Just another old white billionaire who couldn't keep it in his pants

I see where Frank Stronach’s sins have found him out. Sins from fifty years ago, in some cases. Or as recently as last year, if such a thing can be imagined! The dude is 92 years old! Frankly, you gotta tip your cap to a guy that age who can still rustle up the means and the motivation for an indecent assault. Are they sure it’s not just a case of senile dementia? That often manifests as inappropriate contact; crazy old guy grabs everything within reach, etc… Of course, that could just be their cover story. But what interests me more are the stories from fifty years ago. How does somebody not remember something for fifty years? Or maybe they just hit the self-actualization stage after fifty years of therapy? Or maybe they figure the lecherous old billionaire is soon gone, and if they want to punch their ticket, they better do it soon? Who knows. But I do feel bad for a guy who got off the boat with nothing, and made a go of things. It’s a shame to see him end his days in disgrace. To my way of thinking, he did more disgraceful things in his life. His Magna used to be a Canadian manufacturer, but after NAFTA came in Frank was happy enough to build one new plant after another in Mexico. Tens of thousands of $20/hr Canadian jobs were transferred to $20/wk Mexicans. On the other hand, he forged a truce with the unions who had tried for years to organize his Canadian operations. He invited them in, on condition they sign no-strike contracts. That sounds a bit like union capitulation, but look at it this way; he could have just shut those plants down and moved the jobs to Mexico like all those others.

Jeff Rubin and me

 I've never met the man, so it came as a shock when reading a half-page interview with him in today's Globe and Mail to see how many of my ideas he's borrowed. Like the idea that "free trade" screwed the working class, for example. Then again, maybe he came to the same conclusions from his post as chief economist at CIBC as we shop-floor folks arrived at via lived experience. 

All those shops I spent time in during the 70's and 80's are long gone; Dayton Steel, Budd Automotive, General Electric, Dresser, Kearney-National, Frankel Steel, all gone to warmer climes with lower wages. When the big push was on to rewrite the Canada-US free trade deal to include Mexico, corporate media was saturated with feel-good nonsense about the unbeatable combination of Yankee know-how, Canadian resources, and cheap Mexican labour creating an epic triple-win.

The men and women on the shop floor didn't buy the bullshit. You'd have to be a raving racist to assume that only the shit jobs would be going to Mexico, as if our stupid brown brothers south of the Rio Grande were not capable of building anything we could build here. We knew ALL manufacturing jobs were at risk. We were right.

Rubin mentions Magna as an example. Before NAFTA was signed, Magna had one plant in Mexico employing a few hundred people. Today this "Canadian" success story has over two dozen plants and 30,000 employees in Mexico. That's 30,000 less jobs in Canada, but it's good for Canada from the point of view of Magna shareholders, and that's the point of view reflected in national media.

It's been a long and anguished downward spiral for Canadian workers ever since. The big employment news today is that Amazon is opening two more warehouses in Ontario. Big whoop! When they opened one in Ajax a few years ago PM Trudeau was on hand to thank the company for bringing "600 good jobs that will strengthen the middle class."

Bullshit! 

$14.50/hr. was a good middle-class wage in 1986. In 2016, not so much. 

I'll give Rubin the last word; 

"...in most of the post-war period, having a job was an exit from poverty. Now it's a gateway into poverty."

Shame!

Giving thanks for trade agreements

I see where Tiffany Gooch, full-time Liberal Party strategist and part-time Toronto Star op-ed writer, has crafted a paean to the derring-do of the Trudeau-Freeland negotiating team for their masterful take-down of Team Trump in the USMCA negotiations.

Yup, "our prime minister aimed high and held true to his commitment that he would only sign a deal that was good for Canadians."

Well, maybe, but I guess you'd have to ask yourself, which Canadians? The first NAFTA deal was good for some Canadians too, mainly the ones in the corner offices and on the shareholder roll. For Canadians on the shop floor, not so much.

Canadian auto-parts giant Magna built their first Mexican factory in the early '90s. Today they've got thirty-two plants in Mexico employing 28,000 Mexicans. That's the logical result of making a free-trade agreement with a third world economy. Why pay a Canadian twenty bucks an hour when a Mexican will do the same work for twenty bucks a day?

But our media and the political class still tell us every chance they get that NAFTA was good for us, and so of course this "new" deal will be too.

Being a Liberal Party shill means Gooch has to toss in the obligatory bit of virtue signalling re: this being a "progressive" trade agreement. Why, it defends the rights of workers against gender-based discrimination, don't ya know!

Protection against gender discrimination has been enshrined in Canadian law since the Charter of Rights, which predates the original NAFTA, so this is hardly a win for Canadian workers.

But isn't it nice that we're doing something for those 28,000 Mexicans working at Canadian owned auto plants in Mexico!

Enough about NAFTA

The folks at the Toronto Star are mighty pleased with themselves today. Seems their official Trump fib-tracker, Daniel Dale, has been in DC long enough now to have cultivated a source, apparently at Bloomberg, and after a year and a half, he's finally found himself a scoop!

More than a scoop... a BOMBSHELL!

You certainly don't find those in the Star everyday!

The Bloomberg source told Dale that in off-the-record remarks Trump had told them that he's not about to make any compromises with the Canadian side.

