Right Wing Echo Chamber

Last week the right wing thunk tank and taxpayer funded lobby group the Fraser Institute discovered corporate welfare. And sure enough their political lobby arm the Canadian Taxpayers Federation echos their masters voice;



Mr. Gaudet said the collapse of the auto industry remains inevitable despite this latest surge of public cash. "There is no evidence in the past that corporate welfare works," he said. This bailout will only lead other financially struggling companies and industries in this tough economic time to also expect a government shell-out, Mr. Gaudet warned. "The government can't bail them all out," he said. "It's hard to justify to a laid-off Nortel worker why his or her tax dollars should go to support artificially inflated salaries in the auto industry."



Which Nortel workers are those? The ones left working in China?

My goodness but this is funny to hear the CTF speak on behalf of workers. This political lobby of business types, who are not taxpayers, whose association does not speak for workers but a small self interested right wing business lobby, whose association is not democratic and has no elected officials simply employed self appointed spokesmen.

But as the article goes on to point out actually the last time Chrysler was bailed out they paid back their debt. However it seems ominous that this apologist for the capitalist class is telling us the Big 3 are doomed. Of course as usual they blame workers salaries and production costs for being uncompetitive. However as usual they never let the facts get in the way of their rhetoric. In Canada the wages and benefits paid to Toyota workers who are not unionized are competitive with CAW wages and benefits. Not less but competitive. Yet no one is telling Toyota workers to take a wage cut.

And like the Big 3 Toyota is cutting back on production as well. The crisis of overproduction has hit automakers around the globe, thanks of course to globalization.

We are facing a two fold crisis in capitalism, the fiancial market meltdown and the crisis of overproduction and underconsumption. Nothing new in that it is just the same old same old as Marx pointed out 150 years ago.

SEE

Bail Out Is Not Job Security

Chrysler Black Mail

There Is An Alternative To Capitalism

Auto Solution II

We Own GM

Auto Solution

tagsMGuinty, GM, concesssion bargaining, unions, trade union, Marx, Ontario, Corporate Welfare, Canada, cars, automobilie, production, taxes, tax credit, investment, environment, hybrid, self-valorization,, self-management,, workers control,, autoworkers,, KEN LEWENZA,,CAW, Big Three Auto,, libertarian socialism, automobile, Chrysler, Tony Clement, business unions, auto parts, workers, layoffs, plant-closings, workers-control, unions, labour, Canada

Bail Out Is Not Job Security

And we got what for this?

And the $6-billion that the Big Three domestic automakers are now seeking from the federal and Ontario governments is on top of what Mike said is $752-million in financial assistance to the industry from the two governments since 2004, including $200-million for Ford, $200-million for GM and $125-million for Toyota.

Layoffs, new plants with shifts shut down, pension plan payments deferred, and let's not forget that auto industry in Canada does not pay for health care.

Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) pointed out that the only cost difference between operating in the U.S. and Canada “has got to be entirely on health care.”

And there is no asssurances that there will not be further layoffs even with a bail out and further worker concessions. Unlike equity investments past performance does predict future performance when it comes to the auto industry. There is no job security in the auto sector no matter how much money gets thrown at it. And of course we know the only solution to this crisis is socializing the auto sector under workers control. Anything else is a band aid trying to patch a gaping wound.

Canada's three struggling automakers must come clean on plans to cut jobs if they hope to win taxpayer support for the $6 billion in aid they're seeking, Premier Dalton McGuinty says. McGuinty's push for details followed days of criticism from opposition parties worried that an aid deal could be cut with taxpayers knowing nothing about the fate of thousands of auto jobs and how their money will be spent. McGuinty noted the automakers have made public far less information about their plans in Canada compared with their U.S. parent companies, leaving lawmakers here in a difficult position in trying to sell an aid plan to taxpayers already feeling the pinch of the economic downturn themselves.
Overall, GM is seeking $800 million by year's end and $1.6 billion later, Ford wants a "standby" line of credit worth $2 billion and Chrysler $1.6 billion. GM, which is Canada's largest automaker, has signalled it may need another $1 billion if the rapid vehicle sales decline continues.Chrysler has already warned its car assembly plant in Brampton and minivan plant in Windsor may not be able to survive without financial help soon.

