Bombardier Strategy Poses Dilemma For Labour
Posted on Tuesday, March 15 at 12:17 by Perturbed
"You can imagine 1,000 jobs disappearing, plus all of the spin-offs, the suppliers," McLean said, recalling the pressure he received from the community.
His fight in 2002 reminds him of the brinksmanship playing out between Bombardier Aerospace and its workers in Montreal, Toronto and Belfast, Northern Ireland, as they battle to win production of the company's proposed new C-series jet.
"I was reading the other day about Bombardier and I thought to myself, scratch out the name, move it to Manitoba and you got the exact same situation."
While dangling the carrot of 2,500 new jobs, the aircraft builder approached workers in its various plants to see what costs could be cut before deciding where to locate final assembly. That decision will likely come down early this week.
Bombardier hopes the 110-135-seat C-series will grab a 50 per cent share of the mid-size jet market that one company official said amounts to $250 billion (U.S.), or 6,000 aircraft over the next 20 years.
The Toronto workers didn't even sniff. Feeling they already sacrificed enough during a recent contract negotiation, members of Canadian auto Workers Local 112 voted last month not to discuss concessions that would take effect next year. After agreeing to a wage freeze and changes in work rules as part of a 2003 deal that cost the local 360 jobs, the union feels it has already done enough to earn new work.
If it does not win the C-series, Local 112, which represents 1,600 workers with 700 on layoff, could be pushed further toward the margins of Bombardier's worldwide operations.
But the 6,300 Montreal workers bit, opened talks, made concessions and are guaranteed work until at least 2020 if the C-series moves there.
Who made the right choice? Some observers and labour advocates say there are no winners in what is just the latest example of how labour is becoming increasingly irrelevant in today's global economy.
The carrot-and-stick approach to reducing costs truly gained popularity in the 1980s as big companies expanded their foothold throughout the globe and capitalized on their increasing options, said Anil Verma, a professor at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management.
"Capital could go more places and could produce more cheaply in different locations. Those opportunities could not be ignored by management," he said. "Some of us called it strategic bargaining. Traditionally it was not part of collective bargaining (where) businesses made their own business decisions separately and came to (negotiate) about wages and existing operations."
Verma's colleague at Rotman, assistant professor John Oesch, wonders what shareholder wouldn't expect Bombardier to try to get the best deal from its workers when customers are putting more pressure on suppliers and thinning profit margins.
"Bombardier is really squeezed. Their margins are really small, maybe 2, 2.5 per cent," he said. "They're being pushed by their customers; they're going to push on the unions."
As the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) noted in a 2004 research paper, the nation's aerospace industry has lost one-quarter, or 13,000, of its jobs since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The unions, then, should be willing to co-operate, Oesch added, "instead of taking an adversarial position and saying, `We want, we want.' It's a big mind-shift for unions."
But some are not as sympathetic to Bombardier encouraging workers to compete against each other.
"It's akin to being children of parents and have those two parents consider giving your pocket money to some other kids on the street," said the CAW's Bob Hamilton, plant chairman at Bombardier's Downsview facility.
Put another way, "These guys are poker players. The notion that Bombardier is really squeezed is dubious, to put it mildly. What they're doing is unethical given the pressures working people are under," said Leo Panitch, a political science professor at York University and co-author of From Consent to Coercion — The Assault on Trade Union Freedoms.
"Corporations are playing (globalization) to the hilt," he added. "Anyone who tells you this is a process without an author is not telling you the truth. These things are done by human beings."
Which got a rise out of Bombardier's John Paul Macdonald.....
www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1110754209069&call_pageid=970599119419
Contributed By
Topic
Article Rating
(0 votes)
Options
Stumble It!Comments
view comments in forum
Page 1
By and large the unions have failed at the task they were originally created for. Namely to provide protection for all working men and women. They degenerated into little cliques of money train addicts who were not interested in any one but themselves. Well, we are back on the firing line now! The company goons are coming for us. We will either stand together or fall apart.
In many workplaces where there are large unions, they are almost invisible. You rarely hear of them, and often have to search vigourously to find your local representative. If you do find them, they are increasingly ineffective in dealing with day-to-day grievance-type issues directly affecting individual workers. Often they are absorbed with the process rather than the results. Few believe any more that "going to the union" will help you to solve any problem. More likely it will double your stress, the union will pressure you or blame you for your own problems, and management will make things even more difficult for you, in an effort to further neutralize the union. For many workers its just not worth it.
Big unions have also become increasingly "corporate" in the generic sense. They have property, investments and cash flows to protect; thus it's easy to imagine that they could have an agenda at variance with that of their membership. Their national elections are frequently convoluted and indirect, and often mistrusted by the grass roots as being manipulated, perhaps even when that isn't so. Nobody seems to know who or what they are voting for. Very few vote at all. They have been frequently accused of intimidation and dirty tricks, and even of violence as recently demonstrated in the Windsor Wal-Mart situation.
In addition, they are deep in denial. Even though most of the critisism they receive from their own membership is well intentioned and meant to help, instead of listening they lash out, and threaten their critics to the point where nobody gives a hoot about them any more. When you hear of a union threatening to sue its own members because they don't support it, you've got to believe it is in deep trouble.
That's one big reason, when push comes to shove, many unions can't muster enough support from their membership to resist tough employer tactics. For the same reason, they can no longer deliver the votes or support of their membership for progressive political parties or candidates. Indeed, the opposite is often true.
Canadian labour unions need to undergo some tough
self-examination. They need almost entirely new leadership and a completely new direction. They need to re-evaluate their corporatism, and above all reconnect with their grass roots goals. We need them more than ever, but right now they are seen by too many as a big part of the problem rather than a part of the solution. I hope that will change very soon.