Showing posts with label CAW. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CAW. Show all posts
Friday, June 1, 2012
Ottawa GM plant to close with loss of up to 2,000 jobs
Chris Buckley who is president of the local CAW (Canadian Auto Workers) union said: “This is absolutely sickening,” Actually the closing has been in the works for five years. The required notice of 12 months was given by GM which will be closing the plant next June.
Although the older consolidated plant will be closing the newer nearby flex plant is expected to remain open. The plant that is closing produces the Impala and Equinox. Some Impala production will be transferred to the flex plant saving perhaps 500 jobs. But the increased production is not confirmed as yet.
The Equinox's will be built at a now closed Saturn plant in Spring Hill Tenn. GM is re-opening the plant because the UAW has agreed that the company can hire a large number of workers at wages of about 14 dollars an hour less than half what Canadian workers are paid. So the U.S. union is in effect undercutting their fellow workers in a race to the bottom after having already given up all kinds of benefits before and during the restructuring of GM.
The Canadian union has not agreed to these types of cuts. Chris Buckley noted that if the union agreed to these cuts it would soon be asked to meet the 6 dollar an hour wage of Mexican GM workers. Of course that wage would violate minimum wage laws! For much more see this CBC article or the Globe and Mail here.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Sam Gindin: Understanding and Fighting Against Austerity
The linked video is the first half of a session sponsored by the GWTA (Greater Toronto Worker's Association) recently on austerity. Sam Gindin is a former research director for the Canadian Auto Workers. He retired from the CAW in 2000 and now teaches at York University.
The sessions discusses some of the causes of the current financial crisis and how the crisis works to impose all sorts of belt tightening measures upon workers. He also takes up the forms of resistance that are growing throughout the world.
Here are a few of his points in summary form. Gindin points out that measures to weaken unions and the power of workers began back in the 1980's when neo-liberal policies began to be introduced. Globalization and the demands for competitiveness helped decrease the power of workers in advanced capitalist countries. Certainly that process continues today.
Gindin also mentions that there is now a demand to lower expectations. Capitalist critics argue that the entitlements of workers especially unionized workers are a cause of the debt crisis crushing some countries. Good pensions plans and high wages are no longer affordable.Gindin speaks of democracy becoming thinner as policies are more and more determined by the needs of the system and the one per cent.
What is happening in Greece and Italy in response to the crisis are good examples of the point Gindin makes. Politicians are replaced by technocrats often linked with the European financial system. An attempt to let the Greek people have a referendum on austerity measures is met with dismay and in effect blocked. For much more see the video.
The sessions discusses some of the causes of the current financial crisis and how the crisis works to impose all sorts of belt tightening measures upon workers. He also takes up the forms of resistance that are growing throughout the world.
Here are a few of his points in summary form. Gindin points out that measures to weaken unions and the power of workers began back in the 1980's when neo-liberal policies began to be introduced. Globalization and the demands for competitiveness helped decrease the power of workers in advanced capitalist countries. Certainly that process continues today.
Gindin also mentions that there is now a demand to lower expectations. Capitalist critics argue that the entitlements of workers especially unionized workers are a cause of the debt crisis crushing some countries. Good pensions plans and high wages are no longer affordable.Gindin speaks of democracy becoming thinner as policies are more and more determined by the needs of the system and the one per cent.
What is happening in Greece and Italy in response to the crisis are good examples of the point Gindin makes. Politicians are replaced by technocrats often linked with the European financial system. An attempt to let the Greek people have a referendum on austerity measures is met with dismay and in effect blocked. For much more see the video.
Monday, May 11, 2009
CAW: GM bankruptcy likely.
What is clear from the article is that the Canadian government has allowed GM not to adequately fund their pension plan so that the pensioners would still be OK even when the company was not. At least it is good to know that courts have so far never touched pension benefits but that does not solve the problem of how they are to be financed!
GM bankruptcy likely: CAW TheStar.com - Business - GM bankruptcy likely: CAW
Ottawa, Queen's Park order union to slash costs or aid will be denied and GM will face liquidation
May 08, 2009 Tony Van AlphenBusiness Reporter
General Motors will probably seek bankruptcy court protection in Canada and the U.S. in its fight for survival, a top union leader warns.
Ken Lewenza, president of the Canadian Auto Workers union, said yesterday the company's worsening financial condition is increasing the likelihood of court protection from creditors in both countries.
"It is very clear General Motors is in serious trouble," he said.
His remarks came after parent GM Corp. reported it lost $6 billion (U.S.), the equivalent of $7 billion Canadian, in the first quarter, as revenues tumbled 47 per cent due to consumers' fears that the company could collapse and stop honouring warranties. GM, which doesn't break out the financial performance of its Canadian arm, has lost $82 billion since 2004.
Lewenza said the federal and Ontario governments have issued an ultimatum to the union that if it doesn't agree to significant concessions within the next week, they won't provide billions of dollars in crucial public aid and the company will face liquidation.
"If we don't get a deal, the governments will provide no financing and GM Canada will be liquidated," he said. "Plants will close, jobs will be gone, retiree benefits are gone and the pensions are sacrificed. This is an unbelievable situation."
GM must submit new restructuring plans to Ottawa and the province by June 1 to qualify for more than $8 billion (Canadian). It has already received $500 million.
That sets up the prospect of more than 9,000 GM workers voting on concessions for the third time in a year to help offset the company's plummeting fortunes.
