RIP Bob White

Bob White was the most important union leader in Canada the last quarter of the 20th century. He even got a respectful shout-out from the arch-capitalist Globe and Mail on his passing.

Alas, Bob's work is a work in progress. I mean no disrespect to the guys who have followed Bob at CAW and CLC and Unifor, but in Bob's day the weasels at Lear would have seen Bob himself on the picket line and the Lear story would have been on the front page, not buried in the business section.

I was at various times a member of both the UAW and the CAW. I have to say taking the Canadians out of the UAW was a ballsy move at the time. But was it the right move? I'm not sure.

If labour is to have any heft in this age of globalization, it pretty much demands international unions. Otherwise we're just going to see the downward spiral continue.

After all, why should the capitalists who own Lear give a shit whether their workers make $52 per hour or $30 per hour, when they can just move the entire plant to Mexico where workers are delighted to make $2 per hour?

That's the magic of "free trade."

Whatever happened to militant unions?

There's yet another story out there concerning Canadians being sent home so foreign workers can take their jobs for less money.

Reading between the lines, it sounds to me that the sum total of what the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Ironworkers intends to do about it is bleat to the media about their tough luck.

That's it.

When you have a union leadership that gutless, it's no wonder international labour brokers are cutting their grass. Back in the day, had an employer even dreamt of forcing union ironworkers off the job in favour of foreign scabs, the jobsite would have been shut down immediately. Union leaders were willing to go to jail. Rank and file were willing to go to jail. Their jobs were something they and their fathers and grandfathers before them had fought hard to make into a well-paying blue-collar profession.

I cannot for a moment imagine such a scenario playing out in Jimmy Hoffa's Teamsters or Walter Reuther's UAW or even Bob White's CAW.

Look at the CAW today; when Caterpillar closed the London Electromotive plant, the union's response was to help their members fill out their EI applications.

We need a new generation of old-school labour leaders, men and women who know what they stand for and aren't going to buckle even in the face of prospective jail time.

The shit-bags and weasels who are conniving with the Harper government to flood the country with low-paid non-union labour are having a field day because nobody on the other side is willing to take a stand.

Those sixty workers sent home last week have the power to shut Kearl down. But they won't do it by going home with their tails between their legs, and they need the support of their union.

Canadian workers f@cked again!

Just happened to be reading about a mid-sized welding shop in North Bay that recently brought in a couple of guys from Tunisia, because apparently there are no qualified welders available in Canada.

Bullshit!

In the first place, there's plenty of folks among the 1.5 million unemployed Canadians who have those skills.

Furthermore, it's a very long way from rocket science to train up welders. If this government had the slightest interest in training unemployed Canadians, they could implement a training program at minimal cost that would have welder-helpers earning their keep within a few weeks, welder apprentices within a few months, and high-end welder-fitters within a couple of years.

We've got the training infrastructure available in high-school shops and community colleges. What we don't have is the political will. That's because political will in our government is shaped by the will of the Canadian Manufacturers Association and the Chamber of Commerce, and believe it or not those folks don't have much in the way of over-lapping interests with unemployed or underemployed Canadian workers.

What they are after is cheap labour. The government connives with them by establishing the incredibly opaque "Labour Market Opinion" as the magic key that opens Canadian jobs to foreign workers. All the employer needs to do is fill out a few forms to prove that they've tried really hard to find skilled welders in Canada for $16 dollars an hour with no luck, and therefore need to hire from outside the country.

Some cubicle lifer with a BA in sociology, toiling away deep in the bowels of Citizenship and Immigration, who doesn't know shit when it comes to skilled work, gives the application a cursory once-over. She has no clue that $16 hasn't been the "prevailing wage" for skilled welders since the mid-eighties.

Bingo! The rubber stamp comes down and the employer has the green light to bring in those keeners from Tunisia.

Sixteen bucks an hour is serious money in Tunisia.

Here's a telling headline from CTV News; Temporary Foreign Workers debate shines light on labour shortage in mining industry.

What's the debate? There's a one sided drone of platitudes from various employer lobby groups about how we've neglected training skilled trades. They've been complaining about it as long as they've been bringing in foreign workers; it's cheaper to complain than to train!

The employers as a whole (I know there are some exceptional employers who invest mightily in Canadians, but they are the exceptions) would prefer to see the foreigners come in, because a trained Canadian is going to want to work for a Canadian standard of living. The Tunisian is going to be happy with $16/hr, and he's already got the skill set! See why this is a win-win for the employers?

It's also a win-win for the government. They save those training funds while at the same time appeasing their corporate backers.

Contrary to what that headline would lead you to believe, there is scarcely a debate, nor is there a shortage of skilled workers in the mining industry. What there is, is a concerted and coordinated push by employers and government to drive down the wages of Canadians.

Here's another headline, this time from Fort Mac a couple of months ago; 300 Canadians replaced by Temporary Foreign Workers. There was no national outrage over this story like there was when the Royal Bank got caught playing the same game. There was no shortage of skilled workers; these Canadian welders and pipe-fitters already had the jobs and have been displaced by foreign workers.

And where is organized labour in all this? We don't hear a lot from them, do we? Sure, go to any union's home page and they'll be flat out against the TFW program, but where are the demonstrations in the streets? Those 300 Fort Mac guys could and should shut down the Husky project. We no longer have principled union leadership like we had in the day of C.S. Jackson and Bob White. What we have now is union bureaucrats who think getting their former members a better severance package when their jobs are off-shored or handed to foreign workers is all that is required of them.

If we continue on the road we're on, in a few short years our "labour market" will be the plaything of international labour brokers, and secure jobs at a decent wage for Canadians will be but a distant memory.

Michigan workers take it dry

Governor Rick Snyder took Michigan down the "right to work for less" road today. It's for the good of the workers of course. Why should they forever be held back by those union bosses who skim off their union dues and use them to support... an entire snake nest of liberal issues only favored by Democrats?

"Right to Work" is a cynically Orwellian misnomer of course. Right to Work legislation is everywhere recognized as the draconian anti-worker initiative that it is. Now that it has found a home in Michigan, look for it to rear its head across the Detroit River, where wannabe Tory Premier-in-waiting Tim Hudak has already been making noises about how unions are too powerful etc.

The truth of the matter is that unions are weaker in the North American economy today than at any time in the past 75 years. What we need is a new generation of union leaders who are willing to face down the politicians who are doing the bosses bidding. We need more Jimmie Hoffas and Walter Reuthers and CS Jacksons and Bob Whites.

Maybe we need to roll back the clock a bit further and pick up where the "Wobblies" left off. One union for all working people. After all, everybody from the clerk at the 7-11 to the most sophisticated technician in the aerospace industry deserves to make a living wage. It doesn't need to be the same wage, obviously, but even the weakest and least-skilled among us deserves to live with dignity.

How the weakest among us fare out will be the criteria by which our society is judged.

I think Jesus said that.