Well-paid manufacturing jobs are vanishing, report warns

Ottawa, Ont. -The countryís manufacturing slump means Canada is losing tens of thousands of its best and most productive workers, according to a new report by the Toronto-Dominion bank.

The report estimates that Canada lost 130,000 factory jobs in 2007 and
will likely lose more this year as conditions worsen for manufacturers,
particularly in Ontario and Quebec.
"In short, we are losing many of the high-quality, high-productivity
jobs in manufacturing, not just the jobs in low-productivity
industries," Beata Caranci, the bank’s director of forecasting, wrote
in the report.
The report found that 55 per cent of the 212,000 jobs lost in the
sector in the past five years have been unionized, which tend to be
higher paying and more productive.