Labour Disputes and Government Intervention

The labour dispute between Electro-Motive and its workers is gathering  a lot of attention (as it should) and a lot of sympathetic political attention. But what are the actual options available, and what are the repercussions?

The offer put forward by the company, essentially demanding that the workers take a 50% pay cut, is unfair. The workers have a right to feel insulted by this offer, and they have the right to withhold their labour in protest. They are not an essential service, their work stoppage won’t have a direct effect on the public good, and so it’s a legal negotiation tactic.

On the other side, the company has the right to make such an offer. It’s ugly, unfair, and done with an understanding/threat to move the operations to a place where the workers will accept that salary (in this case, Muncie Indiana), but it’s not illegal.

And though it is politically expedient for each level of government to point the finger of blame at the others as being too lax with “government handouts”, every level of government has given some kind of incentive to Electro-motive to persuade them to stay in London and manufacture locomotives.  So what could they do now in response to the situation?

1) The federal government could nationalize the company, seizing it from the parent company Caterpillar and assume operational control of Electro-motive. This would create a trade and foreign relations crisis that would eclipse the dispute itself, and have serious long-term repercussions. It’s also probably illegal and possibly an act of war.

2) The federal or provincial government could introduce legislation to end the lockout, though the legality of  such legislation would make it a messy situation. And even if they forced both side back to the bargaining table and appointed an arbitrator to make a binding contract decision, the end result would still likely be the closure of Electro-motive and the relocation of the locomotive production to Indiana.

3) All 3 levels of government could stand by and let the dispute resolve itself.

The sad fact of the scenario is that there is no real chance that the workers will be able to keep their jobs at their current salaries. Direct government intervention right now isn’t legitimately possible, and they all know that. Their hand-wringing and visits to the picket line won’t change it.

The real failure in good governance is the lack of protective measures to limit the effect of situations like these. Each level of government is supposed to ensure that they collect enough revenue that they can adequately protect and assist people when required, but their unshakable faith in “lower corporate taxes=more jobs” equation leaves them with a restricted amount of revenue to use. The money they choose not to collect from corporations is the money needed to buffer the after-effects of corporate actions. The Federal Government should be ensuring that Employment Insurance is properly funded and can quickly assist those applying for help, the Provincial government should be ensuring that retraining programs have additional resources to call upon when a large workforce is suddenly thrown out of work, and the municipal government has to have the money available to fund the increase in support services that will be used. Instead, we have Federal and Provincial crowing about the lowered corporate tax rate, and the Mayor with his bunch of “Zeros” cutting funding obsessively to meet their campaign promise of no tax increases.

Though all levels of government make the argument that “business incentives=more jobs” the reality is that the only guaranteed way a government can create jobs is to hire more people for public service.  Every other incentive, whether a direct subsidy paid to a company, a tax expenditure that allows a company to avoid paying some of their taxes, or an across the board tax cut, cannot be directly tied to an increase in full-time, permanent jobs at a living wage.

Companies are amoral, driven by a simple mandate to increase revenue for the shareholders, with no consideration to the community or the employees. Any kind of enticement offered to them to lure them to the city is at best a temporary arrangement that will dissolve the moment a cheaper offer is made. Government’s role is to collect enough tax revenue from these companies so that the community can survive the effects of the company’s demise or exit, and to create smart international trade agreements that protect the Canadian people and Canadian businesses instead of the multinational corporations.

 

Buzzwords A’plenty!

A buzzword is a word that used to sell an item without really explaining anything about it. Buzzwords can have a very technical origin, and they might have meant something useful at some point, but by the time they are bandied about by the general populace, they’ve become vague placeholders that are meant to trigger emotion, not transmit information. Buzzwords are fantastic selling tools, because they shift the purchasing decision away from “what features does this item have and do I need those features?” to “do I feel good when I think about buying this product?”

The LPC Biennial convention was awash in buzzwords. It was buzzword-driven, really. Bold. New. Change. Modern. Status Quo. Grassroots. Insiders. These words carry connotations and implications, but they have little practical value. I can proclaim that I will boldly innovate my next meal, but that could easily mean that I’m going to put fried eggs on top of chocolate pudding. Bold doesn’t mean good, and status quo doesn’t mean bad.

