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June 1, 2012 - No. 82

Too Big to Fail and Too Big to Negotiate

Anti-Social Dictatorship of the Monopolies


Striking CP Rail workers and supporters rally on Parliament Hill against back-to-work legislation, May 29, 2012. (TCRC)

Too Big to Fail and Too Big to Negotiate
Anti-Social Dictatorship of the Monopolies

Interview
CP Rail Teamster Pickets at Vancouver Intermodal Facility

Harper Dictatorship's Continuing Disinformation
Fraud of "Fiscal Austerity" to Attack the Workers - Dougal MacDonald

Government's Forced Labour Regime
Harper Dictatorship's Forced and Slave Labour Policies Take It Down the Nazi Road - George Allen

Discussion on Budget Implementation Act

Universal Social Security Programs Are Required for a Democratic and Humane Society - Jim Nugent


Too Big to Fail and Too Big to Negotiate

Anti-Social Dictatorship of the Monopolies

The working class is charged by history to build the new

Federal legislation to crush the strike of CPR workers and criminalize them if they refuse to work under terms dictated by the monopoly is further proof that Canada has sunk into an unabashed dictatorship of the monopolies. According to the Harper government, CPR is too big to negotiate because it controls 40 per cent of rail traffic. The Harper government will not allow a disruption of that much rail transport as it contends the damage to the economy is too great. The Harper government argued similarly, when it legislated an end to workers' struggles with Air Canada and Canada Post.

Even without specific legislation, global monopolies routinely refuse to negotiate with their workers and simply dictate terms of employment. Monopolies such as Rio Tinto Alcan, U.S. Steel, Caterpillar and Vale use the power of their global reach to extort concessions from workers. Workers are ordered to pay the price of the capitalist tendency towards monopoly in the economy with negation of their right to negotiate wages, benefits, pensions and working conditions acceptable to them and their peers.

This dictatorship of monopolies extends also into the field of public regulations governing their operations. The omnibus federal budget Bill C-38 contains measures that emasculate public input and regulations governing the environment, fisheries and other aspects of the social and natural environment.

In Quebec, the Charest government has brought in a Special Law negating civil rights to push through higher tuition fees that favour the banking oligopoly and punish the people. Many of those same banks across the country that profit from government guaranteed student loans received at least $114 billion in public pay-the-rich bailouts during the recent economic crises to save them from collapse because they are deemed "too big to fail."

CPR -- From Nation-Building to Annexation into the U.S. Empire

Bill Ackman, a U.S. billionaire using a New York City investment company called Pershing Square Capital Management recently gained control of Canadian Pacific Railway. Just prior to the strike, Ackman denounced the current CPR leadership for the company's falling rate of profit. May 17, Ackman eased out CPR's chief executive Fred Green with a "golden handshake" worth $18 million plus a pension of $1.6 million a year. Green and four directors were replaced with Ackman appointees. CPR workers inform TML that Green was pushed out in a proxy war led by Ackman and supported by large blocks of shares held by the Ontario Teachers' Pension fund and the Canada Pension Plan fund. Many workers including teachers would like to know how these funds of the Canadian people's savings became a factor in the U.S. annexation of a major and historical Canadian corporation like the CPR. Ironic indeed that a railway originally conceived to unite Canada in opposition to U.S. expansion and continentalism has become annexed by U.S. imperialism and is attacking Canadian workers and the economy with the active consent and participation of large Canadian pension funds and the federal government, which is politicizing the private demands of Ackman in opposition to the rights of Canadian workers.

In a press scrum after the introduction of legislation to criminalize the strike of CPR workers, a reporter asked Labour Minister Lisa Raitt, "Many Canadians believe you are acting on behalf of a New York hedge fund and not on behalf of the people. How do you respond?" "Ridiculous!" she blurted out. Ridiculous indeed Labour Minister. That is precisely what many Canadians think of your actions and the state of political and economic affairs in a country dominated by global monopolies and annexed into the U.S. Empire.