Lewenza noted that if GM moves to bankruptcy court proceedings, the union will gain assurances that workers won't face additional concessions beyond the cuts from bargaining during the next week.
The latest negotiations at GM follow a recent concession deal at Chrysler that saw workers vote overwhelmingly to accept about $240 million in labour cost savings annually to save plants and jobs.
That hasn't led to much stability at Chrysler, which filed for bankruptcy court protection in the U.S., despite deals with workers and most stakeholders.
That triggered a halt in production at almost all of the company's North American operations, including two assembly plants in Canada.
Meanwhile, CAW leaders expressed frustration at government demands for both sides to deal with a massive deficit of more than $4 billion in GM's pension plan and the formation of a retiree health-care trust during the negotiations. Talks will start Sunday or Monday.
"It's absolutely impossible that we can do this at the bargaining table," Lewenza said.
CAW officials repeated that the Ontario government needs to accept responsibility for allowing GM to not properly fund the pension plan and said Ottawa must make tax changes so a health-care trust can work.
They also said it is difficult to compete on labour costs with Toyota Canada when the governments include pension expenses. Toyota has few pensioners; Chrysler has a ratio of 1.5 retirees for every active worker, while GM will have a five-to-one ratio within the next year.
"We can become fully competitive if we threw 25,000 (GM) retirees overboard," union economist Jim Stanford said. "Is that what the government wants when it tells us to equalize our costs?"
Lewenza added he finds it incredible that the governments want more concessions at GM when the company has already indicated it is satisfied with cuts that will make it competitive with rivals in the U.S.
But Michael Bryant, Ontario's minister of economic development and trade, eased retirees' concerns by saying the cost cuts won't affect retiree pensions, even in bankruptcy court proceedings.
"No Canadian judge has ever touched a retiree's pension in the history of CCAA (the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act)," he said.
In Ottawa, NDP MP Malcolm Allen (Welland) accused Industry Minister Tony Clement of asking auto workers to sacrifice more than other stakeholders.
Clement replied in the House of Commons that everyone must co-operate in the restructuring.
"What will not work is if the union heads do not want to be part of the solution," Clement added. "Then the choice of the workers is to have a job that is cost-competitive or to have no job at all."
With files from Les Whittington and Madhavi Acharya-Tom Yew
GM bankruptcy likely: CAW TheStar.com - Business - GM bankruptcy likely: CAW
Ottawa, Queen's Park order union to slash costs or aid will be denied and GM will face liquidation
May 08, 2009 Tony Van AlphenBusiness Reporter
General Motors will probably seek bankruptcy court protection in Canada and the U.S. in its fight for survival, a top union leader warns.
Ken Lewenza, president of the Canadian Auto Workers union, said yesterday the company's worsening financial condition is increasing the likelihood of court protection from creditors in both countries.
"It is very clear General Motors is in serious trouble," he said.
His remarks came after parent GM Corp. reported it lost $6 billion (U.S.), the equivalent of $7 billion Canadian, in the first quarter, as revenues tumbled 47 per cent due to consumers' fears that the company could collapse and stop honouring warranties. GM, which doesn't break out the financial performance of its Canadian arm, has lost $82 billion since 2004.
Lewenza said the federal and Ontario governments have issued an ultimatum to the union that if it doesn't agree to significant concessions within the next week, they won't provide billions of dollars in crucial public aid and the company will face liquidation.
"If we don't get a deal, the governments will provide no financing and GM Canada will be liquidated," he said. "Plants will close, jobs will be gone, retiree benefits are gone and the pensions are sacrificed. This is an unbelievable situation."
GM must submit new restructuring plans to Ottawa and the province by June 1 to qualify for more than $8 billion (Canadian). It has already received $500 million.
That sets up the prospect of more than 9,000 GM workers voting on concessions for the third time in a year to help offset the company's plummeting fortunes.
Lewenza noted that if GM moves to bankruptcy court proceedings, the union will gain assurances that workers won't face additional concessions beyond the cuts from bargaining during the next week.
The latest negotiations at GM follow a recent concession deal at Chrysler that saw workers vote overwhelmingly to accept about $240 million in labour cost savings annually to save plants and jobs.
That hasn't led to much stability at Chrysler, which filed for bankruptcy court protection in the U.S., despite deals with workers and most stakeholders.
That triggered a halt in production at almost all of the company's North American operations, including two assembly plants in Canada.
Meanwhile, CAW leaders expressed frustration at government demands for both sides to deal with a massive deficit of more than $4 billion in GM's pension plan and the formation of a retiree health-care trust during the negotiations. Talks will start Sunday or Monday.
"It's absolutely impossible that we can do this at the bargaining table," Lewenza said.
CAW officials repeated that the Ontario government needs to accept responsibility for allowing GM to not properly fund the pension plan and said Ottawa must make tax changes so a health-care trust can work.
They also said it is difficult to compete on labour costs with Toyota Canada when the governments include pension expenses. Toyota has few pensioners; Chrysler has a ratio of 1.5 retirees for every active worker, while GM will have a five-to-one ratio within the next year.
"We can become fully competitive if we threw 25,000 (GM) retirees overboard," union economist Jim Stanford said. "Is that what the government wants when it tells us to equalize our costs?"
Lewenza added he finds it incredible that the governments want more concessions at GM when the company has already indicated it is satisfied with cuts that will make it competitive with rivals in the U.S.
