Eco Socialism

I love the pretense behind this meeting announcement. As if eco-socialism, social ecology or even feminist ecology were NEW only to be recently discovered by the Left in Toronto.

A new synthesis is emerging, combining two great radical forces -- the

'red' movements that seek to free labor and bring down capitalism, and the

'green' movements that seek to mend our relationship with nature. Activists

from 13 countries met in Paris October 7-8 to discuss this perspective.

They founded the Ecosocialist International Network, and called

for a global ecosocialist conference, to be held in conjunction with the

next World Social Forum.

Speaker: IAN ANGUS

Ian is a member of the Steering Committee of the Ecosocialist International

Network, and the editor of the web journal Climate and Capitalism. He will

discuss what happened in Paris and provide an overview of the state of

ecosocialism today: as a goal, as a body of ideas, and as a movement

against capitalist ecocide.

Sponsored by: Socialist Project, International Socialists, New Socialist

Group, and Socialist Voice.

Seems to me they missed the notice that Murray Bookchin revived libertarian socialist environmentalism known as social ecology, over forty years ago. Of course being Trot's they probably didn't read his Listen, Marxist! either.

The journal Capitalism Nature, Socialism has been around for about thirty years. . Get a sub.

Monthly Review Editor John Bellamy Foster has long promoted a Marxist view of ecology and environmentalism. Get a sub.

Missed the big meeting announcing the founding of the German Red Greens led by old Sixties activist Rudi Dutschke and Daniel Cohn Bendit over two decades ago did we.

As happened elsewhere in the world, most of the 1968ers ultimately joined the mainstream, with a number of 1960s activists -- including Rudi Dutschke -- later paving the way to found the Green Party. Dutschke himself was to be a key figure in the party, but he died shortly before its official creation in 1980. Some of them, most famously Joschka Fischer, became ministers in the German government led by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

Skipped reading Adrienne Rich on feminist ecology/green feminism because she was only taught in Womens Studies, did we.

Missed the work done by syndicalist feminist eco activist Judi Bari did we. She who split with Earth First! over its tactics that endangered lumber workers rather than getting them onside with eco activists.

And clearly these folks need to read my blog.

And while they jump on the eco-environmental-green bandwagon, they do so without addressing the contradictions current in the ecology/environmental/green movement, that places more emphasis on consumers and morality then on understanding that environmental degradation is essential for capitalism to function.

Here are some contemporary articles that they would do well to read as well.

The Modern World-System as environmental history?
Ecology and the rise of capitalism

JASON W. MOORE
University of California, Berkeley

Abstract.

This article considers the emergence of world environmental history as a
rapidly growing but undertheorized research ¢eld. Taking as its central problematic the gap between the fertile theorizations of environmentally-oriented social scientists and the empirically rich studies of world environmental historians, the article argues for a synthesis of theory and history in the study of longue duree socio-ecological change.

This argument proceeds in three steps. First, I o¡er an ecological reading of Immanuel Wallerstein’s The ModernWorld-System.Wallerstein’s handling of the ecological dimensions of the transition from feudalism to capitalism is suggestive of a new approach to world environmental history. Second, I contend that Wallerstein’s theoretical insights may be e¡ectively complemented by drawing on Marxist notions of value and above all the concept of ‘‘metabolic rift,’’ which emphasize the importance of productive processes and regional divisions of labor within the modern world-system.

Finally, I develop these theoretical discussions in a short environmental history of the two great ‘‘commodity frontiers’’ of early capitalism the sugar plantation and the silver mining complex.

Animals, Agency, and Class: Writing the History of Animals from Below

This essay is an historical exploration of the nexus between
animals, agency, and class. More significantly, it seeks
to place the agency of horses, cows, sheep, pigs, etc. into the
process of historical writing. This essay is divided into three
sections. The first is a critique of the current state of the historiography
of animal-studies. The second, ‘A Product of an
Unspoken Negotiation,’ considers how animals themselves
have shaped their own lives and labors. The third, ‘The Evolution
of Vegetarianism and Animal-Rights,’ explores how a
class relationship developed between humans and other animals.
Moreover, this section demonstrates how this solidarity
then led to the creation of social change.

