The NDP has hit the nail on the head with this simple translation of outrageous spending on stupid projects like the F-35s and bottomless prison budgets.
At least one party is trying to keep the Cons honest.
Perhaps ALL Canadians won’t be so ignorant when the next election comes around.
So, we’ve had more than a month to ruminate on the situation in London, Ontario where international machinery company Caterpillar battles it out against a few hundred unionized labourers at Electro-Motive Diesel.
Unfortunately, there’s not much that’s going to happen because all of our leadership is on the side of selling out to the international ‘who’s who’ of screw local workers and these people will have to accept half of what they used to just to put food on the table.
With this in mind, I have a suggestion: 50% days, starting in London, taken nationally.
We create a bunch of pins, bumper stickers, shirts, etc that declare that we – citizens of this community – are fine with accepting 50% off our wages and salaries, but we’ll also demand 50% off other costs of living, including some of the following:
And … to top it all off, the City of London should embark on a ’50% off profits’ campaign, where any company not based in London will also face a 100% increase in property taxes to reflect the reductions demanded by its citizens.
It’s the only way folks: since the Kevin O’Leary MBA-types out there are telling us it has to be this way and we have to take it or leave it, we need to fulfill the second part of the equation.
In most media circles, the title ‘The Future of Labour in Canada’ is almost always asked as a question and not as a statement: ‘what’s the future of labour in Canada?’
While I’m not a labour expert, I’m more optimistic and I don’t see it as a question. It’s an opportunity.
It won’t take Harper and the rest of the country’s neo-cons to destroy every facet of organized labour in this country and we’ll all be poorer as a result.
Weekend work, no benefits, rental housing instead of ownership are just a few simple examples of what an economy without basic rights to earn just a little bit more holds for all of us if we don’t start to take action in this country.
For the record, I’m not a unionist, but every day, I enjoy the contributions that folks on the line have made over time towards my lifestyle and I do try – in my own little way – to thank them whenever I can.
This poll on rabble.ca asking what labourers should do provoked this blog entry. Feel free to answer the poll yourself, but my preference is this suggestion: occupy the plant.
While I know it’s not a realistic solution, we have to remind ourselves that Canadians have invested in this plant, the City of London has made commitments towards it and by definition (admittedly, a thin one) and one could argue that we own that plant. It’s ours, we should occupy it and we should kick Caterpillar out of this country.
Again, it’s very unlikely that this will happen. Our government, like or not, doesn’t support this and would sooner send in riot police to protect the plant before acting as moderator to a potentially awful situation for the City of London.
It speaks to a bigger consideration when it comes to the future of labour in Canada.
Historically, most labour organizations have made significant advances when it comes to their own personal gains, but we’re about to witness the evolution – forced for sure – of Canada’s labour movement.
First, take the idea of a union out of the equation. For now.
All of us need to ask ourselves what options exist for Canadians to make a better living, assuming for a moment, that unions don’t exist.
In a classic capitalist scenario, there’s stuff like basic wage rates, benefits and even stock options for a lucky few, but when we’re talking about people working for massive international organizations like Costco or WalMart, those examples just become ridiculous. There’s no way ‘Joe 6-pack’ or ‘Sally Single Mom’ will ever have any leverage over these kinds of institutions.
Second, cut the big companies out. No, not in a violent, vendictive kind of way.
We need to decide that it’s time to shift our economic fortunes towards people that matter and the only way we’re going to do this is if we truly understand who’s local and who’s not. We have to turn our back on the bigger forces of globalization and find ways to enjoy and support the undercurrents.
Third, all of us need to consider and pursue a different business model: the co-op.
2012 will be the ‘Year of Austerity’ brought to us by the likes of Rob Ford and Stephen Harper, but they’ll ‘discover’ that there is no ‘gravy train’ and will have to make draconian cuts once they’ve pretended they’ve lifted a few rocks called ‘efficiencies’. The resulting insults to all Canadians who have relinquished control to these liars will hopefully incite some response, but that response will be weak and will not have the impact needed to alert Canadians that our standard of living is about to drop down a deep shit hole.
2012 is also the International Year of the Co-op. For those who haven’t heard of this business structure, a co-op is essentially a worker owned, typically local organization that earns and keeps revenue locally.
It is jointly owned and democratically controlled.
And co-ops offer the only hope for Canada’s labour movement.
There’s no choice. The age of animosity must come to an end and the age of ownership must begin. Labour has no choice but to adapt.
Finally, the voice of labour – the NDP – must adapt as well. The fortunes of the NDP will quickly dry up when Harper and Ford and others kill unions. Relying on a dwindling base is foolhardy, at best. Becoming a central force behind the growth of co-ops in Canada will ensure longevity and loyalty from those who’s fortunes rely on strong, local economies.
The NDP could add co-ops in a productive way to their platform:
I’m sure there are lots more options. We just have to work together.