But Michael Bryant, Ontario's minister of economic development and trade, eased retirees' concerns by saying the cost cuts won't affect retiree pensions, even in bankruptcy court proceedings.
"No Canadian judge has ever touched a retiree's pension in the history of CCAA (the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act)," he said.
In Ottawa, NDP MP Malcolm Allen (Welland) accused Industry Minister Tony Clement of asking auto workers to sacrifice more than other stakeholders.
Clement replied in the House of Commons that everyone must co-operate in the restructuring.
"What will not work is if the union heads do not want to be part of the solution," Clement added. "Then the choice of the workers is to have a job that is cost-competitive or to have no job at all."
With files from Les Whittington and Madhavi Acharya-Tom Yew
Monday, October 8, 2007
CAW predicts 8 billion dollar auto trade deficit
With the Canadian dollar high against not only in terms of the US dollar but other currencies as well we cannot hope to have a plus balance in trade in auto parts or autos. Companies will buy parts where they are cheaper and now relatively speaking we have lost our edge even with respect to US purchases because of our high dollar.
As long as our dollar remains high it is unlikely that the deficit will go down. It may increase even more.
Stanford for some reason does not talk of encouraging more manufacturing by Asian car makers in Canada. Perhaps this is because so far--at least last I heard--the CAW has been unsuccessful in unionising either Honda or Toyota plants in Canada. The union just doesn't seem to be able to convince workers they would be that much better off with being unionised. I gather that Honda is unionised in Japan. I don't know about Toyota.
CAW predicts $8 billion auto trade deficit
Last Updated: Monday, October 8, 2007 | 8:55 AM ET
The Canadian Press
Canada will record the largest automotive trade deficit in its history this year, according to a report from the Canadian Auto Workers union, which is urging Ottawa to reconsider the direction of its economic and trade policy.
In a report released Monday, CAW economist Jim Stanford said the deficit — where more vehicles and parts are coming into the country than are exported — is expected to be about $8 billion for 2007, the largest single-year drop to date.
"Not only is Canada's automotive trade performance now the worst-ever; it is still deteriorating at a record rate," Stanford said in the report titled "Canada's Deteriorating Automotive Trade Performance."
The report, which uses Statistics Canada data reported on an Industry Canada website, predicts a year-end surplus in finished vehicle trade of under $14 billion, offset by a deficit in parts of close to $22 billion.
The previous largest automotive trade deficit was $3 billion incurred in 1979, Stanford said, adding that was during the height of the post-OPEC surge in sales of small imported vehicles after gasoline prices soared in the wake of record world oil prices after the Iranian revolution.
The report said 1999 was the best year for Canada's auto sector, with a trade surplus of almost $15 billion.
"Instead of being a net supplier of high-quality automotive products to the global economy, Canada is now a major net importer of automotive products," Stanford said.
"This trade deficit inevitably translates into a loss of jobs in domestic automotive production (since fewer jobs are supported by exports, and more jobs are displaced by imports)."
The CAW report is part of the union's campaign to lobby the federal government for more aggressive auto trade policy, in the hopes of getting more Canadian-made vehicles and parts into Asian and European markets by breaking down trade barriers in those parts of the world. The union is pressing Ottawa to demand more auto trade concessions in its general trade talks with South Korea, which resume in Ottawa this week.
The study also comes as the Big Three North American carmakers — General Motors, Ford and Chrysler — continue to lose market share to their Japanese and Korean rivals and pare thousands of jobs to streamline production in Canada and the United States. General Motors recently announced the end of a third assembly line operation at its main plant in Oshawa, cutting 1,200 jobs, adding to thousands of jobs cut in the last two years by Ford and Chrysler.
At the same time, however, Toyota and Honda are adding jobs and production in Ontario as they increase their sales in North America and expand plants in central and Southwestern Ontario.
In the CAW report, Stanford noted that loss of jobs has battered the Canadian industry, with more than 10,000 auto assembly jobs lost since 1999, and more than 10,000 auto parts jobs eliminated since 2001.
Stanford said nearly 90 per cent of the deficit is due to five large bilateral deficits with Japan, Mexico, Germany, Korea and China.
While Canada's automotive trade deficit with Japan is the largest, exceeding $6 billion, the most unbalanced relationship is with Korea. The report says Canada buys 183 times as much automotive value as it sells in Korea.
Canada's automotive trade deficit with China, due mostly to imports of auto parts, will reach almost $1 billion this year.
As a result, the CAW is calling on the federal government to stop trade negotiations with Korea.
"Future trade talks must be integrated with a broader strategy to support auto and other high-value Canadian industries, and must feature focused measures to ensure that our automotive imports are matched by equivalent automotive exports," Stanford said, adding that the next round of negotiations begin in Ottawa on Tuesday.
"This is the wrong time for our own government to expose this still-crucial export industry to even more damage from low-cost, one-sided imports."
The report cites Industry Canada studies indicating that a Canada-Korea trade agreement will spur an increase in Canadian vehicle imports from Korea by 18,000-33,000 units per year.
As long as our dollar remains high it is unlikely that the deficit will go down. It may increase even more.
Stanford for some reason does not talk of encouraging more manufacturing by Asian car makers in Canada. Perhaps this is because so far--at least last I heard--the CAW has been unsuccessful in unionising either Honda or Toyota plants in Canada. The union just doesn't seem to be able to convince workers they would be that much better off with being unionised. I gather that Honda is unionised in Japan. I don't know about Toyota.
