Congratulations, Buzz!
June 3, 2008 · By Charles Anthony
Buzz Hargrove must have felt like a hero in May. Now, the auto workers feel betrayed.
The news follows an agreement reached in mid-May with the Canadian Auto Workers.
CAW President Buzz Hargrove said GM is now breaking that agreement.
Speaking at a news conference, Hargrove said GM had committed to ongoing production of pickups in Oshawa through the life of the new collective agreement.
“No intelligent human being would ever agree there’s been such a change in two weeks that somehow General Motors would have to back away from a commitment,” Hargrove said, vowing the CAW would fight the closure.
Well, gee, Buzz, those auto workers hired YOU to negotiate on their behalf. So, who is the intelligent human being?
Anyway, I have a recommendation for Buzz: go on a strike!
By the way, I would rather see politicians do a little bit less selling out to gain political power, thank you very much.
How can you possibly put the blame of the Oshawa truck plant closing on Buzz Hargrove? Ok i agree, in his tenure as union leader he has been awfully soft. But the agreement he reached with General Motors two weeks ago was a master piece given GM’s current situation and in comparison to the pact the UAW signed a while back.
G.M backstabbed the union, this closure is illegal and should be brought to court. In the agreement the CAW signed, G.M is required to inform the union if they were going to relieve any more jobs in the Oshawa plant.
I personally believe that G.M knew they were closing the plant before they signed the agreement. So to try and say that this is Buzz Hargroves fault is ridiculus. For years buzz has lobbied to re-instate the Auto-pact in Canada, but the Conservatives have sat idly by and enabled all of these job losses to continue.
This closure has less to do with Buzz but more to do with the ignorance of our current federal government.
That’s right, how Liberal of you to blame the Federal Government for the brutally poor business practises of GM.
When you overpay workers, provide low quality, highly overpriced products, what you get is business failure. If an autoworker ever picked up an economics report or took their head out of their overpaid bottoms for 10 minutes and watched the news, they would have known the North American auto sector was tumbling.
I hope the federal government pulls all grants and funding from GM and puts it into something more worthy like health care and education.
Buzz Hargrove is finally resembling the joke he really is!!
Ronnie, it sounds like you got a nice fancy desk job….. Let me tell you one thing that i guess you didnt read about, the reason why G.M was failing is because of uneven trade embargos placed against North American Auto products, research that. It also has to do with the price of fuel, and how the Canadian government has not adressed the rising canadian dollar which is effecting all industries across Canada. Another point you made which proves how uneducated you are about the topic, is that G.M products are low quality. the G.M plant in Oshawa won dozens awards for its productivity and effieciency….bad G.M products? Toyota has a 1-3 turnover rate….How can you say G.M’s buisuness practices are poor when they are the number 1 auto producer in the world? its an uneven market that has enabled G.M’s downfall…..your a goof go buy a toyota and vote harper, or just watch the news for 10 minutes.
Josh,
It sounds like you get to buy American vehicles at less than retail prices….. family pricing, perhaps?
You certainly sound like you have been inhaling too much of the ink on their freshly printed promotional pamphlets.
Pretending that GM cars are superior and that they are victims of trade embargoes is bad comedy.
I am not putting the blame of the closing on Buzz Hargrove. I am just throwing salt on his wound. I believe he deserves it. The end of his career as a union leader should be marked with abysmal failure. He was hired and paid to negotiate employment contracts. All he did was bring false hope when he should have known better.
Now, what will the next CAW leader do?
Promise pies in the sky???