Tim Harper on Caterpillar's Betrayal of Canadian Workers

As it hauls its billions in profits south of the border, Caterpillar executives should make a detour and stop in Ottawa to drop off the money they owe Canadian taxpayers.

Failing that, the Conservative government should be waiting for them at the border demanding the tax break and handout cash looted from the federal treasury.

But since both scenarios are highly fanciful, it is time for an end to the scattershot, no-strings-attached tax breaks being tossed from Stephen Harper’s government to large multinationals that are using it to drive down the standard of living in this country.

And those are just the first three sentences in Tim Harper's excellent and trenchant analysis of the Electro-Motive debacle, which I highly recommend.

Liuna Fails Its Members

The Labourers’ International Union of North America Local 183 seems to be playing right into the hands of neoconservative forces that would like nothing better than to see right-to-work legislation that would make union membership optional.

The problems at the union, which I wrote about previously, escalated into violence yesterday at a meeting in which members demanded answers about John Mandarino, the training centre executive who showed his contempt for the members' dues in a variety of ways, including misappropriating funds.

In addition to physically removing those who wanted full disclosure about the Mandarino debacle, the union executive threatened legal action against the questioners:

Local 183 business manager Jack Oliveira told the meeting that members who asked questions about Mandarino are linked to the union’s previous leadership and are “politically motivated.” Those leaders lost a close, bitter election fight last summer.

“If there is any undermining of this organization, steps will be taken to stop this once and for all. . . . I will bring charges against you,” Oliveira warned.

At a time when union membership is at an all-time low, Liuna Local 183 seems primarily concerned with concealing cronyism and possible corruption, hardly inducements for workers to surrender hard-earned dues to an organization that seems to have lost sight of its very reason for existence.

Martin Regg Cohn On The Wider Implications of the Electro-Motive Debacle

So the first lesson of the London massacre: Ottawa must be vigilant about vetting foreign investment and retaining jobs, but also mindful of valuing — and anchoring — our homegrown intellectual property. Why underwrite our companies if we willingly sell off our embedded brainpower to foreign bidders who leave Canada cash-rich, patent poor and jobless?

That, and the following, essentially sum up an excellent article by Cohn found in today's Star:

Another lesson: When it comes to the economy, empathy isn’t enough. Premier Dalton McGuinty adopted a reflexively tepid tone from the start, expressing the vain hope that both sides would come to their senses. Belatedly last week, he ratcheted up the rhetoric by exhorting the plant’s owners to play fair.

But he never picked up the phone to the employer. Nor did he reach out to Prime Minister Stephen Harper to forge a non-partisan common front. When a company treats its workers like dirt, a premier should leave no stone unturned.

But of course, the one error Cohn makes in his piece is the underlying assumption that either Harper or McGuinty really give a damn about ordinary people in this country. Proof that this is a misguided assumption: our 'leaders'' virtual silence on yet another instance of unfettered capitalism wreaking havoc in this country, and the aiding and abetting role they played.

Educate, Educate, Resist

I have to admit that nowadays I am feeling the pessimism of old strongly reemerging, not to the point of giving up my blog and whatever value it might serve in the fight against the extremists who now control the Canadian government, but to the point where I realize that the battle is lost without the willingness of Canadians, no matter how hard their daily struggles might be, to educate themselves about the issues and keep current with as many facets as possible of the neoliberal agenda being relentlessly advanced by those who pretend to represent us.

To that end, I list the following for your consideration in today's Star:

Caterpillar shutdown: U.S. company bails from London, Ont.’s Electro-Motive Diesel plant

Walkom: Caterpillar closing part of a coordinated attack on unions

Chantal Hébert: Conservative reform plans aimed beyond 2015 election

To be passive, to excuse our lack of activism with a facile dismissal of politics as 'not being interesting,' to continue to narcotize our minds and infantalize ourselves with the latest electronic gadget or reality show diversion is to reject both the rights and the responsibilities of citizenship, and to condemn future generations to a hardscrabble existence.

Thus endeth the sermon.

I'm Back - Nothing's Changed, Just Getting Worse

After a week out of the country with limited access to the Internet and Canadian news, I see things keep getting worse. First thing I read this morning was how the Harper regime faked a Citizenship ceremony staged on Sun TV, the ever-faithful tool (and I mean that in the full sense of the word) of government propaganda. Now that the truth has gotten out, I'm sure the government will find some way to burnish Sun's up-to-now- unblemished reputation for journalistic integrity.

Next comes word that Caterpillar Inc. is closing down its Electro-Motive plant in London because the workers wouldn't accept a 50% reduction in their wages and the gutting of pensions and benefits. Expect the usual suspects to lay the blame on an intransigent union, while those of us who can think will see yet another sad result of Harper and McGuinty's corporate appeasement policies.

And finally for now, despite the fact that Old Age Security is on pretty solid financial footing, Harper and Flaherty, that dynamic duo of despair, show no signs of backing down, despite widespread anger, in their plan to raise the age of entitlement to the pension, regardless of how that will affect countless Canadians.

I keep asking myself when my fellow citizens will finally rouse themselves sufficiently from their apparent inertial indifference and have a strong and unequivocal reaction against this tide of neo-liberalism, a reaction that can't be ignored even by the fascists now in control of our collective fate.

Time For A Brief Break

Regg Cohn's Thoughts on Catterpillar Inc.

I don't have too much time this morning, but I highly recommend Martin Regg Cohn's piece, which offers, amongst other things, a contrast between how long-serving Conservative Ontario Premier Bill Davis treated labour, and the current do-nothing philosophies of Dalton McGuinty and Steven Harper:

The former Tory premier of Ontario wasn’t perfect, but he was always plugged in. He took labour seriously, listened closely to business and wooed foreign investors (remember Renault?). He knew how to leverage the power of the premier’s office to stand up for Ontario’s greater interests.

A phone call to Caterpillar’s corporate braintrust would show that Ontario’s premier is no pushover. If that didn’t work, a phone call to Harper — who is still trying to live down the tax breaks he gave the locomotive factory’s former owners a few years ago — might find a receptive ear.

While his suggestions are unlikely to move either McGuinty or Harper, who much prefer to offer platitudes such as "We urge negotiations to continue," and "This is a matter between private interests," or, as of January 1st, grant a further federal corporate tax reduction of 1.5%, no strings attached, we must, as a province and nation, keep current with such situations and urge action by communicating with our elected representatives.