CAW predicts $8 billion auto trade deficit
Last Updated: Monday, October 8, 2007 | 8:55 AM ET
The Canadian Press
Canada will record the largest automotive trade deficit in its history this year, according to a report from the Canadian Auto Workers union, which is urging Ottawa to reconsider the direction of its economic and trade policy.
In a report released Monday, CAW economist Jim Stanford said the deficit — where more vehicles and parts are coming into the country than are exported — is expected to be about $8 billion for 2007, the largest single-year drop to date.
"Not only is Canada's automotive trade performance now the worst-ever; it is still deteriorating at a record rate," Stanford said in the report titled "Canada's Deteriorating Automotive Trade Performance."
The report, which uses Statistics Canada data reported on an Industry Canada website, predicts a year-end surplus in finished vehicle trade of under $14 billion, offset by a deficit in parts of close to $22 billion.
The previous largest automotive trade deficit was $3 billion incurred in 1979, Stanford said, adding that was during the height of the post-OPEC surge in sales of small imported vehicles after gasoline prices soared in the wake of record world oil prices after the Iranian revolution.
The report said 1999 was the best year for Canada's auto sector, with a trade surplus of almost $15 billion.
"Instead of being a net supplier of high-quality automotive products to the global economy, Canada is now a major net importer of automotive products," Stanford said.
"This trade deficit inevitably translates into a loss of jobs in domestic automotive production (since fewer jobs are supported by exports, and more jobs are displaced by imports)."
The CAW report is part of the union's campaign to lobby the federal government for more aggressive auto trade policy, in the hopes of getting more Canadian-made vehicles and parts into Asian and European markets by breaking down trade barriers in those parts of the world. The union is pressing Ottawa to demand more auto trade concessions in its general trade talks with South Korea, which resume in Ottawa this week.
The study also comes as the Big Three North American carmakers — General Motors, Ford and Chrysler — continue to lose market share to their Japanese and Korean rivals and pare thousands of jobs to streamline production in Canada and the United States. General Motors recently announced the end of a third assembly line operation at its main plant in Oshawa, cutting 1,200 jobs, adding to thousands of jobs cut in the last two years by Ford and Chrysler.
At the same time, however, Toyota and Honda are adding jobs and production in Ontario as they increase their sales in North America and expand plants in central and Southwestern Ontario.
In the CAW report, Stanford noted that loss of jobs has battered the Canadian industry, with more than 10,000 auto assembly jobs lost since 1999, and more than 10,000 auto parts jobs eliminated since 2001.
Stanford said nearly 90 per cent of the deficit is due to five large bilateral deficits with Japan, Mexico, Germany, Korea and China.
While Canada's automotive trade deficit with Japan is the largest, exceeding $6 billion, the most unbalanced relationship is with Korea. The report says Canada buys 183 times as much automotive value as it sells in Korea.
Canada's automotive trade deficit with China, due mostly to imports of auto parts, will reach almost $1 billion this year.
As a result, the CAW is calling on the federal government to stop trade negotiations with Korea.
"Future trade talks must be integrated with a broader strategy to support auto and other high-value Canadian industries, and must feature focused measures to ensure that our automotive imports are matched by equivalent automotive exports," Stanford said, adding that the next round of negotiations begin in Ottawa on Tuesday.
"This is the wrong time for our own government to expose this still-crucial export industry to even more damage from low-cost, one-sided imports."
The report cites Industry Canada studies indicating that a Canada-Korea trade agreement will spur an increase in Canadian vehicle imports from Korea by 18,000-33,000 units per year.
Monday, July 23, 2007
VIA reaches tentative agreement. BC unions on strike
With tough negotiations but good faith bargaining can work. However, in Vancouver the city workers are on strike. It really seems as if the city wants to break the power of the unions. The strike will come in the midst of a busy tourist season. Preparations a being made to deal with the effects.Meanwhile forestry workers are also on strike.
Via Rail reaches tentative deal with CAW
Last Updated: Saturday, July 21, 2007 | 9:39 AM ET
The Canadian Press
Via Rail and its major union announced early Saturday that they have managed to avert a strike.
The passenger railway and the Canadian Auto Workers union said they reached a tentative agreement ahead of Sunday's midnight strike deadline.
Via spokesman Malcom Andrews said the three-year deal covers such issues as wages, benefits, work conditions and work rules.
"The negotiations were pretty close to around the clock for several days in succession,'' he said, adding both Via and CAW representatives "worked very hard, worked really professionally and really hammered things out.''
Paul Côté, Via's CEO and president, said in a statement that the settlement is good news for Canadian rail passengers.
"Via is very pleased with the outcome of negotiations. We believe that the settlement is good for our employees, and that it will assure the stability of our operations for the next three years,'' he said in the statement.
Continue Article
The railway and the union will not release any details of the deal until it's ratified. Union leaders will be in Montreal on Monday to begin reviewing the deal.
However, the union said in a statement that it believes "this is an excellent agreement," and said it "unanimously recommends the ratification of this agreement.''
The CAW represents 2,600 Via Rail workers across Canada, including those who supply on-board services, ticket agents and skilled trades workers.
The company and the union had disagreed on wages and benefits.
The union had been without a collective agreement since it expired in December 2006. The two parties have been negotiating with the help of two federal conciliators for several weeks.
Via Rail reaches tentative deal with CAW
Last Updated: Saturday, July 21, 2007 | 9:39 AM ET
The Canadian Press
Via Rail and its major union announced early Saturday that they have managed to avert a strike.