Kate Soper:
Beyond Consumerism: Self-Interest, Pleasure and Sustainable Consumption
Abstract
Responses to climate change and ecological attrition seldom say much about the downsides of the consumerist lifestyle nor promote the pleasures and fulfilments of a less work-driven and acquisitive life-style. This is hardly surprising given the dominance of global capitalism and the scale of its advertising budgets. But there are signs that the tensions between economic growth and human and environmental well-being will not be indefinitely contained. The negative impacts of affluence are a growing political concern and a source of disenchantment on the part of consumers themselves. In this context, the article seeks to counter the suppression of other visions of the ‘good life’ and presents the attractions of a post-consumerist life-style as of critical importance in winning wider support for a sustainable future.

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Green Blogging

Today is Green Blogging Day. And so in celebration I am linking to my critique of the myth of sustainable capitalism, which is what the dialectical dance of environmentalism and its opposite is all about.

I will be posting some more today on nature and the environment with that little bug up in the left hand corner, which links to the bloggers publishing today.

The right wing attack on Rachel Carson this past summer is a good example of this dialectic. Carson wrote the earliest popular work on ecology and the environment; The Silent Spring. 2007 is the 100th anniversary of her birth. The result of her work led to much needed public education about the dangers of chemicals; especially pesticides. Her work would inspire the ultimate capitalist reformer; Ralph Nader.

The dance of the dialectic is that both those who promote environmentalism and those who oppose environmentalism are both trying to protect capitalism as it is. One group is promoting sustainable capitalism, by restricting and ameliorating its worst aspects, while the other groups opposes any restrictions that would impeded capitalisms unbridled expansion.

Why Brown is the New Green

Brownfield sites are the gaps in urban areas where factories once stood. They cover a significant, if scattered, amount of land in the old industrial areas of East and South East London, stretching far into Essex and Kent along the Thames estuary. Bordered by housing estates and industrial parks, these sites have in some cases been neglected and unused since as far back as the Second World War.

To the disinterested eye they are spare ground, home to nothing but weeds, rubble, burnt-out cars and dumped appliances, and an obvious place to build new homes in a region where housing is so scarce essential workers cannot afford to buy a home.

This policy has long been seen as an environmentally sound way of dealing with the housing crisis. Green belts, areas of countryside surrounding the UK's major cities, were created in the 1950s to stop the spread of urban sprawl, and the government is reluctant to build on them. Filling in the gaps left by defunct industry in urban areas seems like the obvious answer to the problem.

However, naturalists have increasingly noted that brownfield sites not only provide a haven for wildlife, but are amongst the most important ecological sites in England. Furthermore, hard against built-up areas and open for public access, these sites are a valuable resource for England's majority urban population.

In the green belt around London industrial crop farming has created a monoculture more barren for wildlife than the city itself. Made up largely of private land closed to the public, and saturated in pesticides, these EU-subsidised farms cover a disproportionate area of a crowded region.

This was dialectical contradiction was best shown this summer with the Live Earth Concert organized by Al Gore and his capitalist friends.

Out came the forces of the ultimate in consumer capitalist culture; the rock bands last weekend to save the earth.

After saving the starving in Bangladesh, then Ethiopia, and ultimately the African Continent, now the fearless Rock and Roll Inc. (tm) (c) types are out to save the the earth from Climate Change.

Sorry but coming one week after the mud fest that was Glastonbury, the Concert for Princess Di's Trust Fund and the Canada Day concert in Ottawa, and on the same day as Oxfam Canada and End Global poverty were doing a cross Canada gig, well I must be getting jaded.

All I could garner was a ho hum and switched the channel to see the Canadian U20 team lose to the Congo in the FIFA World Cup.

I would take this whole Rock Concert To Save the World a lot more seriously if all that 'energy' output had been created by solar and wind power rather than using power generated by nuclear, coal, hydro, gas and diesel, as living examples of what could and can be done. I would have been a lot more impressed.

Forty years after the first DIY love ins and be ins I expect more than another attempt to recreate Woodstock for a good cause.

And considering how important this issue is in Canada the lack of a venue, or any critical comment from the MSM and pundits,about that over sight, shows how irrelevant Live Earth was.

Like Kyoto, carbon markets, biofuels, and Harpers 'Made in Canada' green plan, Live Earth was another dud.

In fact what is often overlooked by both sides is the fact that Harpers Made in Canada Green Plan is already in effect in Alberta.

Go figure -- a carbon tax crafted right here at home

Don Braid, Calgary Herald

Published: Friday, March 09, 2007

Well, some things you thought you'd never live to see. And one of them is an Alberta carbon tax, imposed by an Alberta government on Alberta energy companies, with the companies quietly nodding acceptance.