This dictatorship of the monopolies over the Canadian people openly flaunted by Harper, Charest and the provincial premiers and their cronies is of great concern. What kind of country are we heading towards with this unbridled control of monopoly capital over our economy and lives? That is a question on many people's minds. Canadians are told to accept the rise of global monopolies as inevitable under capitalism and that no alternative exists. With acceptance of the dominance of monopolies in most sectors of the economy comes the inevitable rationale that their failure or any disruption of their activities is unacceptable. For the Harper dictatorship, common sense must prevail. CPR controls 40 per cent of the country's rail traffic; a prolonged disruption, in the words of Lisa Raitt, would put "other people's livelihoods at risk.... We cannot wait any longer. Not when our economy hangs in the balance. [This government is] here on a mandate to protect the economy."

The problem for Canadians is that "the economy" is dominated by private monopoly interests and in this case U.S. private interests and the government instead of protecting Canadians and their economy is protecting and politicizing the U.S. dominated private interests in opposition to not only CPR workers but farmers and all other workers and their communities whose livelihoods are connected with shipping and producing those commodities the CPR monopoly handles.

Canadians are told that for the monopolies to compete and survive in the global marketplace they must be merged with the financial, legislative, police and military powers of the state. The state has become a gigantic public-private monopoly-partnership rife with corruption, pay-the-rich schemes and class privilege. Private monopoly interests are politicized in various ways while the public interest is disavowed creating a state monopoly capitalist dictatorship that controls our economy and all major aspects of the way we live and relate to one another.

This situation has created a glaring contradiction between the people and monopoly capital that must be resolved based on the recognition that people have rights by virtue of being human, including the right to govern themselves and control their economy, and that monopolies, whether public or private, must come under the control of the popular will.

The working class has to respond to the present contradiction and reality with eyes wide open and clear thinking as to how to organize to defend itself effectively, hold high the public interest and general interests of society and open a path forward. Canadians are at a crossroads demanding new ways of organizing and actions with analysis that break new ground. Workers cannot afford to be aloof and think that life will just carry on in the old way; the evidence points to the contrary. Anti-worker, anti-social disequilibrium has descended on the country. Only the working class organized to defend the rights of all, armed with an agenda to take the economy and nation in a new pro-social direction can mobilize the popular will and break new ground towards an alternative.

Too big to fail and too big to negotiate, the monopolies have seen their day.

The new is waiting to be created. The working class is charged by history to lead Canadians in building the new.

CP Rail Workers' Rally on Parliament Hill, May 29




(Photos: TCRC)

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Interview

CP Rail Teamster Pickets at
Vancouver Intermodal Facility

TML: Can you please inform Canadians about the issues you face, whether they relate to negotiations or not. Tell us about your working conditions.

Jim Armillotta: I've been a locomotive engineer for 34 years. I just finished doing a stint for 28 years in Revelstoke, and recently moved back to Vancouver in October 2011. My main issue is that I only have a couple of years to retiring after so many years of work. The company seems to want to take away what I thought I'd have as a retirement package. My understanding was I'd get a livable pension to retire with like my father and grandfather did. I'm third generation railroader, and have two younger brothers with CP. They're trying to cut back to a cap which is less than I have been able to generate in my last five years of working according to the old arrangement. Also they want to eliminate our medical benefit package after age 65.

In addition they want to expand the hours of work from 10 hours to 12 hours. They only give an $80 stipend if you go over 10 hours of work now, but it doesn't compensate for the exhaustion you suffer after working 10 hours. Often even though you exceed your 10 hours, you don't get the $80 through little loop holes. Like you arrive in terminal just before 10 hours, they cut you off there, but then they send your train to another terminal in Vancouver, then we have to taxi back to our home terminal, and by the time the day is really over, we've put in 12 hours, but we don't collect the $80.

I understand where CP is coming from wanting 12 hours because they don't want to double-man the trains. Now they may have to use two crews to get the train to the designated place.