Is this an admission of the failure of the world’s economic intellectual ‘powerhouses’ to develop a real and functional economic system that doesn’t pit man against man, man against nature, and so on?
Pundit George Soros has already called it and you can now consider yourself warned:
Socialism, then?
Fascism, more likely.
This image is a fantastic representation of the rapid array of mergers and financial manipulation that took place in the 20+ years preceding the whole ‘too big to fail’ ‘financial crisis’ that occurred in 2008.
People: be wary of Conservative talk about how ‘they’ prevented a financial meltdown because they probably would have let it happen here if they were in charge (I know … the PCs were in charge in the early 90s, but they were progressive).
For most of the world, this is all old news, but I have to vent about this issue.
Electro-Motive, the locomotive manufacturing company that’s owned by Caterpillar Inc., gave a shocking update to 500+ employees at the beginning of 2012 by telling them they had to accept less than half their original pay or the plant will be closed.
Caterpillar’s move devalues us all.
When these guys were making $30 an hour, I could charge a similar rate for my time. Now that they’re being forced to accept about half that, that has a negative impact on my billing rate.
Should I charge clients $25 per hour? $20? $15?
How low are we supposed to go?
This is a kick in the junk for all Canadians.
Admittedly, one of the greatest challenges this country (and others) faces is the resistance of unions to change. How many accept stock option plans or direct local ownership? How many engage in co-op-type models instead of worker / employer models that are cast in the beginning of the 20th century as opposed to the 21st?
What are unions doing to respond to these kind of actions locally and globally?
And what actions are our governments taking when they forked out millions to Caterpillar Inc. to set up shop in London, Ontario? What did they do to encourage ownership at the local level? Why didn’t they anticipate companies coming in, stealing our money and locking out local citizens?
What’s their plan for stability or are our politicians only good at throwing our money around for foreign corporations?
Last question: when so much went into this plant in terms of public investment, why are not considering Electro-Motive to be public property? If we spent the money to get the plant here, then part of that plant is ours and belongs to the people of Canada. It probably wouldn’t be easy, but we should re-tool the facility and convert it to making all kinds of train-related vehicles (trains, subway cars, trams, light rail, high-speed transit, etc).
To be honest, I don’t know the answer to these questions, but I know this: more people should be asking them.
I’ll be there. Join me.
Plutocracy = rule by the elite.
From ‘the Rothschild Model’ to the ‘Rise of Corporations’ as methods by which we are all fueling perpetual war.
This is 26 minutes well spent.
Of course, not all of it should be taken as gospel, but we need to understand his last comments as they relate to the ‘market’. There is a supra-national group of organizations that are not subject to any democratic input.
I also like the solution: don’t fight the beast. Stop feeding it.
The essence of the article addresses America’s expansion around the world and extension of hegemonic corporate powers universally.
It explores the deceit that’s being used to fool us into believing that a revolution is happening worldwide, while it also exposes the abyssmal coverage of the #occupy movement that occurred in North America and elsewhere.
Go ahead. Click through, print off and grab a coffee and enjoy some truth for the holidays!
The Federal Reserve – a privately owned lender to the Federal Government in the US – printed $7.7 trillion during the 2008 financial crisis.
They gave it to banks in 2008 while the rest of America started to fall apart.
Dennis Kucinich explains:
If you don’t believe what he’s saying, know this: nearly HALF of all capital gains in the US went to just 0.1% of the US population. Continued efforts to reduce the tax on capital gains will only exaggerate the inequality in the US and elsewhere, including Canada.
Here’s the translation: socialism for the top crust, capitalism for the rest of you.
Whether you’re in the carbon credit market or the car or you’re simply looking for ways to generate revenue, it’s not a good idea to think of a carbon tax as a solution, even though some Canadians think it might be the only way to go.
Why?
It’s morally absurd to nationalize (or localize) carbon costs when the local government might be hosting the producers of carbon, but they’re not reaping all of the benefits.
Allow me to explain …
Say you’re a big country with a whole pile of natural resources. Let’s remind everyone that very few of these natural resources are actually currently owned by the people of that country.
And let’s say that in order to produce, export and consume those products, people already pay an excise tax that is designed to simply extract cash from the pockets of those people to pay for things that they may or may not want, like crappy jets and useless prisons.
And let’s finally agree that the corporations that extract these resources are already getting a free ride because they pay a minimal amount of royalties, all of which are deductible against absurdly low corporate income taxes, most of which are negative because of the vast array of ridiculous writeoffs that we create for these welfare slobs.
And now … we introduce a carbon tax on the people that might use the carbon-based products that non-Canadian companies overcharge us for.
What an insult.
It’s time we got the formula straight.
I will pay carbon taxes when I know that the companies like Shell, BP and Exxon pay a flat tax to the people of Canada for the privilege of extracting our resources.
Until then, adding another tax to Canadian citizens is just another insult to our pocket books and will do nothing – I repeat nothing – to solve the environmental tragedy known as the Tar Sands.