Two strikes come to mind as this post is written. Yesterday the management of the Woodbine racetrack locked out their workers
story here. This is a shocking development! And what is worse these folks are earning not much more than minimum wage. But the most telling part of the story and our society is the report that one of the workers, who has been working there for 25 years has seen his wages only double in that time.
TOStar quote "Tony Bennett started working at the racetrack 25 years ago as a stand attendant and earned about $6 an hour. Today, he earns $13.90 an hour and is now locked out.“We are not asking for everything — just enough to have a decent life,” said Bennett, 48, who also holds down part-time jobs at Winners and Home Depot."
In another development the strike at Vale-Inco enters its seventh month. This formerly Canadian company was purchased by a Brazilian company and immediately was forced on the picket line by a management that refused to bargain.
G&M quote"More than 3,000 employees at Vale's mill, smelter, refinery and six nickel mines in the Sudbury area have been on strike for seven months. At issue are proposals by Vale Inco to reduce a bonus tied to the price of nickel and to exempt new employees from its defined-benefit pension plan, moving them instead to a defined-contribution plan. Workers complain they shouldn't have to give concessions to a company whose parent, Brazil-based Vale S.A., earned $5.35-billion (U.S.) in 2009."
We have here two examples of disgusting behaviour by management and the workers are getting it in the neck. Both issues illustrate the modern way of dealing with unions - just ignore them, intimidate them and wait for them to quit on you.
Visit the strikers webpage here
As you all know the readership of the BurdReport is varied in its opinion so we welcome all comments knowing that some may be more inflammatory than others however those comments designed to incite will be flagged and identified as such.
In the interest of fairness please visit the Company's website (try to find any mention of the strike!)
A postscriptHere is a link to a report of another mining dispute, the circumstances are so similar the strategy must have been dreamed up at the MineOwners' Convention
21 comments:
Interesting take Ben. You forgot to mention the demand for subsidized TTC passes and paid personal days. Also, no quotes from management?
You know what I've never undestood and I don't think I ever will? Get on a streetcar or a bus or a subway in Toronto. Take a look at the driver or operator. Right there on the floor beside the operator you'll see a satchell -the driver's 'grip' they call it. In the grip the driver carries a rule book, keys and other paraphenalia necessary to the job. But invariably there's something else sticking out of the top of the grip; a copy of The Toronto Sun.
Why would any self-respecting union member, especially a target of what amounts to a viral campaign by the Toronto Sun against TTC Operators, be caught dead with a copy of a newspaper that has relied for over a quarter of a century on anti-union sentiment in its readership?
I don't understand that. And, incidently, I was a union member for over thirty years -the last ten of which were devoted to simply holding on to what we had. It doesn't matter what the line of union work is anymore -racetracks, automobile building, public transit, the government even- it's all about a race to the bottom and who's going to end up there before everybody else.
By the time anti-union companies and media outlets and governments get done with us, the Joad family will look like nice folks who did well for themselves and if only the rest of us could afford a vehicle like the Joad's got, well, maybe we's too could git out to Cal-ee-fornya too before the peaches rot on the ground.
The root of it all is simple: Misery loves company. And when the anti-union vitriol starts rolling in on this comment, remember this; all the anti-union crowd really wants is two things; 1) they want what they've been led to believe by the press that unions have and2) they want more for themselves.
Dear anon or John or Frank or Bill, here is the Inco Vale website, no mention of the strike here just glowing reports of their succeses and employees doing good work!!
http://www.inco.com/
The CBC just reported (9AM Sunday) that Vale-Inco has launched a $1-million lawsuit against the United Steelworkers alleging that the union and/or members of the union have published personal information on the web about people who are continuing to work during the strike (I remember when we called those people 'scabs'.
I was asked to work as a scab after I retired. A mine in Northern Ontario needed a qualified locomotive engineer to get their ore in and out of company property to the main line. I was offered more money in a day than I'd ever earned in a month. Needless to say, I didn't touch it with a ten-foot pole because, simply put, there is nothing grovelling on the face of this earth more sickeningly repulsive than a scab. Nothing.
I just sent my 42-bucks to Straight Goods for a one year subscription. What I was googling around for that led me to Straight Goods (www.straightgoods.com) was any info on the black population of lily-white Brooks Alberta and how when I was there last summer I was quite shocked at the camps black people lived in. What were all these Ethiopian/Somalian-looking people doing in camps in Brooks Alberta (I was there to see the aquaduct first hand) anyway? Well, it has to do with an ugly strike at Tyson Meat Packers and what you're looking at in Brooks is Globalization At Work. If any of these people had applied individually to get into Canada, they would have gone to the back of the line. But, because a huge company needs scabs, well, the doors are open wide. See -that's how Globalization works -EVERYBODY WINS! Especially if you're upgrading to a truly shitty life in Alberta from the even shittier life you had in Somalia fighting off the hyenas at night. Now, the only hyenas you have to worry about are the ones running the company you work for.
Here's a link to Straight Goods. I'll be over there if you need me...
http://www.iuf.org/mcjobs/?p=101
Anyway, there's hope. If McDonald's workers in Baku, Azerbidjan can stand up for some kind of rights, maybe we can again too:
http://www.iuf.org/mcjobs/?p=101
Charlie Angus' take on the Vale-Inco strike and foreign takeovers:
http://www.straightgoods.ca/2010/ViewArticle.cfm?Ref=269
CUPE's anti-semitism as stoked by Syd Ryan, and the udder idiocy of Jerk Layton cozying up to islamaniacs.