That's what the government introduced Thursday -- a surprisingly tough bill that will force companies to reduce their CO2 emissions per barrel by 12 per cent starting July 1, or pay $15 per tonne into a technology fund.

Call it a user fee. Or call it a technology incentive. Please go right ahead.

But what it is, actually, is a tax on carbon users and producers that will fall most heavily on oilsands companies and coal-fired electricity plants.

So it's a carbon tax, the very spectre that made Alberta shudder when the federal Liberals mentioned it.

But this carbon tax has an environmental goal. It will give companies a real incentive to lower emissions, while fostering technology that makes the job easier. And the money stays inside Alberta.

Companies can't escape by lowering production. What counts is emissions per unit, not total emissions. So the tax can be skimmed without bringing the industry to a halt.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper was on hand to announce his own green initiatives when the Alberta bill came out.

He professed not to know what was in it. That may be, but he's sure aware of the politics behind it.

The goal is to paint Harper and Alberta green

Environmentalism is not anti-capitalism it is just another market giving consumers choice.

North America's biggest solar farm set for Ontario

Homeowners look to go off electrical grid- Environmental self-sufficiency driving market

Green process makes brown coal the new black

One of the problems with the environmental lobby that gives its opponents on the right ammunition to use against them is their uses of prohibition as the basis of regulation. For instance the issue of public health. Rather than deal with the toxic emissions that result from capitalist production they ban smoking in public.

Another example of this dialectical dance is Green NGO campaigns against GMO's and the Seal Hunt.

What do Genetically Modified Organisms, genetically modified grains, soya and corn have in common with the seal hunt?

Why the likelihood of them being banned in Canada is zero, nada, zip, not bloody likely.

The same Green NGO's lobby Europe and other countries to ban seal pelts and GMO's.

Except the fact is that both the anti-seal hunt and the anti-GMO campaigns impact on producers, fishers in the case of seals and farmers in the case of GMO's. The majority of canola crops in Canada are GMO.

The reality is that the call for bans on the seal hunt or GMO crops are counterproductive, they harm producers not the State or multinational corporations.

Ban GMO food crops

US Humane Society Asks Americans to Boycott Canadian Seafood on Eve of Seal Hunt

Don't hold your breath for Quebec to act on GMO labelling

The Supreme Capitalist Court in Canada ruled on GMO crops versus farmers rights in the Schmeiser case. It was a significant attack on property rights versus patent rights/intellectual property rights. Something that not only upsets farmers, and anti-GMO activists but should also upset any right thinking libertarian.

Regarding the question of patent rights and the farmer's right to use seed taken from his fields, Monsanto said that because they hold a patent on the gene, and on canola cells containing the gene, they have a legal right to control its use, including the replanting of seed collected from plants with the gene which grew accidentally in someone else's field. Schmeiser insisted his right to save and replant seed from plants that have accidentally grown on his field overrides Monsanto's legal patent rights.

Canadian law does not mention any such "farmer's rights"; the court held that the farmer's right to save and replant seeds are simply the rights of a property owner over his or her property to use it as he or she wishes, and hence the right to use the seeds are subject to the same legal restrictions on use rights that apply in any case of ownership of property, including restrictions arising from patents in particular. That is to say, patent rights take priority of the right of the owner of physical property to use his property, and the entire point of a patent is to limit what the owner of physical property may do with that property, by forbidding him or her from using it to duplicate, produce or use a patented invention without permission of the patent owner. Overriding the rights of the physical property owner for the protection of the intellectual property owner is the explicit purpose of the Patent Act. As property rights are not constitutional rights they do not override statutes such as the Patent Act.

In the U.S. on the other hand they have had some success with challenging Monsanto.

Monsanto, its seed distributors and growers stand to lose up to $250 million if the alfalfa, which was designed to survive the company's Roundup herbicide, is taken off the market for the two years it takes to complete the study, the company said in court papers filed late on Friday.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer halted the sale of the modified alfalfa at the request of farmers, environmentalists and consumer advocates who say that it could harm the U.S. economy and the environment.

The judge voided the U.S. Department of Agriculture's 2005 approval of Roundup Ready Alfalfa, finding the agency had not conducted a full environmental impact statement. Breyer banned seed sales and gave farmers until March 30 to plant seeds they had already purchased.