The passenger railway and the Canadian Auto Workers union said they reached a tentative agreement ahead of Sunday's midnight strike deadline.
Via spokesman Malcom Andrews said the three-year deal covers such issues as wages, benefits, work conditions and work rules.
"The negotiations were pretty close to around the clock for several days in succession,'' he said, adding both Via and CAW representatives "worked very hard, worked really professionally and really hammered things out.''
Paul Côté, Via's CEO and president, said in a statement that the settlement is good news for Canadian rail passengers.
"Via is very pleased with the outcome of negotiations. We believe that the settlement is good for our employees, and that it will assure the stability of our operations for the next three years,'' he said in the statement.
Continue Article
The railway and the union will not release any details of the deal until it's ratified. Union leaders will be in Montreal on Monday to begin reviewing the deal.
However, the union said in a statement that it believes "this is an excellent agreement," and said it "unanimously recommends the ratification of this agreement.''
The CAW represents 2,600 Via Rail workers across Canada, including those who supply on-board services, ticket agents and skilled trades workers.
The company and the union had disagreed on wages and benefits.
The union had been without a collective agreement since it expired in December 2006. The two parties have been negotiating with the help of two federal conciliators for several weeks.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Hargrove Fetes Ontario Liberal Premier
Hargrove obviously has no real commitment to the NDP. He sees it only as a vehicle to promote his specific union issues. Given the Liberal record as portrayed in the article and given the way in which he has caved in to corporate demands he is feted by the Liberals and even corporate leaders. He is the ideal leader for the times. He is the TINA (there is no alternative) position union leader of the year!
World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
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Canadian Auto Workers bureaucrats fete Ontario’s Liberal Premier
By Carl Bronski
1 May 2007
In yet another example of the inexorable shift to the right of the Canadian Auto Workers union bureaucracy, CAW President Buzz Hargrove ushered Ontario Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty onto the podium of a CAW National Council meeting in Port Elgin, Ontario, April 13.
“I believe this (Liberal provincial) government has done an incredible job for people,” gushed Hargrove. McGuinty’s appearance marked the first time in the CAW’s history that an Ontario premier had been invited to address the CAW leadership. Hargrove went on to tell the 800 delegates assembled at the union’s Lake Huron retreat that he was “absolutely thrilled” to introduce McGuinty, whom he characterized as a “champion” of the automobile industry.
Ontario’s Liberal premier returned the compliments. “The CAW,” he affirmed, “has always been a force for good across Canada and we are rolling in the same direction.”
Hargrove’s embrace of McGuinty is the CAW bureaucracy’s response to an unprecedented crisis in the auto industry that threatens the jobs, wages and pensions of tens of thousands of current and former auto workers. It is the political corollary to the union’s imposition of a new round of concessions at various Big Three plants and its agitation for protectionist measures to defend “Canadian jobs” at the expense of workers in other countries.
The feting of McGuinty is the latest in a series of steps that the leadership of the CAW, the country’s largest industrial union, has taken to forge closer ties with the Ontario Liberals and their sister party and the Canadian bourgeoisie’s traditional national party of government, the federal Liberals.
In the 1999 Ontario election, Hargrove and the CAW called for a “strategic vote” for the Ontario Liberals in select ridings, in the name of defeating the provincial Tory government of Mike Harris, a position effectively endorsed by the leader of Ontario’s social democratic party, the New Democratic Party or NDP. Continuing the same tack, Hargrove declared in 2003 during the election campaign that ultimately brought McGuinty and his Liberals to power, “People know how to bring about a change in government and you don’t do that by voting for someone who doesn’t have a prayer of winning. We are looking at information riding by riding, to see where there are opportunities to knock off a Tory.”
With Hargrove’s full support the NDP sustained a federal Liberal government headed by Paul Martin, who previously had imposed the greatest social spending and tax cuts in Canadian history, in office for six months in 2005. But Hargrove ran afoul of the NDP leadership when he publicly stumped for Paul Martin and Belinda Stronach, daughter of the boss and principal owner of Magna International, and had his union explicitly call for the reelection of a minority Liberal government in the January 2006 federal election.
Hargrove responded to a subsequent NDP decision to expel him for having endorsed a rival political party by successfully pressing for the CAW and its locals to disaffiliate from the NDP. This ruptured a decades-long relationship between the CAW and Canada’s social democrats. The latter, it should be added, were not too upset to see the severing of the NDP-CAW tie, since they, in response to pressure from big business and the corporate media, have been anxious to refute allegations that they are organizationally and financially dependent on the unions.
In keeping with the CAW’s orientation to the Liberals, last month’s CAW Council meeting endorsed “strategic voting”—that is supporting the election of Liberal governments—in both this October’s Ontario election and the next federal election, so as to prevent Conservative victories. “We need strategic voting to ensure we don’t have a majority Conservative government,” affirmed Hargrove.
But the CAW, or at least its president, does not rule out supporting select Conservatives. After McGuinty’s unprecedented appearance before the CAW leadership, Hargrove told the press that he fully expects to have union members working for all three national parties, including the Conservatives, but only “a small amount for the Tories.”
The Ontario Liberal’s right-wing record
While Hargrove and the CAW bureaucrats laud the McGuinty Liberals, under Liberal rule workers in Canada’s most populous province have continued to see their living standards eroded, social services slashed, and jobs lost.
