February 15, 2018

Quebec Nurses Take Action to End the Crisis in Their Sector

Breaking the Silence About Unsustainable Working Conditions and Degradation
of Patient Care

- Pierre Chénier -

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Quebec nurses picket outside Hotel Dieu hospital in Levis, December 1, 2017.

Quebec Nurses Take Action to End the Crisis in Their Sector
• Breaking the Silence About Unsustainable Working Conditions and Degradation of Patient Care - Pierre Chénier
• Interview, Félix-Olivier Bonneville, Vice-President, Head of the Nursing and Cardio-Respiratory Personnel Category, FSSS-CSN

Nova Scotia
• Nurses Achieve Success in Fight for Their Rights and the Rights of All

Chronic Underdevelopment in Atlantic Canada
• Closure of Former McCain Food Plant in Saint-André, New Brunswick

Mining Companies "Swimming in Cash"
• The Workers Know Where the Money Goes
• Negative Consequences of Private Expropriation of Social Value - K.C. Adams

Quebec Nurses Take Action to End the Crisis in Their Sector

Breaking the Silence About Unsustainable Working Conditions and Degradation of Patient Care

- Pierre Chénier -

As part of an attempt to end the crisis in their sector, Quebec nurses are stepping up their campaign to break the wall of silence around their unsustainable working conditions, that make the delivery of health services to the public untenable. A Facebook post from a nurse from the Eastern Townships at the end of January deplored the inhuman nature of nurses' working conditions and their impact on the physical and mental integrity of nurses. The post went viral in a few days.

The nurses have taken several organized actions in recent weeks to alert the public about the situation they and their patients have faced for the past several years. They held demonstrations in front of various health centres and sit-ins at hospitals. The fact that nurses are carrying out workplace actions shows the seriousness of the situation. Nurses are also circulating statements for the public to sign to express support. One union has provided a Safe Staffing Form for nurses to report incidents that endanger the quality and safety of patient care. Nurses are working with patient organizations, physician groups and even managers who are fed up and no longer want to be silent. This collaboration is to address the reality of a health system in crisis so as to discuss and provide solutions to problems.

Nurses are speaking out despite being threatened with reprisals, including suspensions, for speaking about unacceptable situations. Nurses and their unions have put forward various slogans that highlight their campaign, including "We will not be silent anymore!"; "I have my quota!" (This is a play on words. Nurses are asking for appropriate patients/nurses quotas while they have also reached their quota of problems).

Nurses even speak of attempts to impose a "law of silence" on them. This refers to a complex situation that has been created with the anti-social restructuring of the health system, a pillar of which is Bill 10, An Act to modify the organization and governance of the health and social services network, in particular by abolishing the regional agencies. Bill 10 was adopted by the Quebec government by imposing closure on debate in 2015. The law concentrates power in the hands of the Minister of Health for all aspects of health care institutions. The minister has the power to appoint, authorize and dismiss boards of directors, order mergers, and decide budgets and organizational structures. Above all, the law is presented as if the reforms that it imposes are strictly administrative changes to make the coordination of health services more efficient, without affecting health care services. It is absurd to pretend that administrative tasks are unrelated to care, or that cuts in administrative staff do not affect care, or that the centralization of administrative duties do not run roughshod over local or individual needs.

By presenting the matter in this way, the minister gives himself the power to declare that all negative consequences of his self-serving actions mandated by private interests which have taken over the public health care system are due to negligence on the local level. Cuts in services and any degradation of care are thus said to be the result of poor administrative management of local managers and of resistance to change by nurses and health care workers in general.

"There are no cuts or degradations of care" is the catchphrase of the minister; consequently public denunciation of health care cuts is portrayed as self-serving "concerted action" of a political nature by the unions just to discredit the government or as managers' betrayal of their mandate to conduct "sound management" of health centres, all according to the dictate of the minister. Not only are nurses being told that they have an ethical duty not to abandon patients, and therefore are often forced to work 16-hour shifts on a continuous basis, but they are also reminded of their duty of loyalty to employers which they are told means that they cannot talk about what is happening at the workplace.

In other words, a mafia-style management system is imposed to ensure that private aims are served while the government is in denial of all the problems which get worse. Chaos is the norm, but problems are swept under the rug by means of all sorts of pressures, including the removal of managers and suspensions of workers including nurses. This in turn exacerbates the physical, mental and emotional distress of nurses and further degrades the care of patients to the point of endangering their lives.

To add insult to injury, within a situation exacerbated by the privatization of health care, further privatization is presented as the only possible solution to all the dysfunction! The type of management and direction private interests have imposed on the health care system is in fact contrary to the needs of the polity. A modern society is based on a socialized economy where workers produce in common, and this also applies to the health care system where the workers contribute immense value to society. Nurses who care for patients on our behalf have the right to determine the working conditions and wages they require so that the services they deliver are delivered responsibly. They have the right to a say on where investments are needed, and what conditions they need to deliver services.

