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Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Hostage to Fortune
Death before dishonour cry the CAW negotiators!
The Canadian Auto Workers union was “not even close” to reaching a new labour agreement with General Motors of Canada Ltd., union president Ken Lewenza said Friday afternoon.
Mr. Lewenza gave the brief update with just hours to go before a midnight deadline set by the federal and Ontario governments with negotiations expected to go right to the deadline.
A GM Canada spokesman wouldn't comment on the details of the negotiations, but said there was “lots of hard work going on.”
Although CAW members ratified a deal with GM back in March, less than a year after the two sides had reached a three-year contract, the two governments almost immediately said it didn't do enough to cut costs.
The CAW, and the UAW, already own the domestic auto producers, in the sense that the bank owns a home with a large mortgage. The legal niceties of ownership - being rapidly dispensed with by the Obama administration, witness the Chrysler bondholders - require there to be a "management" and a "labour" faction at the negotiating table. Since the forced unionization of the early twentieth century - the Wagner Act in the United States and the Rand Formula in Canada - the management side has really been negotiating the terms of its surrender. The 1970 GM strike is seen as a turning point. Had foreign imports not been allowed into the North American market, the extortion of the UAW / CAW might have continued indefinitely.
Its workers' lavish benefits and pay financed at the expense of the North American consumer, a kind ofde facto tax. With the end of the domestic oligopoly, the domestic producers could no longer pass along the increased costs associated with its labour contracts to consumers. Three cheers for freeish trade and Japanese efficiency. The position of the CAW seems, today, to be suicidal. No blood from a stone. Well certainly no blood from the stone of management. What about government? There is hope that the taxpayers - the same consumers being legally mugged - will provide what the Big Three can no longer do. There is another possibility. The CAW is unable to compromise. Hardball tactics have been their M.O. for so long they know no other way of conducting themselves. The trade unionist is forever in a Dickensian hell hole, valiantly opposing the abuses of capitalists. The Pinkerton men are ready to attack, so we attack back. Like the Soviet generals who tried to topple Gorbachev in the summer of 1991, they imagine the symptom to be the disease.
(CP)
Posted by Richard Anderson on May 20, 2009 | Permalink
Comments
Lazy, idle, privileged wealth of Ontario!
Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2009-05-20 8:36:38 AM
Lewenza claims GM Canada has shortchanged the employees' pension fund $6 billion (correct me if I'm wrong).
Now Lewenza wants the Canadian taxparyer to make good on GM's obligation.
That's why bankruptcy would have been the best option.
Posted by: set you free | 2009-05-20 10:32:48 AM
Bankruptcy would certainly have been the best option but someone wants to be in charge of the auto industry.
Mark my words, bondholders will require a significant premium to buy Chrysler or GM bonds from now on.
Posted by: Charles | 2009-05-20 11:29:47 AM
Why would you invest in anything that exists on the whim of the government?
Posted by: DML | 2009-05-20 11:56:27 PM
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