The size of the trains has been designed from an office and says X amount of footage can be pulled by one or two engines from point A to point B in Y hours, without taking into account the real times needed to move the product. The time sequences they impose are not realistic. We pull up to 160 cars on a grain train, 170 on a potash train. One crew out of Vancouver Intermodal Facility (VIF) now pulls 10,000 feet, almost two miles long. Going 10 to 15 mph it takes almost 12 minutes to clear the crossings in the neighbourhood. No wonder the public is annoyed waiting for our trains to cross. These trains are extremely long and slow, and with exhausted crews it's dangerous. If you take a broken sleep for four hours or so, then they abandon you in Boston Bar for up to 14 hours, away from family and not getting pay. There is no incentive for them to take you out of there, so the pressure is always to work up to Boston Bar, and then grab a train and take it back to Vancouver. In a 24-hour day, they can work you up to 18 hours. Of course they can always say, "Well, that's your choice!"

TML: Canadians hear bits and pieces about your "big wages" and "high pensions," but they don't appreciate the work actually done and how the scheduling wrecks family life, has you missing appointments. It's very stressful.

Don Holt: I've been at the CPR for 28 and a half years. I've been an engineer for about 18 years. It took me 10 years to become one, and I'm also a third generation railroader. The company has vacillated on hiring our sons and daughters. They stopped for a while, now they've resumed doing that. Today there are more women workers. Right now I'm a freight engineer, so there is no planning for family life. I'm out of my kids sports and school events, can't plan for weddings etc. If I really need to go somewhere, I have to take a day off without pay. But if we take too many days off then they cut you right back to a minimum.

If I start work at midnight, I try and get a couple of hours before going, which is not always easy. You get to Northbend (Boston Bar) which is our "away from home terminal" for VIF and Coquitlam. Coming back we can stop at VIF, or we could be told to "run through" to Vancouver, Port Moody or Sapperton which adds up to four hours a day. Once you're in the terminal, you're no longer a "priority" so you can sit there for hours. We're usually gone 24 hours, so you're away from home six months a year. It's very hard on family life. We have too high a divorce rate related to this problem. They can tell you to work on your kid's birthday, and it's not uncommon.

Mike Mason: I've been at CP for 21 years and I'm also a freight engineer. I just want to add a bit about this problem of broken sleep and broken time off. We have an absentee policy at CP. They even count your authorized leave of absence (ALAs) against your absentee record. They expect you to have 98.7 attendance over the year. We are not entitled to any sick days. They don't pay for even one sick day. We have to take a day on our leave. You have to talk to a manager at VIF if you're sick. They want a doctor's note within 72 hours. But it doesn't affect them financially. If I lose a 24 hour trip, I lose up to $800; the company loses nothing. Their over-all policy is to keep the working collective of engineers, conductors, trainmen and yardmen to a minimum. Now they want to shrink it by extending the hours of work to 12 hours instead of 10. They basically want to take out a shift in the middle of the day. They want to eliminate the 8 hour shifts in the yard. They plan to do this by expanding those hours to 12, which would cut out a shift.

Jim Ross: I've been at CP for 26 years, 22 years as an engineer. I worked for BC Rail for four years, then I got a job at CP. One thing people should know is the demand of CP Rail to increase the mileage needed to be worked before you get time off. Instead of 3,800 miles a month, they want to expand it to 4,300 miles which CN already has in place for conductors and trainmen. Vancouver to Boston Bar is roughly 300 miles. Now we get time off after 3,800 miles. Under the present arrangement, if I work 80 hours a week, I'd get four or five days off for miles. But if they raise that to 4,300 miles, that would be four more trips, so I'd never get time off for miles. My understanding is that trainmen and conductors at CN work 4,800 hours with their contract, and now CP wants to push it on to all of us, including engineers at CP. I'm sure if you analyzed the situation across the country, hundreds of CP workers would lose their "time off for hours," a serious set-back for railroaders in Canada.

BC Federation of Labour Support Rally, Vancouver, May 29



(Photos: M. Cook)

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Harper Dictatorship's Continuing Disinformation

Fraud of "Fiscal Austerity" to Attack the Workers

The monopolies, their governments, and their media continue to spread disinformation that the world is in recession, that economies are fragile, and that everyone (except the monopolies) must accept "fiscal austerity." All the tired old mantras are trotted out: "tighten your belts," "lower your expectations," "do more with less," "find efficiencies," "contain costs" and so on. On May 15, for example, Canada's Minister of Finance James Flaherty told a Senate Subcommittee that in view of the "Greek crisis," the best thing Canada can do to insulate itself from possible repercussions is to maintain its fiscal discipline by reducing deficits, paying down debt and ensuring Canada's banks remain well regulated. Obviously, this also means escalating the Harper dictatorship's vicious attacks on social programs.

