Skilled Trades Association, CAW Local 199 St. Catharines (General Motors Unit) | ||||||
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| 250 workers to lose jobs Auto parts plant will close in September Don Fraser St. Catharines Standard - Saturday, June 17, 2006 Friday’s announcement that a St. Catharines auto parts plant will close, eliminating 250 jobs, was no shock for Mike Molinaro and Nick Urry Just hours earlier, the two employees of the Affinia Group Inc. foundry were told that the Berryman Avenue plant will shut its doors on September 15. “We’ve been looking for a buyer now probably most of this year,” said Molinaro, 47, a lab technician who lives in Fonthill. “We knew the chance of finding a buyer was very slim. “Globalization has caught up with us,” added Molinaro. “We’re doing everything we can in our power to stay cost-competitive, we’re just not having any luck.” The mood inside the plant, which makes brake drums and rotors, was one of resignation, said the men, who were leaving the factory parking lot in the middle of the afternoon. “Nobody was caught off guard, nobody was really surprised,” said Molinaro, who has a little more than 27 years’ seniority at the plant. “No one wanted to see this day come, but today is Black Friday, I guess.” Urry, 28, nodded in agreement. “Since I started here, there’s always been the threat of the place closing or being bought out,” said the chipper- grinder from Fenwick, who has around nine years’ seniority. “Just like what Mike was saying, with the Chinese market, we can’t compete.” The decision to close was a difficult one, said an Affinia spokesman. It followed a fruitless search for a buyer. “I don’t think this result was a dramatic surprise to anyone in the plant,” said Scott Howat, Affinia’s director of corporate communications. The company announced in February it wanted to sell the operation. “No one is embracing this with open arms,” said Howat. “But teams have been set up to talk about what we can do in terms of services we provide (for employees) and closing the plant.” He said the closing was related to a “capacity issue.... We’ve got several facilities that are just not running at full capacity. “It in no way reflects on the talents of hard-working people of the St. Catharines foundry,” Howat said of the closure. Severance packages and other benefits will be provided to employees, as required by the collective agreement and labour legislation, he said. There will also be “several different options” for workers, including possible relocation to another Affinia plant for eligible employees. St. Catharines Mayor Tim Rigby said the city had been working to find “possible solutions to some of their issues.” “It really comes down to a corporate decision,” said Rigby, who worked at the foundry as a sales assistant in the early 1960s. “It’s a very sad loss for the people that are working there and the city,” he said. “It’s a real shame.” Serious efforts will now have to be made to help redeploy laid-off employees and to decommission the plant, he said. “You’ve got very heavy equipment, foundry sands and everything else.” Canadian Auto Workers Local 199 represents some of the workers at the plant. The exact number wasn’t available late Friday and a union spokesman couldn’t be reached for comment. Affinia’s pending closure is another black mark for the manufacturing sector in St. Catharines and Thorold, which has been hit hard since 1999. There have been large plant closures notably Domtar Papers, Gallaher Thorold Paper and Bazaar & Novelty and hundreds of job losses in other operations including General Motors and Dana Canada Corp. Affinia is a global supplier of motor vehicle components. It is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Mich. It has operations in 19 countries, including a plant in Sudbury, and about 11,000 employees in total. | ||||||
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