General Motors of Canada Ltd. is seeking "painful" cost cuts from the Canadian Auto Workers, as the Canadian units of the Detroit Three ask for financial help from Ottawa and Ontario. "What GM said is, 'We must share in this pain together. And we've got to come up with cost savings, Ken, that may be painful,' " CAW president Ken Lewenza said he has been told. The GM Canada request did not specify what cuts it is seeking, Mr. Lewenza said yesterday, but a union source said the company wants overall hourly labour costs trimmed and workers to give up some of their paid time off. Lewenza's comments came after the United Auto Workers in the U.S. revealed it will revise contracts with GM, Ford and Chrysler to delay billions of dollars in payments to a union run health-care trust. Furthermore, UAW president Ron Gettelfinger said the union would modify a jobs bank in which members on layoff receive up to 95 per cent of their pay. The CAW does not have a similar health-care trust or jobs bank in Canada at the three automakers. But even if CAW members worked for free for an entire year, Chrysler, Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. losses are so massive that the savings from that move would offset just 11 days of losses at the three companies, CAW economist Jim Stanford told the meeting.

SEE:
Chrysler Black Mail
On The Dole
There Is An Alternative To Capitalism
Auto Solution II
We Own GMAuto Solution


tags
MGuinty, GM, concesssion bargaining, unions, trade union, Marx, Ontario, Corporate Welfare, Canada, cars, automobilie, production, taxes, tax credit, investment, environment, hybrid, self-valorization,, self-management,, workers control,, autoworkers,, KEN LEWENZA,,CAW, Big Three Auto,, libertarian socialism, automobile, Chrysler, Tony Clement, business unions, auto parts, workers, layoffs, plant-closings, workers-control, unions, labour, Canada

Chrysler Black Mail

Chrysler is blackmailing Canada.

In its submission to the federal government, Chrysler compared plants in Windsor and Brampton, Ont., with American facilities that could assemble the same models, and noted it had spare capacity in the United States - a comment that some in government saw as a veiled threat to shift production if Canada does not provide emergency assistance.

Meanwhile the Harpocrites offer no new solutions to the auto crisis instead they offer workers the same old same old;

Mr. Clement met with senior officials from the Canadian Auto Workers union, including its president, Ken Lewenza. Mr. Clement has urged the union to be "part of the solution" and has suggested they may need to take a cut in wages and benefits to keep jobs in Canada.


The solution to the auto crisis is not more concessions from workers nor bailing out the Big 3. It is to socialize them under workers control.


SEE
There Is An Alternative To Capitalism
Auto Solution II
We Own GM
Auto Solution

tags
MGuinty, GM, concesssion bargaining, unions, trade union, Marx, Ontario, Corporate Welfare, Canada, cars, automobilie, production, taxes, tax credit, investment, environment, hybrid, self-valorization,, self-management,, workers control,, autoworkers,, KEN LEWENZA,,CAW, Big Three Auto,, libertarian socialism, automobile, Chrysler, Tony Clement, business unions, auto parts, workers, layoffs, plant-closings, workers-control, unions, labour, Canada

Auto Solution II

Up the road without a map
KEN LEWENZA
national president, Canadian Auto Workers union
November 20, 2008
Your editorial demands CAW concessions as part of any deal to restructure the North American auto industry (Keeping A Foot In The Car Door - Nov. 19).
The CAW was the first major player in the North American industry to respond pro-actively to the devastating effects of the financial crisis and credit crunch. Our new three-year contract freezes wages, suspends cost of living protection, and introduces, once fully implemented, savings totalling $300-million per year (or more than $10,000 per worker, per year) for Canadian auto makers.
Auto labour costs are significantly lower in Canada than in the U.S., Germany and Japan - yet our productivity is higher (at least 10 per cent better than in America).
We didn't write the free trade deals, we don't manage the companies, we don't design the vehicles - we just build them. The best thing we can do as auto workers is to keep building vehicles in the most efficient, high-quality plants in the hemisphere, at competitive costs.