Alfalfa, a fodder crop pollinated by bees and wind, is among the most widely grown crops in the United States, along with corn, soybeans and wheat.

The Center for Food Safety, which is among the groups that sought the injunction, said Breyer's order marks the first time a federal court has overturned a USDA approval of a biotech seed and halted planting.

The Center and other plaintiffs have argued that the biotech alfalfa could create super weeds resistant to herbicides, cause farmers to lose export business and contaminate natural and organic alfalfa.

They also alleged that Monsanto could try to force farmers whose crops were contaminated with Roundup Ready Alfalfa to pay for the company's patented gene technology whether they wanted it or not.

But unfortunately many of these campaigns are another form of capitalism, that of fund raising for Green NGO's.

Like Greenpeace's recent anti-Tar Sands campaign, they have no possibility of realistically closing the tar sands but they gain funding for their endeavours. Nor does the campaign effectively challenge capitalism, it merely appears to workers and citizens as being an outrageous publicity campaign. And one that limits its educational value by being deliberately provocative. In doing so it discredits any alternatives to capitalism or discussion of them it makes any such alternative appear unrealistic.

Finally one only has to look at the Canadian Green Party to see that environmentalism is not anti-capitalism. Their recent increase in popular support in the Ontario election showed that it came from disgruntled Progressive Conservatives. In fact Green politics have been embraced by conservatives and the extreme right.

For a truly sustainable environment one must oppose capitalism and offer an alternative; self managed socialist democracy.

The Ecology of Work

Environmentalism can't succeed until it confronts the destructive nature of modern work—and supplants it

by Curtis White

For instance, as a matter of conscience we should be willing to say that the so-called greening of corporate America is not as much about the desire to protect nature as it is about the desire to protect capitalism itself. Environmentalists are, on the whole, educated and successful people, many of whom have prospered within corporate capitalism. They’re not against it. They simply seek to establish a balance between the needs of the economy (as they blandly put it) and the needs of the natural world. For both capitalism and environmentalism, there is a hard division between land set aside for nature and land devoted to production.

SEE:

Junque Journalism

Blogging Green Day

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Industrial Ecology

Another conservative climate change denier attempts to paint left wing ideas and environmentalism as reactionary.

The concept of "nature" is a romantic invention. It was spun by the likes of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 18th century as a confabulated utopian contrast to the dystopia of urbanization and materialism. The traces of this dewy-eyed conception of the "savage" and his unmolested, unadulterated surroundings can be found in the more malignant forms of fundamentalist environmentalism.

At the other extreme are religious literalists who regard Man as the crown of creation with complete dominion over nature and the right to exploit its resources unreservedly. Similar, veiled, sentiments can be found among scientists. The Anthropic Principle, for instance, promoted by many outstanding physicists, claims that the nature of the Universe is preordained to accommodate sentient beings - namely, us humans.

Industrialists, politicians and economists have only recently begun paying lip service to sustainable development and to the environmental costs of their policies. Thus, in a way, they bridge the abyss - at least verbally - between these two diametrically opposed forms of fundamentalism. Still, essential dissimilarities between the schools notwithstanding, the dualism of Man vs. Nature is universally acknowledged.


Quoted by The Economist, Daniel Esty of Yale, the leader of an environmental project sponsored by World Economic Forum, exclaimed:

"Why hasn't anyone done careful environmental measurement before? Businessmen always say, 'what matters gets measured'. Social scientists started quantitative measurement 30 years ago, and even political science turned to hard numbers 15 years ago. Yet look at environmental policy, and the data are lousy."

However we do know how to measure environmental impacts of capitalism, and we can reduce them through Industrial Ecology. In fact that was how industrial capitalism boomed during WWII, it reduced, reused and recycled. The fact is that capitalism needs to adapt, or die. Thus IE is a closed loop system based on biology and ecology. While technology continues to adapt itself in an organic fashion as well. But in order to overcome these contradictions we need to move beyond Green Industrialism to social ecology.

Industrial ecology is the shifting of industrial process from linear (open loop) systems, in which resource and capital investments move through the system to become waste, to a closed loop system where wastes become inputs for new processes.

Industrial ecology proposes not to see industrial systems (for example a factory, an ecoregion, or national or global economy) as being separate from the biosphere, but to consider it as a particular case of an ecosystem - but based on infrastructural capital rather than on natural capital. It is the idea that if natural systems do not have waste in them, we should model our systems after natural ones if we want them to be sustainable.

