CAW Screws its Members Out of Jobs!!!

This is actual breaking news that I've heard tonight straight from the horse's mouth. I was trying to find some sources to quote but I was, as of yet, unable to find any.

A GM dealership called Gravel in the upscale city of Iles-Des-Soeurs, just outside of Montreal, was on the verge of closing its doors and laying off all its employees. When the owner of said dealership decided to sit down with the people from whom he leases the land and the workers (sales, maintenance, administration) from his dealership and lay it all down.

He told them that if they could pay a lower price for the lease for the next twelve months and the workers accepted a 10% percent cut, he could manage to keep the dealership open and try to weather out the economic storm. Everyone agreed, from the landlord down to the receptionist.

When the workers of the dealership presented the plan to the CAW (Canadian Auto Workers Union) to have them work out the details, they refused. Stating that it would set a dangerous precedent for other dealership owners to cut wages across the board. Basically telling these workers that they would have to lose their jobs instead of taking a pay cut.

Who the heck is this union working for anyways? Maybe someone can explain it to me because my basic understanding of a union was that it was there to protect its members, not to have its own agenda and not help their members keep their jobs.

The case is now being heard in Quebec courts. I really hope the workers win because they probably have families to feed and were happy to keep their jobs. 90% of something is better than 100% of nothing, you'd think the largest private sector union in the country would understand that, seeing as how everyone else does.

Muchacho Enfermo

Obama to GM CEO: You're fired

In a move that surprised the industry and will surely rock the stock market today, President Obama asked GM CEO Rick Wagoner to resign. The President has also given Chrysler a 60 day deadline to prove it is worthy of bailout money.

I have a really mixed sort of emotion about this whole thing, as I'm writing this I'm not even sure how the end of this post will look.

On the one hand I LOVE the accountability that Obama is trying to push hard for, especially when giving out tax dollars; as opposed to say... the proposed Conservative slush fund to "quickly disperse the money without going through the usual parliamentary spending checks" , which did not have the safeguards in place to protect Canadian tax dollars. I also love that the President seems to be paying attention to what companies are doing and the economy.

On the flip side, I don't like that when he appears on TV for presidential addresses the stock market almost inevitably goes down the next day. I also very much dislike the idea that a President of the US can force the president of a publicly traded company to resign. Can he urge the board to make radical changes? Certainly. Could he make suggestions to said board? Of course, the bailout money is his to dole out.

But GM is not a federally owned company, like say VIA Rail is here in Canada. That for me is where my moral dilemma lies. I understand that he's trying to look out for his people, making sure their money is well spent, making sure that past trends are reversed; and I agree with all of that. I just have a hard time believing what I'm seeing in the country that is probably the purest form of capitalism known to man, you wouldn't even see something like this in Canada and we LOVE public programs such as Healthcare, Medicare, EI, Welfare, Child Tax Credits and "Free Education". The only time CEOs here were forced to step down was after the sponsorship scandal where government funds had been misspent and misdirected.

GM under its current management probably doesn't deserve billions of tax dollars and yes, the CEO should have resigned, along with most of the board. But that's just my view, as a potential shareholder. Maybe the President is also a shareholder... In any case, as steward to the trillions of American Tax Dollars and after the bailout goes, he'll be the only shareholder that matters.

Muchacho Enfermo

Why don't we bail out Nortel?

When Stephen Harper and Dalton McGuinty announced they would follow suit with the US and hand over a 4 billion dollar bailout package to the big 3, a large portion of the population was supportive of the move.

Checking the website of the CAW (Canadian Auto Workers union) it clearly shows that 13% of their 250,000 members work directly for major auto companies. That means 32,500 people are employed by ALL major automakers that have plants in Canada, not just the big three. In addition the two of the big three have posted tremendous loses in the last 4 years. GM has lost 73 billion dollars since 2004 and Ford lost 12.7 billion dollars in 2006 alone.

That just goes to show a serious lack in the management of these companies even in times of economic boom. But we still gave them 4 billion of our tax dollars.

Nortel on the other hand still employs about 32,500 people (only about 6500 in Canada though) and compared to Ford and GM Nortel actually made money in 2006.

I'm not saying Nortel is an amazing company with and excellent business model but I'm saying that people are quick to judge and remember how much money Nortel cost a lot of in the stock market. A poll in the Globe and Mailshowed that 88% of respondents didn't think that Ottawa should bail out Nortel.

If the government wants to give money to companies with ailing business strategies that are years past their prime like GM and Ford why not give at least a little money to Nortel? The deserve it just as much as those wonderful people in the big 3. Maybe if the employees of Nortel had a huge union behind them it would be a little different who knows?

I just know that thousands of Canadians will lose their job and that a government that was so quick to help the auto-industry seems to want nothing to do with the tech sector.

Muchacho Enfermo