CAW Ken Lewenza says; "We didn't write the free trade deals, we don't manage the companies, we don't design the vehicles - we just build them." And that's the problem. The solution to the auto crisis is not more concessions from the workers, thats been tried and it hasn't worked. Just as federal provincial aid have not helped because we lack a made in Canada Industrial strategy.

Jim Stanford, chief economist at the CAW, said newly signed contracts between the union and the Canadian arms of the Detroit automakers include several unprecedented givebacks, such as an 18-month suspension in cost-of-living increases.
A lack of policy attention from governments in both Canada and the United States have contributed to Detroit's collapse as much as anything else, he said.
"In Japan and Germany and Korea and now China, governments proactively nurture and support high-value export industries like autos. In North America, for the last two decades, we haven't bothered."

Rather the solution is right in front of all of us the workers should control auto manufacturing in Canada they should manage and design the cars not just 'build them'.

Ken if you don't want to discuss concessions then you better start talking about workers control of the means of production.

If there is to be a bailout, let it be for us, the workers. Who dare say we’re unqualified? In the 1920s Italian workers at Fiat and Alfa Romeo took over the plants, and they made cars without bosses. Even as we speak, workers in Venezuela are taking over plants and running them.

And I would add to that the Paris Revolution of 1968 and the Hot Autumn of 1969 when auto workers in France and Italy along with student radicals took over factories and universities and put them under worker control.

Capitalism is in a crisis it is time to socialize capital under workers control.

November 20, 2008
A suggestion for Big Three and UAW (updated)
Michael Nadler
My conceptual solution to the auto company bailout question is as follows:
The federal government makes a one-time only injection of the requested $25 billion into the Big Three in return for a proportionate ownership stake in the companies. Based on the current market capitalization of GM and Ford and my estimate of the market value of privately-held Chrysler, that would give the government about 80% ownership in the 3 companies. (A discount from the market price could be justified for such an investment, providing a higher ownership stake.)
The $25 billion cash injection is conditioned on the United Auto Workers (UAW) accepting a gift of the 80% (or higher) ownership stake from the government, giving the UAW absolute control of the 3 auto companies which will then be exempted from any anti-trust restrictions on consolidations, etc. The fate of the Big 3 and its workers will then be entirely in the hands of the UAW, which could strike the appropriate balance between compensation and competitiveness, as well as the many other issues that will determine the fate of the auto companies it now owns, the jobs they provide and the workers it represents. In that regard, the obligations of the PBGC might be limited as part of this grand bargain.


Workers' control of the means of production?
One of the most influential books on my political outlook when I was first getting politically aware was Geoff Hodgson's The Democratic Economy, published by Pelican Books in 1984. In it he advocated an economy predominantly consisting of worker-owned enterprises: market collectivism, to use a phrase of Jaroslav Vanek. In a Market Collectivist economy, argues Hodgson(p.177), "The workers are self-managed: they do not work under the direct or indirect control of a capitalist...the workers (collectively) own the product of their labour, which they bring to the market for sale."

SEE:
We Own GM
Auto Solution


tags
MGuinty, GM, concesssion bargaining, unions, trade union, Marx, Ontario, Corporate Welfare, Canada, cars, automobilie, production, taxes, tax credit, investment, environment, hybrid, self-valorization,, self-management,, workers control,, autoworkers,, KEN LEWENZA,,CAW, Big Three Auto,, libertarian socialism, automobile, Frank Stronach, Magna, business unions, auto parts, workers, layoffs, plant-closings, workers-control, unions, labour, Canada

We Own GM

Since the Big Three have already accepted taxpayer bail outs over the past five years, and now are delinquint on thier pension payments for their workers, why bail them out, we already own them. Time to make them publicly owned under workers control.