But the facts expose that talk of recession and fiscal austerity is deliberate disinformation. Each year in May, Time-Life's Fortune business magazine publishes the revenues of the largest monopolies in the U.S., all of which do business in Canada. The May 21, 2012 issue of Fortune shows that in 2011, the top 500 U.S. corporations generated $824.5 billion in earnings, up 16.4 per cent over 2010. Not only that, the amount of revenue they generated exceeded that generated during the "roaring economy" of 2006, which was prior to the "recession". How is this huge increase in revenues a recession for the monopolies? Obviously the so-called recession is very selective in who it injures and who it rewards.

Number one in revenues in 2011 was the Rockefellers' Exxon, which, through its subsidiary, Imperial Oil, controls Alberta's largest oil sands monopoly Syncrude, exploits conventional oil and gas, and runs Esso gas stations across Canada. In 2011, Exxon's revenues ranked first of the Fortune 500 at $843 billion, an increase of 27.7 per cent from 2010. Exxon's profits also ranked first at $41,060 billion, an increase of 34.8 per cent from 2010. Exxon invaded Alberta in 1920 when former Premier Peter Lougheed's grandfather, James Lougheed, and his partner R. B. Bennett, later prime minister, sold their company, Calgary Petroleum Products, to Imperial Oil. Imperial struck Leduc #1 in 1947, the major crude oil discovery which ushered in Alberta's energy era, and Imperial is now Canada's fifth largest company by assets. It is well-known that Exxon/Imperial and other energy monopolies are the real rulers of the province of Alberta and that the provincial government gives them every assistance to more effectively plunder Alberta's oil energy resources.

Exxon and the Fortune 500 fattened their revenues in 2011 mainly by directly attacking the workers. On May 7, 2012, Andy Serwer, Fortune managing editor, said on CBS: "Corporate America is doing great right now .... A lot of that has to do with the fact that they've cut back. They've cut costs during the downturn, meaning layoffs quite frankly. That's why profits are so high." In other words, record corporate revenues have been achieved by firing workers and/or slashing their wages and benefits. This goes hand in hand with continued outsourcing of production to locations where labour is cheap. The Wall Street Journal reported on April 19, 2011, that a survey of some of the largest U.S. corporations -- Walmart, Chevron, General Electric, Microsoft, Caterpillar, etc. -- revealed that they cut their workforces by 2.9 million people over the last decade while hiring 2.4 million workers overseas.

The disinformation of a recession is a half-truth. There is a recession for the working people but there is a continuing boom for the monopolies and the two go hand in hand. Now the ruling circles want the working people to tighten their belts even more and to give even more concessions to the monopolies and their governments so that in 2012 those same monopolies, which are controlled by such folks as the mega-rich Rockefellers, can make even greater gains, maybe even a trillion dollars in 2012. All this is to be achieved on the backs of the workers because poverty for the workers ensures prosperity for the rich. That is why fiscal austerity for the people is currently being promoted as the "winning formula" for the monopolies and their governments.

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Government's Forced Labour Regimen

Harper Dictatorship's Forced and Slave Labour Policies Take It Down the Nazi Road

On May 24, Human Resources Minister Diane Finley revealed more about the Harper dictatorship's sweeping changes to Employment Insurance (EI). With each announcement the full extent of the despicable forced labour agenda is further revealed, and the necessity to oppose it. History is very revealing here. The use of forced and slave labour in Nazi Germany and occupied Europe during the Second World War took place on a huge scale as it did in Asia with the forced labour of the Koreans and Chinese by Japan.

