To all who work within or are dependent on income from someone employed by the automobile industry in one capacity or another, my sincere sympathies to you and your families on the current state of economic affairs we find ourselves in.
I would be a hypocrite if I did not express at the same time the equal sympathy due to those in the construction industry. The men and women who surveyed, cleared and graded the land, created the forms and poured the foundations, welded the steel frames and attached the aluminum outer shell. who designed and built the interior framing and installed the electrical, heating and pluming systems, tarred the roof and hung, taped and painted the drywall. Those who fabricated, warehoused and delivered the building materials and anyone else who gave their sweat blood and toil to the construction of those buildings that house the people who work in the automobile industry and who build all of our homes stores a
and offices and by their own hands created the skylines of our towns and cities.
Most of the above mentioned workers and many more are feeling the impact to their ability to earn a living from the economic slowdown we are in. Many find themselves having to put off the purchase or lease a new vehicle given the current economy and I know this directly impacts upon the automobile industry. It is a delicate system our economy, much like in nature if one species is negatively affected it is not isolated to them, it spreads throughout the ecosystem.
New construction is down considerably in the past two years which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of layoffs in our construction industry over the past 12 months. Not headline news somehow but significant news to each of these workers and their families none the less. The impact to each of them and their families is as real and as significant as is for the families dependant on the automobile industry for their food and shelter. If the automobile industry and those it employs are worthy of a financial helping hand from the government, in fact from all of us, so then are the construction workers and anyone else who’s livelihood is or will be impacted. The very same economic changes pressuring the automobile industry to adjust its production to pre boom capacities once again are forcing others employed in the province of Ontario to do the same.
I worked in construction for eighteen years prior to becoming a real estate agent. The Sky Dome, Toronto Airport Terminal 2, Scotia Bank Plaza, Metro Convention Centre and Roy Thompson Hall are a few of the projects I was involved with. About this time every year, a week or two before Christmas a job foreman would call the workers together 
and hand out our pay checks. This was a standard Thursday afternoon routine only you knew that on one of those Thursdays in the few weeks prior to Christmas there was likely a pink slip rendering you unemployed, usually until sometime in March or April. Ask anyone you know within the industry how familiar that sounds. During the recession of the early nineties there were more unemployed than working construction workers in Ontario.
I struggle to see how people working in the automobile industry hold separate status above all skilled workers in Ontario. I do not in any way undervalue what they do, I only point out that what they do and what happens when they are no longer required to do it, is not exclusive to them in this province or anywhere else.
To everyone who gets out of bed and trades a piece of themselves for the food on their table, the roof over their head and the education of their children, union or non union, regardless of your title, I wish you the best of the season and remain hopeful that 2009 will see us moving in the direction of recovery.
Interesting Read: Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life
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