As the Toronto Star reported Saturday, GM's actuaries estimated the pension plan for hourly workers would have been short $4.9 billion if the company had gone out of business at the end of November, 2007. But because the pension fund is heavily invested in stocks, the recent fall in stock markets would have left the fund short another $1.5 billion, assuming no other changes in the meantime.

Paul Duxbury, an actuary who has advised GM pensioners in the past, said yesterday that such a shortfall would cost Ontario's guarantee fund as much as $3 billion, if the province provided the money.

The General Motors of Canada Ltd. pension funds had a shortfall of $4.5-billion as of last November - before the stock market collapse - creating a massive financial headache for the Ontario government and pension cuts for retired employees if the company falls into bankruptcy protection.
Senior GM officials revealed the shortfall between the assets in the company's unionized and salaried plans and their liabilities in a meeting yesterday with the editorial board of The Globe and Mail. The shortfalls are measured on a solvency deficiency basis, which would apply if the plans have to be wound up in the event of bankruptcy.

SEE:
Auto Solution
Whiners and Losers
Business Unionism Offers No Solution To Capitalist Crisis
Concessions Don't Work
And Then There Was One
Pension Rip Off
Buzz Off
Unions=Competitiveness
McGuinty Corporate Welfare
Is Delphi the Oracle of things to come?
How Ford Screwed Up
What's good for GM is bad for Workers
Unions the State and Capital
Chrysler Made In Canada?



tags MGuinty, GM, concesssion bargaining, unions, trade union, Marx, Ontario, Corporate Welfare, Canada, cars, automobilie, production, taxes, taxcredit, investment, environment, hybrid, self-valorization,, self-management,, workers control,, autoworkers,, Buzz Hargrove,,CAW, Big Three Auto,, libertarian socialism, automobile, Frank Stronach, Magna, business unions, auto parts, workers, layoffs, plant-closings, workers-control, unions, labour, Canada

Auto Solution

In the U.S. the debate over the failure of the big three automakers has devolved into an argument over bail-out or bankruptcy. As usual the Republicans arguing in favour of bankruptcy and opposing a bail out claim that part of the Big Three's failure is the high cost of production. They attack the UAW for being part of the problem with their retiree pension plans, healthcare costs and wage demands.

Make union pay cuts mandatory for auto aid

They claim that that Toyota and other import car manufactureres in the U.S. can produce cars cheaper then America's own. Well that is true. However the elephant in the room in this debate is the fact where Toyota and other import auto manufacturers set up shop is in Right To Work States, states which use right to work laws to ban unions.

As for Health Care costs this is the other elephant, in Canada and around the world the government provides health care except in two countries America and China. In the US the healthcare cost is a burden born by business and labour.

So what would a solution be do ya think? Hmm how about passing the the proposed first union contract law that was pending in the Senate; Employee Free Choice Act. You know the one that in the last days of the Presidential campaign became an issue for McCain.
And instead of either Clinton's of Obama's weak tea HealthCare reform, a universal healthcare program was adopted in the U.S. like it is in Canada.

Unionization of Toyota and other import car companies American workers would level the playing field as would creating a universal healthcare program.

While these would go a long way to really changing the auto industry in North America the only real solution is nationalization the auto industry under workers control. Something no one is talking about, including the UAW and CAW.

CAW President Ken Lewenza said the failure of even one of those companies would be a "devastating blow to the economy, a devastating blow to consumers out there and quite frankly devastating to our members."
Ontario, especially, would suffer, he told CTV Newsnet.
"It's not even imaginable what would happen in communities like Oshawa, Windsor, St. Catharines, Oakville. These communities are dominated by the auto industry."
Lewenza said the union has done its part to respond to the Detroit Three's shrinking market share, giving up hundreds of millions of dollars in concessions in collective bargaining.
However, Lewenza didn't blame management either, saying "nobody anticipated at the beginning of this business year we would be selling 12 to 13 million vehicles in the United States, when most people were anticipating 16 or 17."