In Europe it was a vital part of Nazi economic exploitation of conquered territories, and also contributed to the mass extermination of European populations. The Nazis abducted approximately twelve million people from almost twenty European countries; about two-thirds of whom came from Eastern Europe. 2.8 million workers were kidnapped from the Soviet Union, the Nazis' main target.

About fifteen million men and women were forced labourers for the monopolies behind the Nazi regime at one point or another during the war. At the peak, forced labourers comprised twenty per cent of the German work force. The largest numbers worked in the German war industry, repaired bombed railroads and bridges, or worked on farms. Many workers died due to their onerous living conditions, mistreatment, malnutrition or became civilian casualties of war. Extermination through labour was a Nazi policy that demanded that camp inmates must work for the German war industry with only basic tools and minimal food until totally exhausted. Workers were executed when they became unable to work.

The Nazis developed a labourer classification system based on layers of increasingly less privileged workers (i.e., guest workers, forced workers and slave labourers). The relatively well-paid "guest workers" from Germany's allies were at the top of the hierarchy and the slave labourers from conquered "subhuman" populations at the bottom. The forced labourers in between were further divided, in descending order, into military internees/prisoners of war, civilian workers mainly from Poland, and Eastern workers who were mainly from the Soviet Union. European forced labourers received at most about one-half of what was paid to German workers, while the forced labourers who were prisoners received little if any wages or benefits.

As the war progressed, the use of unpaid slave labour grew massively. Millions of conquered peoples were used as slave labourers by more than 2,000 German corporations, such as Thyssen, Krupp, IG Farben and Siemens, all of which exist in one form or another today. Even before the war, Nazi Germany maintained a supply of slave labour, beginning from the early days, of the different categories of labour camps for "undesirables" such as communists, political dissidents, Jews, the homeless, homosexuals, and anyone whom the regime wanted to eliminate. Even children were kidnapped to work in an operation called the Heu-Aktion.

U.S. corporate subsidiaries in Germany such as Fordwerke, a subsidiary of the Ford Motor Company, Adam Opel AG, a subsidiary of General Motors, and Focke-Wulf, a subsidiary of ITT, all of which built military equipment for the Nazi war machine, also used forced and slave labour, enabling them to greatly increase their profits. Ford's German branch plant posted heavy losses in the early 1930s. However, with lucrative government contracts, thanks to Hitler's rearmament drive, Ford-Werke's annual profits rose spectacularly from 63,000 Reichsmarks (RM) in 1935 to 1,287,800 RM in 1939. The share of the German automobile market of GM's Opel factory (in Rüsselsheim) grew from 35 per cent in 1933 to more than 50 per cent in 1935 and in 1938 recorded earnings of 35 million RM (about $14 million U.S.) No wonder the U.S. owners and managers, such as Henry Ford, openly expressed their admiration for Hitler. And no wonder the owners and managers of today's monopolies so enthusiastically endorse the forced and slave labour policies of the Harper dictatorship which rules solely in their interests.

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Discussion on Budget Implementation Act

Universal Social Security Programs Are Required for a Democratic and Humane Society

The Harper government's omnibus budget implementation Bill C-38 is making sweeping changes to programs which seriously affect people's lives. These changes are being rammed through Parliament in the most undemocratic way  and the Executive power is being expanded so changes can be made arbitrarily by ministers through regulation without ever coming back to Parliament.  No consideration whatever is given to consulting with or seeking approval from the people whose lives will be acutely affected by social program changes.

Since the Harper Conservatives achieved a majority government through their 2011 electoral coup, they have unleashed another wave of cuts and attacks on social security and other social programs, including cuts to Old Age Security and benefits for unemployed workers and caps to provincial health and social transfers. The Harperites have rejected the need for social investment, considering social programs as expenses standing in the way of economic development. They have declared the medieval motto "Fend For Yourself!" as the foundation of Canada's 21st century social policy.

All of this started following the 1993 federal election win by the Liberal Party when the government of Jean Chrétien with Paul Martin as Finance Minister launched a massive assault on social programs resulting in billions of dollars in cuts to health and social transfers to the provinces and cuts to federal social programs and services. Major cuts to benefits for unemployed workers and the expropriation of Employment Insurance (EI) funds to put them into general revenues were part of this anti-social offensive.

