GE and me

GE and me go way back. Back to the C.S. Jackson era.

C.S. Jackson was for a long time the leader of the United Electrical workers union that represented the shop floor folks at GE.

He was also an unabashed commie.

It's probably him who I have to blame for my political awakening. Long before Jeffrey Immelt waxed eloquent about the need for unions to be "reasonable", his forbears at GE were giving us the exact same message.

Back in the mid seventies I'd been sitting in the shithouse at the GE plant on Woodlawn Road in Guelph, reading the financial pages of the Globe and Mail. Feature story was about GE and their record profits.

As coincidence would have it, later the same day the shop floor folks were herded into the cafeteria for a presentation by a big cheese from head office.

His message was all about how we the union goofballs had to lower our expectations and yadayada all the rest of the thank-your-lucky-stars-you-have-a-job bullshit that Immelt was spewing in Toronto just the other day.

I still had those business pages in the back pocket of my Big Bill coveralls, and I remember this moment like it was yesterday. Management guy gets done his doomsday speech and one of his flunkies asks if there's any questions.

I had a question. First question I ever asked in a public meeting.

"How come we gotta tighten our belts when it says right here (waving paper) in today's Globe that the company is making record profits?"

Well, that sure sparked a commotion. Head office guy didn't have an answer. Sensing his weakness, the herd immediately backed me up, even though most of them hadn't spent an hour in the shithouse with the business pages that morning.

The first question was the last question. Meeting adjourned.

And while I never met C.S. Jackson, I like to think he'd be proud of me.