Oh come on now quit apologizing for your bosses incompetence. What part of Climate Crisis did you miss? I mean for christ sakes the NDP proposes a Green Vehicle plan three years ago and what does CAW get fromall its politcal pull and lobbying? An investment in GM by the Ontario Government for a Camaro plant. Is that counter intuitive or what.

If we are going to produce green vehicles then it will take a complete restructuring of the industry based not on concession bargaining but on workers control and workers ownership.



SEE:
Whiners and Losers
Business Unionism Offers No Solution To Capitalist Crisis
Concessions Don't Work
And Then There Was One
October Surprise Was The Market Crash
No Austrians In Foxholes
Pension Rip Off


tags
MGuinty, GM, concesssion bargaining, unions, trade union, Marx, Ontario, Corporate Welfare, Canada, cars, automobilie, production, taxes, taxcredit, investment, environment, hybrid, self-valorization,, self-management,, workers control,, autoworkers,, Buzz Hargrove,,CAW, Big Three Auto,, libertarian socialism, automobile, Frank Stronach, Magna, business unions, auto parts, workers, layoffs, plant-closings, workers-control, unions, labour, Canada

Whiners and Losers

This is the same line used by the provincial tories in Alberta since the days of King Klein; the government should not pick winners and lossers iin the capitalist marketplace. But of course it does, as we have seen with Alberta's support of privatiziation initiatives like K-Bro contracting outhospital laundry services, not to mention of course oil and gas development royalty and tax holidays, and dare I say investment in the mythical CO2 coal extraction process that will supposedly reduce methane gas.

Now the Feds are denying the obvious as Jim Flaherty explains about a pending bail out for the auto industry in Canada, with nary a recongition that yes he indeed just did pick winners and losers in Canada's auto industry. Canada: Government is open to selective industry support

Mr. Flaherty said most economists would consider a bailout unwise, since such a
package puts government in the dicey business of choosing winners and losers.
Rather, he said, he would be guided by which plants have the best chance of
remaining viable over the long term.
"So if General Motors is going to build a hybrid car in Oshawa, people can understand that that is a good investment for the longer term. Operating a large truck plant, pickup trucks - probably not a good investment of taxpayers' money," Mr. Flaherty said.
His top priority, however, is to ensure that banks are lending to each other, and that credit is
available to corporate and household borrowers at a decent price. A
well-functioning credit market, he said, will help the manufacturing sector as
much as any kind of direct aid.
David Paterson, vice-president of corporate and environmental affairs for
General Motors of Canada Ltd., said the largest auto maker in Canada has not
outlined specific proposals to Ottawa, but supports calls for both immediate
assistance and a longer-term Canadian program similar to an existing $25-billion
fund Washington created this year. That fund is supposed to help the industry
develop more environmentally friendly technologies.
Mr. Paterson said GM is in the midst of transforming its business in Canada
to meet the sustainability objective Mr. Flaherty has outlined.

There ya go Jim ya picked a winner. But of course this is not a real industrial policy, nor what is needed to create a Made In Canada Auto Industry. Which of course is workers control of production through 'workers cooperatives owning the factories. Now that would be worth taxpayers dollars. Anything is else is the same old same old neo-con crap; public funding of private capitalism.

SEE:

Concessions Don't Work

And Then There Was One

October Surprise Was The Market Crash

No Austrians In Foxholes

Pension Rip Off

Deja Vu

The Failure of Privatization



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Super Bubble Burst

As Eric Janzen in the February issue of Harpers Magazine warned this is a super bubble that just burst.

A financial bubble is a market aberration manufactured by government, finance, and industry, a shared speculative hallucination and then a crash, followed by depression. Bubbles were once very rare—one every hundred years or so was enough to motivate politicians, bearing the post-bubble ire of their newly destitute citizenry, to enact legislation that would prevent subsequent occurrences. After the dust settled from the 1720 crash of the South Sea Bubble, for instance, British Parliament passed the Bubble Act to forbid “raising or pretending to raise a transferable stock.” For a century this law did much to prevent the formation of new speculative swellings.

