Sociologists have convincingly documented rising inequality in Canada. A lucky few - large business owners, top executives, highly specialized professionals - have captured the lion's share of the meagre gains generated by our troubled economy. Statistics reveal the top one per cent of Canadians pocketed 31 per cent of all new income generated in 10 years. The bottom 99 per cent had to fight over the rest.
Most Canadians are guaranteed nothing by our lean, mean, globalized economy. Even university-educated specialists (like accountants or programmers) have been squeezed by new technology, and by trade rules which allow corporations to outsource any job to the lowest global bidder.
As for hourly workers, their real earnings are no higher than a quarter century ago. Given the productive potential of our skills and technology (both of which are better than ever), this constitutes an enormous economic and social failure. A healthy economy generates mass prosperity. Ours, increasingly, does not.
About the only structural protections most Canadians have going for them are public programs (like health care, education and pensions), and unions (to help equalize their power with employers). Yet these are under attack, too, from the same governments that allow (even glorify) the social irresponsibility of corporations. Governments are cutting the social wage as employers try to slash money wages. They stand by as unions fight for their lives. And they give global companies free rein to take over our resources, and our factories, with no commitments whatsoever to future Canadian interests.
So while the academics may debate the fine points of the income statistics, the overall trend is obvious: inequality is growing and the middle is being squeezed out. Companies feel no compulsion to pay living wages to their workers. And they hold all the cards at the bargaining table - including the "ace," which is their unfettered ability to shut down and move someplace cheaper. Governments have reneged on their responsibility to protect average Canadians.
No better example for this depressing long-run trend could be found than the current dispute at the Electro-Motive facility in London, Ont. Thanks to their productivity, their high skills (including highly specialized welding and assembly techniques), and their union, Electro-Motive workers today are still proudly in the middle. They make good wages, but they're hardly rich. They live decently, send their children to college, retire in security and enjoy good benefit programs in the event of injury or illness. Electro-Motive has a long and proud history in Canada, operating productively and profitably here for over six decades. It is Canada's only locomotive manufacturing facility. It's a crucial industrial asset, at a moment when governments around the world are investing massively in railway infrastructure.
Then suddenly the plant and its workers were confronted with an unprovoked and fearsome attack, after Caterpillar bought the company in 2010.
Ottawa didn't even bother reviewing the takeover, let alone attaching conditions. Immediately Caterpillar began building a second assembly plant in Indiana, where non-union workers compete for insecure, poverty-level wages.
Within the year a new plant was also announced for Brazil and more work was shipped to Mexico. Consistent with its reputation for all-out industrial warfare, Caterpillar tabled a list of demands (including slashing wages in half) that is more aggressive and offensive than any I have encountered in my three decades of trade union experience.
We wish dearly that Caterpillar had never bought Electro-Motive. The company's actions are the economic equivalent of a home invasion. And we are infuriated that our governments have done nothing to protect the interests of Canadians. By their silence and inaction, government sides with an enormous, irresponsible global corporation that is making record-level profits and whose CEO rakes in $10 million per year, as it sacrifices the future well-being of hundreds of frightened Canadian families.
Some labour-management conflicts are complicated, with both sides wearing some of the blame. Not this one. Caterpillar marched into London, Ont. with one clear goal: destroy the union and eliminate decent pay at Electro-Motive, or else shut it down and leave. Either way, it's one more step toward growing inequality in Canada.
The CAW will do everything we can to resist Caterpillar's immoral aggression against our country. We are backed by widespread community support, a reinvigorated labour movement and moral legitimacy.
At the same time, our willingness to bargain a responsible, realistic agreement with the company is unchanged. There are many proposals that we can entertain; but tossing hundreds of Canadian families into the bottom of the heap is not one of them.
At the end of the day, the union alone can't protect the vision of an inclusive, prosperous economy. Without our governments living up to their responsibility to ensure that the wealth we produce is shared fairly and equitably, our vision for a just society doesn't stand a chance - at Electro-Motive, or anywhere else in Canada.
Ken Lewenza is CAW National President - (Reprinted with permission)
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