Dear Mr. M. Grimaldi,

I am writing this letter to you in hopes that you will read this letter and really understand what kind of workforce you have in St. Catharines. First let me begin by telling you a little about myself. I am one of six Sheet Metal Workers laid-off among a total of 49 trades. I have nearly 20 years service with GM, which is most of my adult life. Since I became a Sheet Metal Worker, I have always lived by GM’s motto; “Know your Customer and Exceed their Expectations. “

So for the record I would also say this is true of all the different trades we have here in St. Catharines. We have done record-breaking work here; this could only be done with a highly skilled,

Motivated, dedicated and loyal workforce. We have met every challenge head on and exceeded every expectation. Your skilled trades workers in St. Catharines are second to none. Yet we are rewarded with

lay off slips and told our services are no longer needed. We are told there is no work for us and we have to be let go! Under normal circumstances I could accept this explanation, however this is not the case.

This lay-off is a sham! How could it be that rights as soon as we are out the door, the company has certain trades working extended shifts; force in on the weekends and some skilled trades employee’s exceeding 60 hours a week contrary to the labour laws of this province. It is obvious the company knows it cut too deep, because prior to this layoff any infraction made by an employee would be dealt by having the extra hours above 60 being tacked on to the next weeks pay, and a stern warning from the company that one cannot do this any more because of the threat of a fine from the ministry of labour. But now it seems okay to violate the law !

So Mr. Grimaldi, you are a smart man, tell me, does this sound right to you? To my way of thinking, the Company should not be encouraging this type of worker abuse, especially when there are people on the street who want to work! As far as sheet metal work is concerned, I know the company cut way too deep!

It is true that construction work for our sheet metal shop dropped off and the scopes of work issued and forecasted show that construction is slow, however these forecasts did not include service work we do.

Upper management in St. Catharines has no idea what so ever the amount of sheet metal work required to keep this operation running safely and effectively. When lay-off notices were issued to us in the sheet metal shop, front line supervisors were not consulted on their sheet metal needs for each line in the plant. Most front line supervisors were surprised to learn that sheet metal workers had notices at all! Sheet metal work is more than just exhaust systems and makeup air systems. The problem we have in the sheet metal shop is like this; most service work given to us is by word of mouth. Now when construction work slows, the people making decisions on layoffs think we are not busy so they us lay-off ! What needs to be done? Listen to Doug Orr, listen to Gary Martin they have great ideas on how to fully utilize the skilled trades workforce. I know that without their leadership more layoffs would have occurred!

Mr. Grimaldi, if you have any authority at all, and you have General Motor best financial interests at hand which I am sure you do; you will take Doug’s and Gary’s ideas to WFG, Power Train, and local St. Catharines management about bringing all of us back to work now! Your company’s money would not be wasted in bringing us back to work. There is more than enough work to go around, in fact so much so that if the service work we perform in the sheet metal shop were properly assigned, and documented , I believe apprenticeship opportunities would be realized just from this alone .

Respectfully

J. Daniel Murray