The housing bubble has left us in dire shape, worse than after the technology-stock bubble, when the Federal Reserve Funds Rate was 6 percent, the dollar was at a multi-decade peak, the federal government was running a surplus, and tax rates were relatively high, making reflation—interest-rate cuts, dollar depreciation, increased government spending, and tax cuts—relatively painless. Now the Funds Rate is only 4.5 percent, the dollar is at multi-decade lows, the federal budget is in deficit, and tax cuts are still in effect. The chronic trade deficit, the sudden depreciation of our currency, and the lack of foreign buyers willing to purchase its debt will require the United States government to print new money simply to fund its own operations and pay its 22 million employees.


But unlike the South Sea Bubble or the Tulip Bubble, or even the Dot Com Bubble this one has brought capitalism to its global knees.

Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney underscored the deteriorating situation when he said Canada’s business conditions will worsen alongside other industrialized countries next year and the Canadian economy may slip into a recession for the first time since 1992.
“We are predicting very marginal growth in 2009,” Carney said in an interview with Bloomberg News, when asked if he thought a recession might happen. “By definition that’s close to negative growth, and if we have a balanced forecast you can see it going either side, so it’s a possibility."
Carney cut the Bank of Canada’s key interest rate to 2.25 per cent last month and said the world’s eighth-largest economy would shrink this quarter and stall in the first three months of 2009, just skirting the two quarters of contraction that most economists call a recession. He has said further rate cuts may be needed to prop up economic growth.
In Brazil, Flaherty also said the world is facing what appears to be a runaway economic downturn. He noted that the International Monetary Fund continues to lower its growth forecasts month by month. The IMF now predicts the major industrialized Group of 7 countries will fall into a recession next year - with the exception of Canada, which is forecast to post a minuscule 0.3 per cent growth.

For the leading spokespeople of capitalism to say they didn't see it coming well thats laughable. It could be excused as Hegelian black humour if the mouthpieces of capital were not so sincere in denying the obvious; recession and the dreaded follow through; depression.

Hegel remarks somewhere that history tends to repeat itself. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)

SEE:

And Then There Was One

Concessions Don't Work

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Concessions Don't Work

Concession bargaining is always a defeat for workers, it never results in any real gains, and is always presented by the bosses as the alternative to unemployment and job loss. Want job security give us back wage and benefit gains you have made. It is an example of one step forward two steps back. And it is the contradicition which exposes the fallacy that business unions are weapons to defeat capital, rather they bargain workers labour for a seat at the table of capitalism, but that seat keeps getting kicked out from under them and they are shocked.

Trades Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class that is to say the ultimate abolition of the wages system.
Karl Marx, Value, Price and Profit, Addressed to Working Men, The First International Working Men's Association, 1865.


As these news stories show nothing has changed. Concessions are demanded and plants still close. And the current crisis of capitalist credit is used as an excuse to demand more from workerrs in order for the bosses to capitalize their bottom line.

The union representing 85 striking and soon-to-be unemployed workers at Mercury Graphics Corp. has filed charges against the company for poor bargaining practices.
A major sticking point of plant closure negotiations is severance pay, said Cossar. Under the collective agreement and the provincial Labour Standards Act, employees should recieve two weeks of pay per year of employment. For people who have worked for the company for 25 to 30 years, that means a severance payment between $40,000 and $50,000.
The company has offered its employees $2,500 in severance, she said.
"It's an absolute insult to offer someone twenty-five hundred bucks for someone who has invested 25 years in a company," Cossar said. "It's appaling behaviour on the part of a company who didn't need to close down in the first place."
At the company's request, the union agreed to some concessions -- worth $300,000 -- to keep the plant open, Cossar explained. Mercury Graphics, however, wanted more, she said.