The Chrétien-Martin cuts prolonged the recession of the early '90s, causing years of jobless recovery. The cuts to EI caused hardship for workers during the entire period that followed, which was characterized by the wholesale wrecking of manufacturing and other sectors. When the financial crisis of 2008 hit and resulted in a sharp increase in unemployment during the 2009 recession, the changes Chrétien-Martin had made to EI meant most unemployed workers did not have the protection of EI benefits. Now the bankrupt politicians serving the rich have put more cuts to social security programs back on the agenda, including another round of drastic degradation of EI support for unemployed workers.

On March 9, 1994, Hardial Bains, National Leader of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) presented a brief on social security reform to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources Development (HRDC) opposing the direction Chrétien and Martin were leading the country. In this brief, Hardial Bains outlined fundamental principles that need to be considered in any changes to social security programs. These principles are relevant as well in the face of the Harperite wave of the anti-social offensive. To assist the Workers' Opposition to consider the Harper government's attack on social security and other social programs and how to respond, produced below are excerpts from the 1994 brief by Hardial Bains which outline these principles:

"1. In relation to social programs, it is not the universality principle which should be modified or abandoned. On the contrary, measures should be taken to ensure that the system guarantees the well-being and happiness of all and not riches for the few and poverty for the many. In this regard, great care should be taken not to impose changes to social programs or levels of programs such as to UI [Unemployment Insurance; now Employment Insurance] eligibility requirements in an arbitrary way, as is presently done when a budget is presented to Parliament or decisions are made which fundamentally affect the lives of Canadians. Canadians are constantly put into a position of having to adjust their entire lives to cope with such changes. Whether an unemployed person receives 60% or 57% of prior wages makes a vast difference when this is his or her only source of income. The same applies to all those who depend on social welfare or other social programs.

"2. Social programs necessarily deal with these areas which concern basic human rights to health, education, welfare, social insurance, affordable housing, pensions, and so on. Therefore they must be put at the centre of concern of a human society. Any attempt to consider these expenditures as merely an expense, rather than a basic social investment, should be abandoned. This is all the more true when the claims of the moneylenders on society are not questioned, but the claims of Canadians on society are.

"3. Canadians have the fundamental democratic right to fully participate in making the decisions which affect their lives. Therefore, no decisions should be made as concerns social programs before submitting them first for the approval of those whose lives they will affect. The consultation process which is undertaken must, therefore, not be used, as has been the case in the past, as a means to legitimize a pre-determined agenda."

The Harperites are using the most inflammatory and divisive type of politics to promote their anti-social agenda. Their rhetoric around the changes to EI is particularly despicable as it seeks to atomize the widespread resistance to these changes by pitting worker against worker and region against region as it rolls out its EI agenda. Workers in fisheries and other seasonal work are being viciously attacked as freeloaders on the EI system and criminalized. Arbitrary categories of workers are being defined with varying punitive measures established within these categories and a large section of workers is totally excluded from benefits, negating any concept that all people have a right to a livelihood because they are human beings. Outright racism is being promoted on the question of tying EI benefits to Temporary Foreign Worker programs.

In this situation, where the Harperites are trying to create maximum antagonism and disunity among people and the regions around the issue of EI and social programs in general, the concluding remarks in Comrade Bains' 1994 brief on social programs are very relevant:

"Finally, at this time, there are interests which conflict with one another because of the foundation of society and the way it is run. Individual interests run counter to collective interests and individual and collective interests conflict with the general interests of society. A broad program of social programs based on the principle of universality can go a long way towards harmonizing the individual interests with those of the collective and the individual and collective interests with the general interests of society.

"Society has come a long way from the days of medievalism. Nonetheless, the existence of disparities between rich and poor and the pressure that society must only respond to the claims of the rich, are pushing it to go backwards instead of making a clean break with medievalism and creating an entirely new society, in which the well-being of one will be dependent on the well-being of all. A system of comprehensive social programs will contribute in a decisive way to creating a really democratic and humane society, in which all interests will be harmonized in favour of opening the path for progress."

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