Resurrection shuffle: General Motors hiring in Oshawa?

My daughter bought a house in "the Shwa" four years ago. A few months later, GM announced the closure of their Oshawa plant, the community's biggest employer.

I thought, that's a kick in the teeth. She and her partner, a freshly-minted Doctor Phil in Chem from U of T, would be hard-pressed to stay above water with their new house. Millennials in their first house, they were maxed out.

Fast forward to 2022. The GM plant that was moth-balled in 2019 is building pickup trucks again. And they're hiring! In fact, they're so desperate for workers, they've got a huge "Now Hiring" banner attached to the plant that you can see from the 401!

The start rate for new hires is a tad under $24/hour. While I will denounce two-tier contracts till my last breath, even I gotta admit that's not a bad start in the modern era.

What's happened since that kick in the teeth, is that the value of a home in Oshawa has roughly doubled. The bad news is, a detached house in the 'Shwa now runs $800k plus.

The good news is, according to the numbers I just put through the TD Mortgage Affordability Calculator, a couple of kids in those starter jobs in Oshawa will qualify for a $750k mortgage. 

And while I don't want to rain on the parade... anybody who ever had to renew a mortgage at 18% knows not all dreams have happy endings.

Greed uber alles

The idea that a major employer like General Motors is bound by some notion of "social contract" is as good as dead.

Greed is the ultimate value these days among the keeners coming out of MBA programs. Greed makes some people filthy rich. Greedy people can get rich enough to buy the people who make the rules. Then you've got a closed-loop self-devouring perpetual greed machine on the loose...


That can only end badly, as it is ending badly for those three thousand families in Oshawa. As it has for 16,000 Sears employees and their pensions.

A couple of greedbags were allowed to plunder CP Rail, destroying over five thousand jobs but walking away with billions for their efforts.

Meanwhile, our precious princeling billows progressive hot air into the heavens in such volumes that we'll never meet our emissions targets, while simultaneously buying us pipelines, because the greedbags who own our oil demand them.

And don't expect to get the whole story from your friendly corporate news media; the greedbags own those too.

Obama to rename highest peak in North America after a GM SUV

That's right folks, Mount McKinley is about to be re-christened.

The mountain once named for the 25th president of the United States will hence forth be named after a General Motors product.

I get it; Obama salvaged General Motors from the dustbin of history, but renaming America's biggest mountain after a GM product seems a bit of over-reach, does it not?

At least he didn't name it "Mt. Barack."