Court Rules in Favor of Wage Concessions for Frontier Airlines
Bankruptcy Court today granted Frontier Airlines relief it requested regarding its collective bargaining agreement with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT). The court granted Frontier's request for wage concessions from the IBT and adopted the airline's proposed heavy maintenance plan. Frontier's plan allows the company to furlough its heavy maintenance workers during periods Frontier does not require heavy maintenance work and recall these workers during periods Frontier has work available.
"Our inability to reach agreement on outsourcing heavy maintenance, given our reductions in fleet size, would have put Frontier at a competitive disadvantage and required heavier operational outlays than we feel are appropriate in this competitive market and in these difficult economic times," Collins said. "This ruling allows us to continue to perform heavy maintenance with our trusted employees, while providing us the option to outsource if court-approved milestones are not met."

Toronto workers to fight for 'sick bank'
Unionized City of Toronto workers will strongly resist any attempt to take away a perk that gives them up to six months' pay from cashing in unused sick days when they leave the job.
The issue of the "sick bank" – a relic of the days before short- and long-term disability programs – came up in 2005 contract talks, and management is expected to raise it again in talks due to start soon, said Brian Cochrane, chief negotiator for the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 416.
"We understand that they are going to try and take away the sick banks," Cochrane said. "To what extent we won't know until we hit the bargaining table."

Issaquah school unions file unfair labor charge
“The Issaquah School District is not negotiating with their employees,” Powell said. “The district is not negotiating in good faith. The district is demanding language concessions in our agreement that has nothing to do with economics and that our members will never agree to.”
If district officials are found, regarding either of the unions’ charges, in violation of state law by not passing through the cost of living adjustment and added health benefit increases, commission investigators can mandate that district officials pass through each, dating back to Sept. 1.
Neither union’s employees are receiving their cost of living adjustment nor their health benefits increase this year.
Each employee is paying an additional $25 per month to compensate for district officials not passing those through, in addition to their out-of-pocket medical expenses, Powell said.

Michael Russo's Sunday Insider: NHL players brace for concessions
Goals and assists, wins and losses are issues NHL players care most about, but Paul Kelly is giving his players a lesson on economics.
As the NHL Players' Association executive director began his second fall tour last week, one key topic was explaining why the union has decided to put 13.5 percent of each player's salary into escrow.
Under the collective bargaining agreement, players put money into escrow in case salaries exceed 57 percent of hockey-related revenues. If that happens, money is refunded to the owners from the escrow account after the season.
NHL revenues reached a record $2.6 billion last season, but because of the uncertainty in today's economy and the decline in value of the Canadian dollar (down to 83 cents against the U.S. dollar Friday), Kelly proposed the record escrow number.

It was the tactic of the bosses during the recession of the eighties. A recession directly caused by the neo-con agenda of Reagan and Thatcher. And both of them challenged the unions with state power giving the signal to the bosses that concession bargaining was ok.Reagan attacked PATCO air contollers and Thatcher the powerful Mine Workers Union. And again during the debt nd deficit hysteria in Canada during the ninties concession bargaining was demanded by Bob Rae and the NDP in Ontario of public sector workers, and in Alberta with Safeways demanding concessions and a 5% roll back from UFCW leading to Ralph Klein calling for wage and benefit cuts to Alberta's public sector workers.

Canadian unions, like their counterparts in most other developed countries, were on the defensive from neoliberal policies of wage restraint and fiscal austerity long before the crisis hit. Struggling with hostile employers – whose anti-union repertoire includes shutting down locations where workers are involved in organizing drives, to back-to-work legislation against public sector strikers, the re-organization of work processes and the deployment of organizational forms that are resistant to the control of industrial and craft unionism – unions were pushed back and forced to accept concession bargaining. Thus, they may not be in a position to successfully resist employers' pressure for wage-cuts

During the fifties and sixties wages and benefits for private sector and public sector workers, who actively fought for the right to unionise, increased. With the oil crisis and post Viet-Nam war downturn in the economy a recession occurred and the State attacked workers rights through wage and price controls. The latter being far less effective than the former.