Along with more general energy conservation and material conservation goals, and redefining commodity markets and product stewardship relations strictly as a service economy, industrial ecology is one of the four objectives of Natural Capitalism. This strategy discourages forms of amoral purchasing arising from ignorance of what goes on at a distance and implies a political economy that values natural capital highly and relies on more instructional capital to design and maintain each unique industrial ecology.

How does an industrial facility measure its impact on the surrounding community?

And with a voluntary commitment to sustainable practices, can it improve its environmental, economic and social "footprint" over time?

These are the questions the Washington Department of Ecology and Simpson Tacoma Kraft Company, LLC will explore under a new partnership called the "Industrial Footprint Project." The Tacoma pulp and paper mill has volunteered, along with three other pulp and paper mills in the state, to provide baseline data to Ecology on a range of environmental, economic and social indicators.

Working with a consultant, stakeholders and the participating mills, Ecology will use the data to create a scoring system to establish a "footprint" measurement for each facility. The footprint will serve as a baseline to help companies set targets for improving over time.

Environmental data to be collected includes waste streams, recycling, emissions, water consumption and purchase of raw materials. One part of the project will be an energy challenge-asking each facility to voluntarily reduce their energy usage. On the economic side, some data analyzed will include jobs provided and the costs of good and services. Social indicators may include community involvement, health and safety records or good neighbor efforts.

Simpson Tacoma Kraft Company is an integrated pulp and paper manufacturing mill located on the Commencement Bay waterfront in Tacoma, Washington. It produces upwards of 1300 tons per day of bleached and unbleached packaging-grade paper and unbleached kraft pulp. About one-third of the fiber used comes from recycling old corrugated containers.

SEE:

Capitalism Is Not Sustainable

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My Post To the Carnival of Anarchy

Here is my post to this weekends Carnival of Anarchy on Anarchism and Ecology.

Murray Bookchin An Apprectiation

While the Mainstream Media, and the right, have been focusing on Rachel Carson, whose 100th birthday is this year, and her work Silent Spring as the foundation of the modern North American ecological/environmental movement it is important for anarchists to point out that Murray Bookchin was also a founder of the modern ecology/environmental movement.

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Harpers Buzz Off

So as Chrysler Canada announces two thousand job cuts, the PM refuses to meet or take phone calls from Buzz Hargrove, President of the CAW.

Hargrove expressed disappointment that Prime Minister Stephen Harper didn't find some time to meet with him Thursday, especially given the dire circumstances in the auto sector. The prime minister's officials said they had no record of a request from Hargrove to meet.

Gee thats strange since Buzz called, left messages, was in Ottawa, and the NDP and Liberals knew he wanted to meet with Harper. Both parties raised Harpers refusal to meet with Buzz during question period.

Automobile Industry

Hon. Scott Brison (Kings—Hants, Lib.):

Mr. Speaker, with massive layoffs pending at Chrysler, why has the government cancelled labour market partnership agreements that could have helped many of the 2,000 Chrysler workers and why is this Prime Minister, the first in 40 years, refusing to meet with the head of the CAW?

Hon. Monte Solberg (Minister of Human Resources and Social Development, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, the member should know that the government announced its intentions to strengthen labour market initiatives in “Advantage Canada”. We are in constant contact with our provincial partners on all of these issues.

We will certainly put in place all the measures necessary to ensure that we have the strongest possible economy, something that is already happening under the leadership of the Prime Minister.

Hon. Scott Brison (Kings—Hants, Lib.):

Mr. Speaker, we have a minister who is laissez-faire and a Prime Minister who does not care.

The Liberal government partnered with the auto industry to create thousands of new jobs. Canada's neo-Conservative government has done almost nothing and we are losing thousands of auto workers jobs.

Will the Prime Minister meet with the head of the CAW, take action, and reintroduce the previous government's auto strategy that was working and creating jobs here in Canada?

[Translation]

Hon. Maxime Bernier (Minister of Industry, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, I would remind my hon. colleague that we tabled the Advantage Canada plan, a plan that will enable the automobile industry and all other industries to enjoy competitive tax conditions.

We will continue to lower taxes, to limit paperwork and regulations interfering with the productivity of Canadian business in the automobile sector, and we are proud of what we are doing.

Harper is the first PM not to meet with Buzz. But maybe he didn't need to meet with Buzz.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says the looming job losses at Chrysler have nothing to do with federal government policy.