So the talks are over for now, the "deadline" not met.


The reason there was a deadline is because the Americans are keen to push this "new" NAFTA through before the newly elected, more leftish, less corrupt president Obrador takes office in December. Nieto is seen as an easy mark in Washington, whereas Obrador might actually stand up for the interests of Mexicans.

No real danger of Canadian team Trudeau-Freeland standing up for Canadian workers. Or Canadian dairy farmers, for that matter. Selling-out has been the modus operandi of both Canadian ruling parties since at least the Avro Arrow era, so that's nothing new. Canada has never really had an authentic industrial policy, settling instead for a branch-plant economic model.

NAFTA was the most noxious bone jammed up the keister of Canada's working class during my life-time. It devastated the industrial heartland of southern Ontario. Just one example; Magna, the Canadian auto-parts giant, built their first Mexican facility in the early nineties. Today they have 32 plants there and employ 28,000 Mexicans. Where are the Canadians who have benefited from this? In the corporate offices and on the shareholder list, that's where.

That reality has nonetheless never stood in the way of Canada's elite opinion makers crowing about the glories of NAFTA. This should not come as a surprise. After all, these are the same people who believe that working at an Amazon warehouse for $30,000 a year is a "good solid middle-class job."

Unfortunately, when our craven toadies at the top have ensured our branch-plant status for generations, they don't hold much of a hand in these renegotiations. As much as we enjoy mocking Trump, he's evidently smart enough to have figured this out.

So Justin and Chrystia, while trying to do their best to make their inevitable capitulation look like a good deal for Canada, have been derailed by Daniel Dale's bombshell.


Does anybody at the Star really believe that we're going to get a better deal next week or next month?

Canadian Trumphobia not as bad as originally feared

Here's a story from CBC that says Canadians are making more trips to the USA since the election of you-know-who. That figures. Canadians tend to be a smug and hypocritical lot. They may despise that vile man in the Oval Office, but Girl Guides aside, they're still gonna cross the 49th if they can save ten bucks on a tank of gas.

On a related note, here's a point of view on the Muslim ban that hadn't occurred to me. Seems that within hours of its implementation the high-traffic freight crossings from Ontario into Michigan and New York State were getting seriously bunged up.

Here's why; back in the day, when the Teamsters were a serious outfit and the vast majority of drivers were members, driving truck was a respectable career. If you were a Teamsters driver in the middle sixties you were solidly "middle class" income wise.

There weren't a lot of guys named Mohamed in the Teamsters at the time.

Thanks to fifty years of deregulation and union-busting, truck-driving has become a shit job, and you know who takes those. As has always been the case, the recent immigrants end up in the shit jobs. When the Irish were recent immigrants, they got the shit jobs. Same with the Italians, the Ukrainians, the Poles... everybody started out at the bottom of the ladder.

When my dear Daddy got off the boat in 1956, his first job was shovelling coal at Kloepfer Coal in Guelph -  with a hand shovel, not a power shovel.

Guess who you're likely to find behind the wheel of the typical big rig today? That's right - a recent immigrant, and a lot of those guys have Muslim names.

So Mohamed pulls up to US Customs with a 52 foot trailer loaded with a million dollars in auto parts from Linamar or Magna. Customs guy notices driver was born in Somalia.

"Ya'll park that rig in the lot over there and come in for a chat, Mohamed."

Well guess what? If the driver isn't crossing that bridge, the truck ain't either!

That million dollars in auto parts is heading for a Ford or GM or Toyota or Mercedes plant somewhere. Thanks to the magic of JIT and all that stuff, those car plants cripple up pretty quick.

Team Trump may take their sweet time returning calls from lawyers for the ACLU, but they pay attention right smartly when lawyers from GM and Ford are on the line. By the end of day one dozens of those trucks were parked and Team Trump knew they had a serious problem.

Judge James Robart's overturn of Trump's travel ban was actually a huge face-saver for Team Trump. Anything else you're reading is just spin and optics.

Frank's little brother

Everybody knows who Frank Stronach is.

Until now, nobody ever heard of his little brother Hans Adelmann.

Back in the 1950's when Frank was working 25 hours a day getting his Magna empire off the ground, he invited brother Hans along for the ride.

As it turned out, Hans wasn't into working 25 hours a day. In fact, Hans wanted to take a day off now and again to go fishing.

They parted ways in short order. Frank went on to become a billionaire. Hans ended up living a modest life in Switzerland.

Frank would be my kind of billionaire. He actually invited the CAW into his Magna plants to represent the workers, which I believe is unique in the history of North American industrial relations.

After hurricane Katrina he put up his own money to kickstart a model community in Louisiana, Magnaville. Shades of Fordlandia.

Over the years Frank was a big deal in both Conservative and Liberal party politics in Canada. Now in his dotage, he is angling for the premiership of Austria.

Brother Hans meanwhile lived a quiet life. Says he left the employ of his go-getter brother because he never wanted to be gigantic.

And he wasn't. But now he's got a book out that threatens to change that. Einfacher Leben. Simple life.

Why work 25 hours a day when you can work six, have enough to eat and a roof, and spend a life living life instead of accumulating wealth?

That's a question more people should ask themselves.