Initially, I was perplexed by how the majority of attendees embraced these buzzwords without asking what practical application they would have. They grumbled about “the insiders and elite” of the party being the cause of all evil, but the two leading presidential candidates were as inside as you can possibly get. As I caught on to the sense and function of the convention, I understood what was happening. It wasn’t about logic and pragmatic decision-making, it was about the psychology of identity and trauma.

Pretend that the Liberal Party is an individual, and consider how traumatic the May 2nd loss was, especially after 6+ years of being insulted and belittled publicly. A person who suffered through an experience that challenged their ego and self-esteem so profoundly would still be affected by the event 8 months later. So the party came together to reassure itself and repair its ego.  The change that they all rallied for was to change from losers to winners. And can’t we all get behind change like that?

Another huge part of the convention was reconnecting the members to the leaders, past and present. Faith in the leaders (and by extrapolation in the party itself) had become absent and worn out, and the members needed a chance to feel appreciated and listened to. Re-forging that bond between troops and generals was incredibly important, and the event was designed to do that. It was fan service for the loyal party members.

I wouldn’t want you to think that I was somehow disillusioned or jaded by the convention process. The more that I interact with groups of people and watch how they direct their own lives, the more I understand how much power emotion has over our minds. I know that the psychological element of the convention was much more important than policy book-keeping and constitutional bickering. Politics is a competitive sport, and the party had to get the fans back on side and excited.

As a side-note, I’m currently of the opinion that all human interaction is some kind of sales pitch, and that’s not a bad thing. We share information and test our knowledge by trying to convince others to adopt our perspective. So don’t attach any stigma to the term “sales” because we’re all looking for a little buy-in.

Missing my own bed

The school trip is an experience that is almost entirely a mystery to me. My mother’s over-protective tendencies, combined with our families financial restrictions, meant that any trip that had any perceived physical risk, would go out of the city and/or last longer than an afternoon was not for me. I have a clear memory of my grade 5 teacher (Mr. Finnegan, I believe) personally calling my mother to assure her that I would not be at high risk of grievous head trauma if I went roller skating with the class. And, other than sore feet and a significant amount of slow, wobbly turning, the outing was perfectly safe.

It took that level of intercession to change my mother’s mind, but an overnight trip was still out of the question. I understand what fueled her fear-I was a sickly kid, hospitalized several times for asthma attacks, and perpetually plagued with respiratory illness, ear aches, and sore throats. (For the medically curious readers looking for environmental triggers, the answer to your question is yes, my father smoked inside of the house for the entirety of my formative years). So my mother’s anxiety was understandable, and it transferred in some part to me. I would look at any potential variance from my normal routine and immediately examine it for health risks and other dangers. This all fed a general fear of the unknown.

But as you’ve witnessed in this blog, I’ve gone through a real change in the way I see my own life, and the things I want to do with it. And this new ambition and excitement has pushed me past my old reservations and into new unexplored experiences. This last weekend I went, by myself, to Ottawa for the Liberal Biennial Convention, and I discovered that the emotional reactions I would have had as a school-age child on a similar trip had simply been deferred until now. There were times when I was lost, confused, and scared, usually when trying to find a bus stop, or waiting to fall asleep in a strange bed.

The first night away from home was especially potent. I was physically exhausted from working until 11PM the night before, then sleeping fitfully before embarking on a 14 hour day of travel. I stumbled out of the convention centre at 9:30, with only a tenuous understanding of where to catch the bus. A few blocks of trudging through the snow passed, my luggage dragging my arms down and straining, and I staved off the desire to freak out, cry and panic long enough to find the bus stop. On the packed bus hurtling into the darkness, a sense of profound loneliness overwhelmed me. I was far away from my wonderful son and my loving wife, heading farther away from the only people I knew in the area, towards an apartment somewhere in the darkness. I was homesick.  Thankfully, I had enough presence of mind to remember that being exhausted and sleep-deprived always makes me overly sensitive and wildly emotional, so I resisted the urge to totally break down, and instead I crawled into bed and waited for sleep. Night 2 was much better, though the homesickness was still present.

Along with the normal, negative emotions that come with being away from home independently for the first time, came the positive experiences. I made a slew of new friends, people who made me laugh and made me think. I had a new. And whenever I was in the convention itself, I felt like I was supposed to be there. I wasn’t nervous about making a mistake or being disliked. I was confident.

And now I see the incredible value in giving your children the chance to experience the world independently. There is a point where protecting them from potential but unlikely harm inhibits their personal growth and their self-esteem. You can’t know how well you can handle a strange situation until you survive one.