O Canada! > Canadian > Canadian Chat > So, who says there's no need for unions?

Sure, no surprise. And even more manufacturing jobs -- far, far more -- were lost to the "right to work" in China, where workers still regularly kill themselves because suicide is preferable to the abject misery of their current existence.

Sure, no surprise. And even more manufacturing jobs -- far, far more -- were lost to the "right to work" in China, where workers still regularly kill themselves because suicide is preferable to the abject misery of their current existence.

And even more manufacturing jobs -- far, far more -- were lost to the "right to work" in China, where workers still regularly kill themselves because suicide is preferable to the abject misery of their current existence.

As described by the squadron of columnists the (Toronto Star) apparently keeps on hand for such events, the “London massacre,” or in more polite terms, “industrial rape,” was not merely a business decision by the plant’s owners, Caterpillar Inc., or even an egregious assault on workers’ rights.

Rather, Caterpillar was absconding with a vast storehouse of intellectual property developed at “London’s 90-year-old EMD” — patents, technology, equipment, trade secrets, manufacturing processes, the works. Worse, it was doing so with the benefit of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds.
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It’s a compelling story — foreigners buy “our” plant, steal “our” technology, and all with our money! Except:

•EMD is not a Canadian company, and never was. Caterpillar bought it from a pair of American private equity firms in 2010; they bought it from General Motors in 2005, who bought it from its Ohio-based founders in 1930. Since 1935 it has been headquartered in La Grange, Illinois. The London branch plant was opened in 1950.

•Caterpillar didn’t buy the London plant. It bought the whole company, including its La Grange operations, which is where EMD does its design and engineering work, as well as making parts. It seems unlikely it would have stashed its most valuable intellectual property at a far-off final assembly plant. (Incidentally, as the economist Michael Moffatt points out, GM moved all final assembly work to London from La Grange shortly after the Free Trade Agreement went into effect. The jobs we’re worried about losing to the States are jobs we took from them.)

•Even if it were a Canadian company, and even if it possessed a Valhallah of patents, it still wouldn’t belong to “us.” It would belong to them: its Canadian owners, who shelled out good money for it, presumably in anticipation of selling it one day. Caterpillar didn’t steal the company: it paid for it. If its proprietary technology had any value, its previous owners would be just as capable of realizing this, I’m guessing, as any Toronto columnist, and of charging accordingly.

•EMD never received any subsidies from the federal government; certainly not since Caterpillar bought it. Indeed, looking through the hundreds of pages of “grants and contribution” in the Public Accounts, it may be the only company in the country that didn’t. The Harper visit to which Olive refers was to promote a tax break for the purchasers of locomotives, not the manufacturers. The visit occurred in 2008, two years before the Caterpillar purchase. (ref)

The reality is that we 'stole' those jobs from the United States to begin with

The reality is that we 'stole' those jobs from the United States to begin with, when the dollar was low and wages were reasonable. Times change and unions need to adapt. In this case they didn't and now the jobs are gone for good.

That last point about tax subsidies drives a stake right through the biased Star story. They're still po'd that Harper defeated all their editorial choices.

Suffice to say that "right-to-work" is a weasel phrase designed to sound good but what it really means is union-busting,

And it bugs the hell out of me to see Canadians here trying to defend the robber-baron culture of CAT and EMD.

The truth is, we don't really know what the true state of things was at the London EMD plant. Often heavily union shops in older factories are poisonous environments. If we take Progress Rail's word for it, the plant was bleeding cash and needed labour concessions to improve the bottom line. The union refused to budge an inch, and the inevitable happened. We don't really know what EMD would have accepted as concessions. And it certainly could well be that the plan was to close the plant.

Where do you think this right to work movement in the US will evolve into eventually. Do you think the corporate elite will be satisfied once all the states are right to work.

Ask yourself one question, (I have to leave again), if it's such a money loser, why buy it?

Ask yourself one question, (I have to leave again), if it's such a money loser, why buy it?

Ask yourself one question, (I have to leave again), if it's such a money loser, why buy it?