On coming to power in 2003 McGuinty announced, in the tried and true manner of incoming governments, that because the deficit was larger than the ruling Tories had admitted, Liberal election promises were no longer applicable.
Refusing to roll back the all-out legislative assault on working people undertaken by the previous Conservative governments of Mike Harris and Ernie Eves, McGuinty upped the ante even further by imposing a $900 per person healthcare “premium” that has a disproportionate impact on working people and the poor.
Making further inroads into the province’s public healthcare system, McGuinty removed restrictions on private healthcare facilities and ended provincial funding for eye exams, physiotherapy and chiropractic services. His government also reneged on other election promises, removing the cap on hydro electricity rates and refusing to end the Tories vicious clawback of Child Benefit Supplements to the poor that takes $2,700 per year out of the wallets of single mothers on welfare.
A social advocacy group recently issued a report harshly criticizing the McGuinty Liberals for failing to address the plight of the poor in Ontario. According to the Interfaith Social Assistance Reform Coalition (ISARC) the poor in the province are worse off now than they were when the Liberals took office. And while the government has made very public certain changes it has introduced, such as a meager raise in the minimum wage to $8 an hour and a 5 percent increase in welfare rates, the report points out that these measures hardly make up for the erosion in their real value due to rate freezes of a decade or longer. The report also cites the fact that construction has begun on only 6,724 of a promised 20,000 affordable housing units.
Of course none of this is news to Hargrove and the CAW leadership. Why then is Hargrove so enamored of the McGuinty Liberal government? Because it has faithfully upheld the interests of the Big Three, funneling hundreds of millions of dollars in government subsidies into the coffers of Ford, General Motors, and DaimlerChrysler, opposing the federal Conservative government’s plans to reach a free-trade pact with South Korea, and lobbying for new regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions to be tailored for the auto industry.
The CAW and the assault on jobs and wages
No less damning is the CAW bureaucracy’s response to the massive restructuring now taking place in the North American auto industry.
In March Hargrove and the CAW leadership exhorted workers at the DaimlerChrysler assembly plant in Brampton, just northwest of Toronto, to agree to a significant package of concessions that they had strongly voted down in a February plant-wide vote. Riding roughshod over its own constitution that restricts re-votes on matters duly settled, Hargrove and his assistant Bob Chernecki made it clear to the membership that they must vote to accept $5,000 in annual givebacks through the elimination of shift premiums, the intensification of work practices, and the contracting out of union janitorial jobs or accept the consequences. Should they reject the concessions, Chrysler would move auto production out of Brampton without opposition from the union bureaucracy. “It’s just a matter of smart bargaining,” explained Chernecki.
After a heated meeting in which denunciations of the leadership were hurled from the floor, the autoworkers, bitterly noting their total abandonment, ratified the concessions. “A lot of us voted ‘no’ to speak out against the unfolding mistrust with our union,” said Dan Ciurlia, a 27-year plant veteran. “We understand the big threat of globalism. We understand that our jobs can go away. People are scared. But we are being told to make decisions with really no information and very quickly. The workers want to know if the union leadership is truly going to stand up for us.”
A grateful DaimlerChrysler summed up the role played by the union in forcing through the concessions package. “We could not have moved forward without the CAW,” said company spokesperson Dave Elshoff.
When Chrysler announced cuts of over 2,000 jobs in Windsor, Brampton and West Toronto earlier this year Hargrove characterized the attack on his membership as “a real disaster,” but refused to fight the cuts, advising those members on the chopping block to “take whatever package they could get.” And last fall when Ford announced a 21 percent production cut and plans to shut nine plants in North America over the next two years, including an engine factory in Windsor, Ontario, the CAW president called it a “mixed result,” since the job cuts fell disproportionately on US workers.
The CAW leadership, with the support of various middle class radical groups, presented the breakaway from the UAW in 1985-86 as a rebellion against the right-wing leadership of the International. In reality it was a bureaucratic manoeuvre aimed at derailing an incipient rank-and-file challenge to wage cuts and plant closures and at facilitating closer collaboration between the union bureaucracy and auto bosses on both sides of the border.
For years, the CAW bureaucracy has sought to impress upon the auto bosses the importance of the so-called “Canadian advantage”—i.e., the fact that their labor costs are significantly lower at their Canadian than at their US operations, due to the differential in the value of the Canadian and US dollars and Canada’s state-funded public health insurance scheme, Medicare— “the gift that keeps on giving,” according to one Wall Street financial analyst.
But under pressure to take action to prevent major job losses and fearing the erosion of their dues bases, the CAW bureaucrats are becoming ever more blatant in their appeals to the Big Three to recognize that they are the provisioners of cheap labor.
During the 2002 round of collective bargaining, Hargrove lobbied the Wall Street and Bay Street financial houses to pressure the automakers to concentrate their job cuts in the US. During a conference call with J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Hargrove opined: “The real challenge for all of us if we want to make money is to try to demand that the companies pay more attention to those countries or those communities where the obvious quality, productivity, cost and profitability numbers are there.”
The response of the CAW bureaucracy to the current financial crisis of the Big Three has been to deepen its longstanding corporatist relationship with the auto bosses and the big business Liberals. In the name of a “national auto strategy,” the CAW lobbies the federal and Ontario governments to make further tax concessions and outright grants to the Big Three to assist them in competing against Toyota, Honda and other foreign-based automakers. Meanwhile it works to pit North American workers against each other in a fratricidal struggle over jobs, actively campaigning for the Big Three to close US and Mexican facilities in preference to those in Canada, while urging Ottawa to adopt aggressive trade war measures against Asian automakers.
