By Doug Draper
For any and all of us hoping for a bit of good news about jobs in our binational region, it seems like a great report. 
Whether you heard or viewed it on the radio or the television news, or read about it in a local newspaper, the news this February 18 that General Motors – as dismal as sales and profits have been for it over the past few years – will actually be creating 470 new jobs in its struggling Tonawanda plant may be greeted as a sign that the worst of times for work in North America’s auto industry may be over.
But is it? How much of this announcement of new jobs is false gold?
After all, these new jobs will pay about half the $30 an hour older generations of assembly line workers are being paid in this plant and others GM operates in the United States where the United Auto Workers in that country have reluctantly agreed to a two-tier wage system to keep even more jobs from being shipped off to other parts of the world where wages are ridiculously low.
To what extent should this job announcement – greeted with a headline on the front page of the February 19 edition of The Buffalo News that reads ‘GM begins rebirth with engine plant here’ – be a cause for celebration?
Terry White, a long-time GM worker in Niagara, Ontario and plant chair for the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) Local 199, has some mixed feelings. Continue reading
