It’s the city that built General Motors and became a beacon for good manufacturing jobs. And Oshawa has never been shy about fighting for them.

In 1996, strikebound workers got wind that GM was planning to outsource work by moving tool and die equipment to another factory. In response, then-president of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union, Buzz Hargrove, warned management they would “not get one goddamn die out of the city of Oshawa.”

He was right: workers stormed the gates, broke into the plant, and welded the doors shut to stop the parts leaving.

Two decades later, retail workers outnumber manufacturing in a city where good jobs dwindle. Oshawa’s unemployment rate sits at 5.8 per cent, compared to 5.6 per cent for the rest of the province. Across the GTA, around half of all jobs are low-wage, temporary, contract, or lacking benefits.

That’s why the battle for GM’s 2,500 at-risk jobs is just as crucial today as it ever was, says Bill Murnighan, director of research at Unifor, the union that grew out of CAW and represents GM employees.

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“Overall, the labour market is fairly strong, but there are still far too many precarious jobs. So it’s incredibly frustrating to see the Ford government’s reversal of many of the changes that were meant to make precarious jobs better,” he said, referring to recent legislation that removed many new protections for low-wage workers.

“At the same time, (they’re) stepping away from a challenge to stand up for good jobs where we already have them.”

Premier Doug Ford said Monday that GM told him “straight up there’s nothing we can do” about the closure of the plant, which once employed 40,000.

“That’s exactly the wrong argument to make at this moment,” said Murnighan. “We have a contractual obligation from GM to keep our operations open through the life of the collective agreement.”

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Beyond that, he says all levels of government need to promote things like workforce development, research and development and capital investment that make Ontario — and Canada — an attractive place to keep auto jobs.

“The cost of labour, while it’s important, it’s less than 5 per cent of the cost of a vehicle, even those made in Canada and the U.S. It’s the research and development, the skill of the workers, having a supply base that increasingly matters.”

“Moving up higher up the technology chain — this requires more skill, not less. Ontario by every measure has the highest quality of skill,” he added.

Regardless of the ultimate outcome at GM, University of Toronto post-doctoral fellow in Canadian labour history, Christo Aivalis, said the news is a wake-up call for Canadians that “too many of our decisions in our society are dictated by profit motive.”

“The reality is the cars still need to be built and we have the raw materials to produce them. So I don’t think we need to move too far off the question of, why do these workers need to be laid off?”

“For most of those workers under the current status quo, they will not find the kind of job that offers them the same level of security and compensation. They just will not,” he added.

“With the new labour law scale backs, the minimum wage or near-minimum wage positions are going to be that much more unpleasant to work.”

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Cammie Peirce has already had a glimpse of what instability in the auto sector can do to workers. She co-ordinated CAW’s job action centre in Brampton for Chrysler employees when the company decided to can its third shift, putting about 1,100 people out of a job.

The GM jobs haven’t gone yet, she notes, and might yet be rescued — but “the unknown can be pretty terrifying” for workers, she said.

“My initial concern is for people who are in this state of flux between now and whenever something happens. Immediately in my mind, people need to know that mental health supports are going to need to be there.”

If job cuts do come to pass, she says retraining efforts need to be as holistic and accessible as possible.

“I really think that the group philosophy — keeping people with their peers — is really important,” she said.

“I’m very fond of peer-led action centres. You invite people in for a coffee, get them out of their house because you don’t want someone to just sit at home and just fall down that deep, dark hole.”

Just as crucial, she argues, is income support for workers who are retraining — and ensuring they find “employment that is both sustainable and is going to replace the standard of living that is close to what they currently have.”

“To me, everybody there is going to face the challenge of the changing labour market, the shift to contract and temp work,” Peirce added.

Potential job losses at GM could have a far reaching impact, she notes.

“It’s not just 2,500 jobs. We have auto parts that are tied to that,” adding that workers in that sector often face additional barriers to finding new jobs, such as literacy and fluency in English.

A 2015 report commissioned by Unifor on the potential impact of closing the Oshawa plant found that it would cost the Canadian economy over 50,000 jobs and $1.3 billion in public revenue.

“It is like the goose that lays the golden egg,” said Murnighan. “It’s really kind of unacceptable to us to close that door.”

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Correction — November 30, 2018: This article was edited from a previous version that misstated Oshawa's unemployment rate as 9.8 per cent. Incorrect information was provided to the Star.

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