The union goon attacks against free speech -- yes, here in dear old Cobourg.
Jerk Merk pisses, "all the anti-union crowd really wants is two things; 1) they want what they've been led to believe by the press that unions have and2) they want more for themselves."
What reductionist crap! Merk's imagination is as limited as most union members -- they are a notoriously uncreative lot. There are far more than "two things".
Call them scabs as a method of dehumanising them, then they can be attacked.
Call them kikes as a method of dehumanising them, then they can be attacked.
Call them niggahs as a method of dehumanising them, then they can be attacked.
Call them infidels as a method of dehumanising them, then they can be attacked.
Call them scabs to facilitate the rise of goon culture hatred.
Yep, I'm moved by the hyperbolic gang-righteousmess of unionistas.
Call them goons as a method
of dehumanising them, then they can be attacked.
What goes around, comes around.
Looking forwward to the next installment of the CUPE Gooner Pile-On Show
Here's one poster who admires Merk for resisting the lure of company money for scabbing.
Union haters, like the right, are actually interested in 3 things:
ME, MYSELF, and MINE.
If I could add a line to that, it would be
AND THE REST OF YOU CAN GO TO HELL.
Not what the world needs if we are going to save the planet and the people on it. And I don't mean just some of us.
Would you rather people blog as a character in Dr. Strangelove Ben that Anonymous? Perhaps Merklin could offer some suggestions.
personally, although some people prefer to deal identifiable people, I don't care what kind of anonymoue you are. Call yourself anthing you like. But i don't understand the question - too subtle for me.
If anon wants my suggestion (and I thank the individual for asking) my monicker, as anonymous as it may seem, is mine. As long as it appears in bold blue you know what is being said is being said by the last person, one and the same, who posted under that monicker and saw it appear in bold blue.
On the other hand....
There are, at last count, about 20 'Anonymous's in here right now. If you are one Anonymous and you might be slightly right wing but another Anonymous posts from the left, well, how does poor old Merklin Muffley (a perfectly good nom-de-plume I think and one I've kept for well over 10-years. See: sooey's.com) separate the two?
So. My advice? Pick a fuckin' handle and stick with it, will ya ferchrissakes? Thanks for asking.
I just decided what to use as a handle!
It's not very original but it sure beats 'Anonymous'....
"Union haters, like the right, are actually interested in 3 things: ME, MYSELF, and MINE."
This is nothing more than reductionist stereotype crap.
Bumber sticker politics.
Individuals bad
The group (US WE) aka mob, good.
Get it:
Left good
Right bad
Real simple once you get the reductionist techniques of Newspeak down pat, you too will be able to Nospeak with the blandest of them.
You can see, in the reductionist example provided by Deb O, that Nospeak leads to Nothink. Cracker Jack McWit of leftie disproportions. Nothink is more common than obesity. Sad, really.
"It's not very original..."
Well of course not, it was YOUR suggestion weren't it?
Murky as mud muffins.
Wally, now that you have launched your customary insulting, simplistic and disrespectful attack on me, would you care to tell us why the Right is so good and so right?
I'd really like to hear you defend your heroes instead of just atacking other people. It would be so instructional to get a peek into the Poet's mind.
Are you up for it?
Article in the Star today indicates that liberal, atheists have a higher IQ than conservative believers.
Debs one up on the politics Wally, I would tread easy on the attacks.
"like the right, are actually interested in 3 things: ME, MYSELF, and MINE."
& then
"your customary insulting, simplistic and disrespectful attack on me,"
It's not about you Deb. It's about your published words, commentary, ideas. Not YOU, but what you place on the public table. For the most part it is mediocre.
I attack mediocrity ruthlessly wherever I find it. Aside from Murky Merkley, the postings here are mediocre, so don't feel centred out -- you have a lot of company, and I have attacked the mediocrity of others. If you feel that your comments are being attacked more often than others, that may well be true, but then again, you post a lot of mediocrity.
"would you care to tell us why the Right is so good and so right?"
I'm not a right winger. They are as capable of mediocrity as the left. I have no respect for either camp as a camp. I am a fulltime dissident, a unround peg in an unsquare hole.
”I'd really like to hear you defend your heroes. It would be so instructional to get a peek into the Poet's mind.
They are Irshad Manji, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Tarek Fatah, Robert Spencer, Miklos Haraszti, Gabor Demszky, Norman Mailer, IRVING LAYTON, Robert Priest, George Faludy, Kurt Browning, Andrej Sakharov, Natan Scharansky, Ezra Levant insofar as he deals with free speech and the lancing of the poison of human rights commissions. Several of them have been my friend, acquaintance or colleague, been in their homes as well as mine.
Two or three weeks back, Deb wrote a comment concerning the rural poor's lack of accessibility for hospital services. I have spent 37 years living in the core of a large metropolis, and also living in a state of ignorance concerning the plight of rural poor. In this regard, Deb's comment enriched my knowledge and understanding. No small matter that. Thank you.
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