Taking its lead from the state right wing think tanks like the Cato Instititue and Fraser Institute promoted the idea that their neo-con state could reduce workers wages and benefits increasing the bottom line by attacking the uniion movement. Their ultimate plan has always been to smash unions but when this could not be done, the bosses demanded concessions and claw backs from workers. The bottom line was to increase profits, the threat was plant closure or lay offs.

Even as the economy boomed workers were asked for concessions and as taxpayers were asked to bail out companies like the Big Three automakers. Who came with cap in hand in the eighties to ask taxpayers (workers by any other name) to bail them out. And returned again over the past two years as the market for their SUV's and Trucks collapsed.

The recent downturn in the economy is only an excuse to demand more concessions, and whipsaw workers by moving jobs out of Canada. Here is another reason we need to nationalize the auto industry under workers control. Clearly tax investments as well as concessions do not mean job protection nor are they an industrial strategy.

Navistar to slash jobs at Ontario truck plant
TORONTO, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Navistar International Corp confirmed on Thursday it will lay off as many as 499 workers at its Chatham, Ontario, truck plant early next year due to deteriorating market conditions.
The union and the company squared off in 2003 when Navistar said it was going to close the plant in Chatham, which is about 65 kilometers (40 miles) east of Detroit and has a population of about 100,000, and move production to Mexico.
In the end, the CAW said it agreed to significant concessions to keep the plant in Ontario and the federal and provincial governments kicked in C$65 million ($54.6 million) to sweeten the pot.
"We had an incredible struggle five or six years ago in that community to save that manufacturing plant," said CAW President Ken Lewenza.
"We believe it (the layoff announcement) violates the spirit of the agreement that we struck," he said, adding that the company now plans to increase production in Mexico.

Ontario could claw back investment in Chatham truck plant
Navistar International Corp. "will pay" if hundreds of job cuts at its truck plant in southwestern Ontario violate the terms of a government bailout agreement it signed five years ago, Economic Development Minister Michael Bryant vowed Thursday.
The Illinois-based company (NYSE: NAV) received millions of taxpayer dollars to keep open the plant in Chatham, Ont., and will have to pay some of that back if it fails to live up to its end of the deal, Bryant said.
"There is an agreement in place. Taxpayer dollars have been spent," he said.
"Navistar has to fulfil their obligations, which is what we want them to do. But if they don't, we will enforce that contract and we will make them pay."
The job cuts announced Wednesday will affect 470 employees at the Navistar-owned International Truck and Engine Corp., which faced closure in 2003 during a downturn in the heavy-truck market.
The layoffs start Jan. 31 and will leave the plant with about 400 employees.
Bryant didn't provide any details Thursday about the amount of money the company received, the terms of the agreement or how much it may have to repay.
But the Canadian Auto Workers union says International Truck received a $60-million government bailout package to remain open, along with $44 million in annual concessions from workers.
Bryant called the job cuts "totally unacceptable" and warned that Navistar would face repercussions if the layoffs breach the contract it signed back in 2003 under Ontario's previous Conservative government.
"I'm sure that Navistar would not want to damage their international reputation by not responding to a government – provincial and federal – that provided millions of taxpayer dollars in exchange for investments and jobs," Bryant said.
"What's important here is that taxpayer dollars are spent as they are supposed to be. But there is no free lunch, I say to Navistar, when it comes to investments in the province of Ontario."
NDP Leader Howard Hampton dismissed Bryant's remarks as "nothing more than media spin" as the province continues to be hammered by massive job losses in its troubled manufacturing sector.
The governing Liberals invested $235 million to help General Motors (NYSE: GM), only to see thousands of workers laid off, he said.


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MGuinty, GM, concesssion bargaining, unions, trade union, Marx, Ontario, Corporate Welfare, Canada, cars, automobilie, production, taxes, taxcredit, investment, environment, hybrid, self-valorization,, self-management,, workers control,, autoworkers,, Buzz Hargrove,,CAW, Big Three Auto,, libertarian socialism, automobile, Frank Stronach, Magna, business unions, auto parts, workers, layoffs, plant-closings, workers-control, unions, labour, Canada