union if a deal like that went through. But if you’re stuck with just two choices, isn’t a decent non-union job with a Japanese manufacturer better than no unionized job at all?
John McVicar, HARRISTON