Hargrove has already indicated that in the scramble among billionaire investors to seize control of DaimlerChrysler, so as to squeeze out new profits through massive jobs and wage and benefit cuts, he is considering throwing the CAW’s support behind a bid being prepared by the Canadian Magna boss Frank Stronach, who for years the CAW reviled for his aggressive antiunion tactics.
The most far-reaching conclusions must be drawn from the dead end into which workers have been driven by the CAW labor bureaucracy. The defense of jobs, working conditions and living standards can be taken forward only through the building of an independent political movement of the working class based on the struggle to unite workers internationally and reorganize economic life along democratic and egalitarian—that is, socialist—principles.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 1998-2007
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved
World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
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Canadian Auto Workers bureaucrats fete Ontario’s Liberal Premier
By Carl Bronski
1 May 2007
In yet another example of the inexorable shift to the right of the Canadian Auto Workers union bureaucracy, CAW President Buzz Hargrove ushered Ontario Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty onto the podium of a CAW National Council meeting in Port Elgin, Ontario, April 13.
“I believe this (Liberal provincial) government has done an incredible job for people,” gushed Hargrove. McGuinty’s appearance marked the first time in the CAW’s history that an Ontario premier had been invited to address the CAW leadership. Hargrove went on to tell the 800 delegates assembled at the union’s Lake Huron retreat that he was “absolutely thrilled” to introduce McGuinty, whom he characterized as a “champion” of the automobile industry.
Ontario’s Liberal premier returned the compliments. “The CAW,” he affirmed, “has always been a force for good across Canada and we are rolling in the same direction.”
Hargrove’s embrace of McGuinty is the CAW bureaucracy’s response to an unprecedented crisis in the auto industry that threatens the jobs, wages and pensions of tens of thousands of current and former auto workers. It is the political corollary to the union’s imposition of a new round of concessions at various Big Three plants and its agitation for protectionist measures to defend “Canadian jobs” at the expense of workers in other countries.
The feting of McGuinty is the latest in a series of steps that the leadership of the CAW, the country’s largest industrial union, has taken to forge closer ties with the Ontario Liberals and their sister party and the Canadian bourgeoisie’s traditional national party of government, the federal Liberals.
In the 1999 Ontario election, Hargrove and the CAW called for a “strategic vote” for the Ontario Liberals in select ridings, in the name of defeating the provincial Tory government of Mike Harris, a position effectively endorsed by the leader of Ontario’s social democratic party, the New Democratic Party or NDP. Continuing the same tack, Hargrove declared in 2003 during the election campaign that ultimately brought McGuinty and his Liberals to power, “People know how to bring about a change in government and you don’t do that by voting for someone who doesn’t have a prayer of winning. We are looking at information riding by riding, to see where there are opportunities to knock off a Tory.”
With Hargrove’s full support the NDP sustained a federal Liberal government headed by Paul Martin, who previously had imposed the greatest social spending and tax cuts in Canadian history, in office for six months in 2005. But Hargrove ran afoul of the NDP leadership when he publicly stumped for Paul Martin and Belinda Stronach, daughter of the boss and principal owner of Magna International, and had his union explicitly call for the reelection of a minority Liberal government in the January 2006 federal election.
Hargrove responded to a subsequent NDP decision to expel him for having endorsed a rival political party by successfully pressing for the CAW and its locals to disaffiliate from the NDP. This ruptured a decades-long relationship between the CAW and Canada’s social democrats. The latter, it should be added, were not too upset to see the severing of the NDP-CAW tie, since they, in response to pressure from big business and the corporate media, have been anxious to refute allegations that they are organizationally and financially dependent on the unions.
In keeping with the CAW’s orientation to the Liberals, last month’s CAW Council meeting endorsed “strategic voting”—that is supporting the election of Liberal governments—in both this October’s Ontario election and the next federal election, so as to prevent Conservative victories. “We need strategic voting to ensure we don’t have a majority Conservative government,” affirmed Hargrove.
But the CAW, or at least its president, does not rule out supporting select Conservatives. After McGuinty’s unprecedented appearance before the CAW leadership, Hargrove told the press that he fully expects to have union members working for all three national parties, including the Conservatives, but only “a small amount for the Tories.”
The Ontario Liberal’s right-wing record
While Hargrove and the CAW bureaucrats laud the McGuinty Liberals, under Liberal rule workers in Canada’s most populous province have continued to see their living standards eroded, social services slashed, and jobs lost.
On coming to power in 2003 McGuinty announced, in the tried and true manner of incoming governments, that because the deficit was larger than the ruling Tories had admitted, Liberal election promises were no longer applicable.
Refusing to roll back the all-out legislative assault on working people undertaken by the previous Conservative governments of Mike Harris and Ernie Eves, McGuinty upped the ante even further by imposing a $900 per person healthcare “premium” that has a disproportionate impact on working people and the poor.
Making further inroads into the province’s public healthcare system, McGuinty removed restrictions on private healthcare facilities and ended provincial funding for eye exams, physiotherapy and chiropractic services. His government also reneged on other election promises, removing the cap on hydro electricity rates and refusing to end the Tories vicious clawback of Child Benefit Supplements to the poor that takes $2,700 per year out of the wallets of single mothers on welfare.
