Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Disgruntled and soon to be unemployed workers at a Nortel factory in near Paris decided to threaten to blow up the factory if they weren't given proper severance pay. Almost 500 layoffs were planned this week due to Nortel's bankruptcy proceedings here in Canada.

This, to me anyways, is just as crazy at that time in March where French workers held the boss hostage to demand better severance pay.

It wasn't the first "boss-napping" but those have since stopped... now it's bombs around buildings, recently Peugeot, Renault and Citreon employees also threatened to blow up factories if the salary demands weren't met.

This stuff is just messed up, I mean deep inside of me as someone who hasn't always been on top of the food chain: I feel like cheering for the workers who have the guts to stand up to fat cats and demand what they feel is theirs.

On the other side, as a shareholder you know how much money you've lost in Nortel and from a business point of view laying off these workers makes sense: so let's do it.

The problem with both of those mentalities is what I like to call the "Me me me factor":
-The worker is thinking only of himself, not of the thousands and millions of investors that have lost their homes, their shirts, their lives because of the losses Nortel has taken over the years.
-The shareholders couldn't care less about the workers because they want dividends and profits.

All of the above, in some twisted and strange sort of way, makes SENSE it is the ESSENCE of capitalism... Is it perfect? no. But it's dog eat dog and every man for himself. So you can hate the shareholders or you can hate the workers, because in the end everyone is the same: Me. me. me.

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