Canada's ruthless corporate ruling class is not satisfied with record profits and its ability to hire and fire at will. Nor its ability to contract out and privatize our jobs. Nope it wants more and more from us, in order to feed its rapacious addiction to profits.
And if you are unionized you are under threat of contracting out, lock out and ultimately giving concessions like the Telus workers, the Air Canada workers, the Autoworkers all have faced this past year.
And the Conference Board of Canada says this is business as usual in the new globalized economy.
Globalization is reshaping labour relations in Canada
"Globalization is transforming the dynamics of labour relations in
Canada," said Prem Benimadhu, Vice-President, Organizational Performance.
"Faced with global competition, management is increasingly determined to hold
its ground by demanding concessions or resorting to lockouts.
"Unions are faced with the difficult choice of accepting concessions or
watching jobs go to lower-cost countries. At the same time, unions are looking
to maintain their power by building the international labour movement in these
same countries.
Today in the neo-liberal economy its ratcheting down workers wages and benefits in order to keep stock prices high. It has been occuring since the 1980's and the labour movement is barely able to keep itself fighting defensive battles in this order to keep running on the spot. Because as usual the business unions fail to understand this is not a battle over bread and butter issues but Class War.
See:
Union Busting Alberta Style
This is Class War
Gone is the Keynesian Social Contract that kept the Welfare State booming.
It's a little thing Herr Dr. Marx called the falling rate of profit.
After the long boom after World War Two, it would seem that capital did indeed come up against a crisis in the falling rate of profit and overproduction of capital, leading to the crisis of the late 1960s and the opening up of a period of “stagflation” in the 1970s.
So in an era of riches the workers once again are asked to take crumbs from the table. And even the booming economy can mean profit failure for some industries while we create untold riches for others.
Strongest Canadian dollar in 14 years hinders Q4 results
Canadian Oil Sands Trust announces strong financial results for the fourth quarter of 2005 and a distribution of $1.00 per Unit
Shell Canada announces record earnings of $2 billion
But Canada is not alone in this situation. While profits soar and trillions of dollars, fictious capital, travel in the market place making money off of money, work, the actual source of profit, continues to decline as it gets automated and outsourced. It is not just Canada's problem but is actually the crisis of globalization itself. As capital moves out of the industrialized countries, or hires workers out of the underground immigrant communities in the industrialized countries; the sans papiers, those without papers, and as it replaces labour with technology we face not a leisure society with abundance for all . Au contraire we face a growing crisis of employment. Such as we have not seen since the depression of the 1930's. And why it is greater is that it is global. There are no longer peasant societies anywhere in the world. There is a global proletariat, the multitude if you like. And there is a crisis of employment.
ILO Director-General warns of 'unprecedented jobs crisis' [ILO]
Companies get tough in bargaining
Toronto Star -
Fierce worldwide competition is making companies more militant during contract negotiations, while unions are pushing back by globalizing the labour movement, according to a report released yesterday by the Conference Board of Canada.
'Militancy' the new catchword for employers
Globalization holding down Canadian union wages, Conference Board ...
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