THUNDER BAY - Ontario Premier Doug Ford visited the Alstom plant in Thunder Bay on March 17 and toured the facility after meeting some employees.
"We were on the afternoon shift, so there wasn't a lot of people at the plant, but he was very friendly, and he talked to all the people there in the plant, and he looked at some of the cars we're building. Actually, we're building cars now, not for Ontario or Canada; we're building some cars for the west coast of the US," said Dominic Pasqualino, Unifor local 1075 president.
"Well, obviously it's getting close to an election, so he really was working hard to make sure his candidates got elected in this area, and he said there was a lot of work on down the pipeline, he wasn't very specific about any particular dates one way or the other, but he assured us if any work than can come to this plant, he would make sure that would happen."
"We've been over there a few times speaking to the folks, and I'll be very frank, if we didn't invest what we did, the plant wouldn't even be open," said Ford.
"We invested $271 million in the go rail. Another $180 million In streetcars, we're going to make sure we support the workers there. They're retooling now. That CEO promised me those 300 jobs are coming back after the tooling."
Pasqualino says that the Premier's visit raised the spirits of the workers present, especially in such a tense time as more layoffs loom.
"There's a lot of them that's going to get laid off next week, and that's when it's going to start this big layoff where we're going to have under 100 people in the plant this summer, and you know, a lot of people are really worried about it. The mood in the plant is muted," said Pasqualino.
"People are concerned about their futures and, you know, I've heard that Doug Ford was over at the mine earlier yesterday and, you know, I might lose some more of my guys to jobs like that."
Pasqualino says that he made sure that the Premier was well aware of the layoffs, but Ford did not talk about it with the present workers.
