Skilled Trades Association, CAW Local 199 St. Catharines (General Motors Unit) | ||||||
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Michael Grimaldi
At least one member of upper management in Detroit has proposed and promoted the idea of using as many outside contractors as possible to replace in house skilled trades. There are drawbacks to this.
Superficially its attractive because when their services are no longer needed they can be terminated.. no notice , no benefits.
I can attest to the following from first hand experience. When I was laid off in 1999 I joined our local millwrights union and worked as an outside contractor in a variety of industrial settings in Southern Ontario. One of my Job assignments was to do service work in a local automobile parts manufacturing plant, specifically TRW. A tradesman coming to perform service work in a plant has no familiarity with the layout of the facility. He needs to be accompanied by another tradesman or be left on his own to find his way to the job. Neither is very efficient.
While the majority of the millwrights I worked with outside were dedicated and knowledgeable, their work ethic had been compromised by the time constraints that working to a deadline had imposed over the years. “Lets get the job done and get out of here.”
The approach of both the GM journeymen and skilled trades supervision is to do the job right the first time so someone maybe yourself doesn’t have to come back and redo it. The outside contractor is already gone. If his installation needs retrofitting or modification chances are it will be the in house maintenance trades that do it. Cost effective?
Right now St. Catharines has barely enough trades to operate. Just ask a floor level maintenance supervisor if he has sufficient manpower or a production supervisor how long he has to wait for a service call to be answered. In the millwright trade this is only going to get worse. For the other trades it is probably the same. At the moment there are 30 millwrights with 30 years plus seniority. They can leave at almost any time. Others are in their sixties and will be retiring over the next 5 years.
Currently no provision exists to deal with this looming shortage. I asked Ron Brais, then maintenance superintendent, in the fall of 2001 if someone at his level or above was addressing this issue. He said it was being looked at. Since then, nothing. If an apprenticeship program were initiated tomorrow it would be at least four years until the first journeyman graduated.
The St. Catharines employee has a commitment to this operation because of his years of service. Add to that, He she comes with a built in job familiarity. They would be a logical choice for re training to fill trades openings.
The long-term future of out jobs and the St. Catharines facility may well depend on decisions about this now.
Respectfully yours | ||||||
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