Except that Canada is negotiating a bilateral trade deal with Korea, home of Hyundai.

And considering that Buzz and Stephen agree on the need to go slow on emission regulations you would think Harper would take a call from Hargrove.

Buzz Hargrove, head of the Canadian Auto Workers' union, told the committee that too-tough efficiency standards could result in plant closures.

No sooner had Buzz said that then this happened.

Buzz Hargrove fears major job cuts at Chrysler
OTTAWA – As many as 2000 of Canada's workers with DaimlerChrysler could lose their jobs, Canadian Auto Workers leader Buzz Hargrove suggested Thursday. ...

And suddenly Buzz is doing as I have said Canada's labour movement would have to do, accept the global market and demand Fair Trade agreements.

Hargrove calls for 'fair trade' deal with Asia to curb auto job losses

Automobile Industry

[Table of Contents]

Hon. Jack Layton (Toronto—Danforth, NDP):

Mr. Speaker, today's news that Chrysler is going to eliminate 2,000 jobs in Canada makes it very clear that we have to get down to helping out our auto industry. Consumers want fuel efficient cars, but the government stands by and does absolutely nothing about it.

That is why the NDP put forward a green car strategy in 2003, supported by Greenpeace and the CAW. Too bad the Liberals would not adopt it because it would have transformed our industry and we would have been in the forefront of protecting jobs and creating new jobs as well.

Does the Prime Minister not understand that when it comes to building green cars, either we get it done or China, Japan and Korea will do it?

Right Hon. Stephen Harper (Prime Minister, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, while we are obviously concerned by the announcements that we expect from Chrysler, this is a global company that is making global decisions. These are not related to policies in our country, as the member well knows. At the same time, we have seen a growth in other parts of the auto industry.

I appreciate some of the suggestions the leader of the NDP has made. They are much more positive than the motion tabled last week by the Leader of the Opposition, which would effectively propose that we cut emissions from the auto sector, from all sectors, by one-third in the next four and a half years. I wonder if he has any idea how that would devastate the Canadian auto sector.

Hon. Jack Layton (Toronto—Danforth, NDP):

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is wrong about the impact of his own actions. The workers in the auto sector are worried and rightly so. Their jobs are on the line. As people look for more efficient cars, they will not find them manufactured here because there has been no action.

The government says that it is a global marketplace, that the market will take care of it, but the market is not fair. Those other countries can sell their cars in Canada without limit, but we cannot sell good Canadian cars, built right here, to countries like China, Korea and Japan.

Is that why the Prime Minister thinks it is a good idea to sign a free trade deal, signing away our auto industry to Korea?

Right Hon. Stephen Harper (Prime Minister, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, the government has been pursuing negotiations with South Korea and with others for the express purpose of opening up Asian markets to Canadian products. I am glad to see that Buzz Hargrove seems to have completely reversed himself and now suggests that is exactly what we should be doing, trying to open Asian markets. The government will work hard with the industry to do that.

The government has ongoing consultations with the energy sector. There are some happening this very day. We think it is important to consult with industry before telling it to simply slash one-third of its production, as the opposition would.

Ouch! Of course that is not what Buzz is saying, but that's the spin the Free Traders will make over Fair Trade. Until the labour movement and its political allies spell out the difference.

What we need is a national industrial ecology strategy, not just tax cuts and credits for the industry. And that does not mean that industries in Canada have to be Canadian owned either. Sovereignty is not determined by corporate ownership but by the working class, having autonomous Canadian unions, and eventually in joint ownership of industry in Canada.

As recent negotiations with CAW and Falconbridge's new owners Xstrata PLC have shown.

Each of the past three bargaining rounds between the Canadian Auto Workers and previous owner Falconbridge Ltd. were marred by bitter confrontations and each ended in dispute. Workers were off the job in 1997, 2000 and in 2004.

Things were so bad, that after members voted to end a particularly acrimonious seven-month strike in February, 2001, the CAW was still hurling public insults at Falconbridge's front office.

"The previous owners seemed willing to spend a million dollars to save a dime. These people, the new owners, seem to recognize the value of a dime. That's different. It's going to require us to adjust our style as well. So we've made a commitment to try to work on the relationship over the life of the agreement and that was part of our settlement. How do we communicate better and how do we get things done in a positive way?" Mr. Mitic said.

See

Hargrove

CAW



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