A social advocacy group recently issued a report harshly criticizing the McGuinty Liberals for failing to address the plight of the poor in Ontario. According to the Interfaith Social Assistance Reform Coalition (ISARC) the poor in the province are worse off now than they were when the Liberals took office. And while the government has made very public certain changes it has introduced, such as a meager raise in the minimum wage to $8 an hour and a 5 percent increase in welfare rates, the report points out that these measures hardly make up for the erosion in their real value due to rate freezes of a decade or longer. The report also cites the fact that construction has begun on only 6,724 of a promised 20,000 affordable housing units.
Of course none of this is news to Hargrove and the CAW leadership. Why then is Hargrove so enamored of the McGuinty Liberal government? Because it has faithfully upheld the interests of the Big Three, funneling hundreds of millions of dollars in government subsidies into the coffers of Ford, General Motors, and DaimlerChrysler, opposing the federal Conservative government’s plans to reach a free-trade pact with South Korea, and lobbying for new regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions to be tailored for the auto industry.
The CAW and the assault on jobs and wages
No less damning is the CAW bureaucracy’s response to the massive restructuring now taking place in the North American auto industry.
In March Hargrove and the CAW leadership exhorted workers at the DaimlerChrysler assembly plant in Brampton, just northwest of Toronto, to agree to a significant package of concessions that they had strongly voted down in a February plant-wide vote. Riding roughshod over its own constitution that restricts re-votes on matters duly settled, Hargrove and his assistant Bob Chernecki made it clear to the membership that they must vote to accept $5,000 in annual givebacks through the elimination of shift premiums, the intensification of work practices, and the contracting out of union janitorial jobs or accept the consequences. Should they reject the concessions, Chrysler would move auto production out of Brampton without opposition from the union bureaucracy. “It’s just a matter of smart bargaining,” explained Chernecki.
After a heated meeting in which denunciations of the leadership were hurled from the floor, the autoworkers, bitterly noting their total abandonment, ratified the concessions. “A lot of us voted ‘no’ to speak out against the unfolding mistrust with our union,” said Dan Ciurlia, a 27-year plant veteran. “We understand the big threat of globalism. We understand that our jobs can go away. People are scared. But we are being told to make decisions with really no information and very quickly. The workers want to know if the union leadership is truly going to stand up for us.”
A grateful DaimlerChrysler summed up the role played by the union in forcing through the concessions package. “We could not have moved forward without the CAW,” said company spokesperson Dave Elshoff.
When Chrysler announced cuts of over 2,000 jobs in Windsor, Brampton and West Toronto earlier this year Hargrove characterized the attack on his membership as “a real disaster,” but refused to fight the cuts, advising those members on the chopping block to “take whatever package they could get.” And last fall when Ford announced a 21 percent production cut and plans to shut nine plants in North America over the next two years, including an engine factory in Windsor, Ontario, the CAW president called it a “mixed result,” since the job cuts fell disproportionately on US workers.
The CAW leadership, with the support of various middle class radical groups, presented the breakaway from the UAW in 1985-86 as a rebellion against the right-wing leadership of the International. In reality it was a bureaucratic manoeuvre aimed at derailing an incipient rank-and-file challenge to wage cuts and plant closures and at facilitating closer collaboration between the union bureaucracy and auto bosses on both sides of the border.
For years, the CAW bureaucracy has sought to impress upon the auto bosses the importance of the so-called “Canadian advantage”—i.e., the fact that their labor costs are significantly lower at their Canadian than at their US operations, due to the differential in the value of the Canadian and US dollars and Canada’s state-funded public health insurance scheme, Medicare— “the gift that keeps on giving,” according to one Wall Street financial analyst.
But under pressure to take action to prevent major job losses and fearing the erosion of their dues bases, the CAW bureaucrats are becoming ever more blatant in their appeals to the Big Three to recognize that they are the provisioners of cheap labor.
During the 2002 round of collective bargaining, Hargrove lobbied the Wall Street and Bay Street financial houses to pressure the automakers to concentrate their job cuts in the US. During a conference call with J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Hargrove opined: “The real challenge for all of us if we want to make money is to try to demand that the companies pay more attention to those countries or those communities where the obvious quality, productivity, cost and profitability numbers are there.”
The response of the CAW bureaucracy to the current financial crisis of the Big Three has been to deepen its longstanding corporatist relationship with the auto bosses and the big business Liberals. In the name of a “national auto strategy,” the CAW lobbies the federal and Ontario governments to make further tax concessions and outright grants to the Big Three to assist them in competing against Toyota, Honda and other foreign-based automakers. Meanwhile it works to pit North American workers against each other in a fratricidal struggle over jobs, actively campaigning for the Big Three to close US and Mexican facilities in preference to those in Canada, while urging Ottawa to adopt aggressive trade war measures against Asian automakers.
Hargrove has already indicated that in the scramble among billionaire investors to seize control of DaimlerChrysler, so as to squeeze out new profits through massive jobs and wage and benefit cuts, he is considering throwing the CAW’s support behind a bid being prepared by the Canadian Magna boss Frank Stronach, who for years the CAW reviled for his aggressive antiunion tactics.
The most far-reaching conclusions must be drawn from the dead end into which workers have been driven by the CAW labor bureaucracy. The defense of jobs, working conditions and living standards can be taken forward only through the building of an independent political movement of the working class based on the struggle to unite workers internationally and reorganize economic life along democratic and egalitarian—that is, socialist—principles.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 1998-2007
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved
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