Skilled Trades Association, CAW Local 199 St. Catharines (General Motors Unit) | ||||||
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Thanks For Your Support! The Skilled Trades Association was created initially to give support to laid off trades in the St. Catharines G.M. facility. This site also can provide useful information to trades across Canada. As of this date, the laid off members in the General Motors facility in St. Catharines still include;
On Monday, May 7th of 2007 we finally achieved full employment of the Maintenance Trades, some of which were laid off for almost 6 years.
Others had to spend almost that amount of time on the Oshawa Assembly lines and putting in 12 or 13 hour days traveling back and forth for employment. Yet others chose not to go to Oshawa and tried to find other employment opportunities locally. The amount of stress and anxiety this places on a family is incredible.
Hopefully, the stress of traveling and working here in St. Catharines will now help these families heal. You cannot put a price on how valuable it is to have at least 4 more hours a day to spend with your family and friends. I urge everyone to welcome these brothers back with open arms.
Our Union Leadership was fortunate to get these skilled trades members back to work and we will continue to work tirelessly until all our Production Sisters and Brothers are back working in St. Catharines as well. We wish them all the best and hope to see the rest of our brothers and sisters back to work in St. Catharines soon.
Welcome back and Welcome home!
Thanks to our Union, we are NOT "Casualties of War".The Skilled Trades Association has proven to be very useful in our quest to cope with our situation, return to work and remain there. This site is for all trades and that includes you.
Who are we? We are you! Or at least we are people just like you. Some of us are unemployed and some of us are not. We are Skilled Trades and production workers who have come together for a common cause. We want to get back to work and we want to remain there without the constant threats of layoffs, which have plagued us for twelve years. We offer to share experiences with any other Skilled Trades people who have been laid off, are laid off or are concerned about being laid off.
Our mandate is to help trades, production and our community. Feel free to contact us or to use any of our ideas. We hope to help provide useful information to skilled trades in Niagara and Ontario. Management in most companies considers skilled trades to be an unwanted expense, with no-value added to the end product. We are weary of companies continually laying trades off as their first line of defence against a poorly managed bottom line. "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!”
We are confident and supportive of our union and our leaders. We have decided it is time to once again stand strong and give our leaders the united voice they need to act forcefully in our behalf. Along with this are many ideas we have come up with to present ourselves more professionally and demand the respect we deserve for our training.
We are not militant, but we are ready to S.T.A. united, for a future devoid of the constant threat of layoffs and disrespect for our professions. We will do what is necessary to protect the welfare of the integrity of skilled trades, our friends in production, our families security and our communities stability.
We are determined to put the conscience back in management and make them accountable for their mismanagement. As a very smart fellow once put it "We are beings not beans". Management needs to consider trades as an integral part of the production team. This is YOUR Skilled Trades Association. It was formed by YOU, supported by YOU, and will grow through YOUR support. I will repeat our Mission statement here.
Our mandate is to help strengthen our union by supporting our leadership and creating a Skilled Trades Association dedicated to the full employment and the well being of all trades in our plant and across Ontario. We are also committed to supporting our friends in production and being responsible community members helping out where we can.
Once again thank you for showing an interest in everyone's future and for your support by adding your name to ours.
Your Sisters and Brothers CAW Local 199 members of the Skilled Trades Association. | ||||||
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