By Jamie SturgeonNews editor, Humber Et Cetera
12-15-2007
On a frigid but sunny Saturday afternoon in late November, Ed Patersen pulled into the empty parking lot of auto parts-maker Dura in the cottage town of Bracebridge, Ont.
Patersen, a nine-year veteran at the plant and current chairperson of the Canadian Auto Workers Local 61 agreed to meet that day to discuss an unsettling topic to him and many others in town.
On Dec. 31, Bracebridge’s largest employer, Dura Automotive Systems, will permanently close its doors, leaving hundreds of workers without incomes, and a considerable void in the economy of the town of 15,000 roughly two hours north of Toronto.
The decision to close the plant was made in April, six months after the Rochester Hills, Mi.-based company filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States.
"We were just shocked. As soon as they mentioned the plant was closing down, production just went for a slide,” Patersen, 50, says. "I'm going to miss the people."
Times were not always this grim though.
In 2004, production at the plant was booming. Employment was at an all-time high with 535 workers churning out thousands of seating systems — what Patersen calls “sliders” — a week for General Motors and Ford vehicles.
"We were the main place," Patersen (photo right) says of the plant in Bracebridge. "They called us the centre of expertise. We did everything up here."The plant was one of three facilities that made Dura's sliders, with a second located in Illinois and a third in Tennessee. It was also the company's main research and development centre since Dura took it over from competitor Meritor Automotive Canada Inc. five years earlier in 1999, according to Patersen.
Yet by early 2005, a host of challenging economic conditions began to beset not only the automotive industry but most manufacturers in Canada and the U.S.
High energy costs, spurned by surging demand for oil around the world, were beginning to cut into operating expenses in North America. At the same time, the loonie was quickening its ascent against the U.S. dollar, making it even more expensive to produce things in this country.
"When we were at our peak and the loonie was around 75-cents [U.S.], things were great," Patersen says. "When the dollar started escalating, especially in the last six months [with the Canadian dollar reaching parity with the greenback], it got worse and worse.
"They just kept letting contracts run out," he says. "And every time that a contract ran out, there'd be layoffs."
By the middle of 2005, five major North American auto part-makers had filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. It was also at this time that Dura announced it had lost a vital contract with major trading partner Lear Corp.
"We didn't have anything to replace it," Patersen says. "We kind of knew we weren't getting new business in. We were hoping and hoping we'd get some, but it never came."
By October 2006, Dura itself was seeking bankruptcy protection. In Bracebridge, successive waves of layoffs ensued at the plant as business dried up, Patersen says. The final round was completed this October with 40 of the most senior workers being dismissed for good.
Ivar Plavinskis, is one of the more recent layoffs. Plavinskis, 52, is a millwright who has spent the last 13 years as the custodian of the plant's machinery, ensuring the line ran smoothly.
Plavinskis’s home lies on the outskirts of town, where an enormous transport trailer idles on the edge of the lane leading up to his family’s home.
He’s fortunate. His future at least has some certainty, even if it comes at the price of moving across the country.
Plavinskis has found work maintaining a grain elevator in Nampa, Ab., a small town roughly 500 kilometres north of Edmonton. In two days, Plavinskis, with his wife and teenage daughter will set out in the transport for the long drive west.
"I'm disappointed but I'm not devastated that the plant closed," he says. "I'm a journeyman millwright. The term journeyman means, guess what, you go where the work is.
“I’m sad of course, but I’m still looking at this as an adventure.”
Yet Plavinskis says he sympathizes with the scores of workers who do not have the option of finding comparable work, especially longtime ones who have little training beyond the low-level labour required at Dura.
"I feel sorry for the people that went into [the plant] as there very first job and have no other experience in anything," he says. "They've spent the last 25 years working there and their only real skill is the ability to work a production line."For them, it's going to be incredibly difficult to find a job they feel is suitable. And trying to match the money is going to be impossible."
The average pay at Dura, like the majority of manufacturing jobs in Canada, was around $20 an hour. Almost a full dollar higher than the national average, according to the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC).
Yet it’s precisely manufacturing jobs that have been hit hardest from the impact of a high dollar and rising energy prices.The CLC reported in August that Ontario has shed over 160,000 high-wage manufacturing jobs since 2002.
More disconcerting though, is the anticipated doubling of that number over the next two years according to the Canadian Auto Workers.
Like dozens of other communities across the province that have seen once stable jobs disappear over the last few years, a challenging transition confronts many in Bracebridge.
Yet Patersen seems accepting if not welcoming of it. "I have no hard feelings for anyone up in that building," he says of the plant’s management. "I mean, you draw a line in the sand and that's it. You can be upset, but it's the way it is."
It’s a sentiment seemingly shared Dan Brooks, Dura’s vice-president and general manager in Bracebridge. "I'm very sad about the closure," the 52-year-old says in a telephone interview a few days later. "It was a great plant and a great group of people. And I'm extremely proud of how everyone has handled it."
As for the other two facilities south of the border, Patersen says they'll remain open for now, but he "doesn't know for how long, either."
Patersen's fate, he says, is now tied to the emerging resort and cottage industry in Muskoka. He is a bartender at Taboo Resort Golf and Spa, a waterside luxury golf resort where his wife also works as an event coordinator.
He's also mulling over the idea of returning to school at Georgian College in Barrie, where his daughter lives, to study hotel management and administration.
"What we've got here are resorts now," he says. "It's a service economy. If you check the papers, they’re looking for people."
Still, the majority of workers haven’t been as fortunate.
Of the 245 employees who have been laid off in the last year, only 30 have found other full-time work according to statistics released by the town in October.
Despite this, Patersen says there isn't a sense of urgency yet, noting the sparse use of the employment centre set up in town by the provincial government in the wake of the impending closure.
Severance pay, he says, is helping to soften the blow at present. "Right now there's not a lot of panic.”
"In six months to a year though," Plavinskis cuts in, "it's going to be a different story."