Nurses are making an important contribution to their own well-being which is required for the well-being of all members who comprise the society and rely on the health care system. Breaking the stifling silence imposed on them and intervening in the public arena to expose the situation and take a stand against the degradation of their working conditions and health care services the people depend on is the first step to end the crisis in the health care sector. The stand of the nurses is a long time coming. It is courageous and deserves the support of all.

Interview, Félix-Olivier Bonneville,
Vice-President, Head of the Nursing and
Cardio-Respiratory Personnel Category, FSSS-CSN

Health care workers organized in the FSSS-CSN hold an action in Gatineau, February 12, 2018,
to mark the third anniversary of the anti-social Bill 10 that is having serious negative effects
on the health care system.

Workers' Forum: In recent weeks nurses in Quebec, including those who are members of the Federation of Health and Social Services-Confederation of National Trade Unions (FSSS-CSN), stepped up their campaign to break the silence on their working conditions, which are also the conditions of the delivery of health care services to the population. How do you characterize the situation that nurses are facing right now?

Félix-Olivier Bonneville: We are facing a shortage of nurses. It's hard to find nurses. There are also many nurses who have graduated but have not entered the public system. Over the last year, about 1,600 did not enter the public system. There was a survey sent to them to find out why. Was it to continue their studies, reorient their career, etc.?

This problem is combined with scheduling management which makes you end up with a lot of mandatory overtime. There are also the problems of recruitment and retention of personnel. Many nurses leave the profession in their first five years of work. There is the problem of patient-to-nurse ratios where the workload is constantly increasing. This is happening, we must not forget, under conditions where the cases are becoming more complex because, for example, of the aging of the population. There are also advances in science which mean that we are now saving patients who were not saved before. The complexity of care increases at the same time as our workload increases.

Shortages affect the organization of work, and the higher the workload the more problems it causes: occupational health and safety is affected, including mental health problems, burnout. The list is long.

Mandatory overtime has become a reality in the nursing world. We have the impression that it has even become a management tool. As nurses we have an ethical duty not to abandon a patient, and this is something thrown in our faces by managers, that we must provide the care. And if there is no one to relieve us to provide safe care, we are told that it is our responsibility to stay on shift. On the other hand, we also have a right and a duty to say that at a given moment we no longer have the vigilance necessary to provide care. After 16 hours of work, we no longer have the vigilance to do so. It is a continual stress that affects many nurses. If in addition you are full-time, you are already doing a full week of work, so with the overtime required you end up with extremely long weeks. That's why part-time jobs are so popular because, in any case, part-time nurses will be forced to work overtime. Part-time jobs give them more reasonable work weeks.

We must also take into account the budget cuts that have been applied for at least five years. These cuts mean that there are savings at the end of the day that are everywhere. For example, they are done on the backs of people doing administrative work. There are fewer of these workers to handle administrative tasks. This work is then assigned to the nurses. The cuts also apply to personal care attendants, whose number is reduced per care unit. Some of their work now falls on the nurses and adds to their burden.

Now, if you add to that the changes that Bill 10 has brought, we see that more and more mobility and flexibility are being requested from nurses and other workers in the system. There is less stability in working conditions, and this has an impact on the health and retention of employees. We have fewer and fewer steady jobs in a single workplace than before. Before, if your position was in a community health centre (CLSC), you stayed there. Now we can be moved elsewhere as needed. This has a big impact on retention. It must be understood that mobility and flexibility are now occurring within establishments that are so large that one can cover an entire administrative region.[1] For example, the Integrated Health and Social Services Centre (CISSS) of the Bas-Saint-Laurent is gigantic. The mobility and flexibility that are required particularly affect people on the oncall lists, especially support staff workers.

It is also becoming increasingly difficult to meet with managers to solve a problem when it happens. In addition, the same manager may have to manage units very different from each other. Managing a CLSC and a youth centre is not the same thing.

In short, the restructuring of health care that has taken place directly affects us.

WF: What work is the FSSS and its unions doing to change the situation?

FOB: The first step would be to sit down with the Minister of Health Gaétan Barrette. It has been months since we sent him a request to meet with the federation and we only received an acknowledgment of receipt.

We are working very hard right now because, under Bill 10, we are in the midst of local negotiations on matters that are not in the collective agreement that we signed nationally. It is in this local bargaining that we are trying to gain more stability for our members, for example by establishing full-time positions that are not subject to mandatory overtime.[2]

Something new is happening right now, the work we're doing together with managers, physician groups, and patient organizations to bring solutions to health system issues. This is called the 15 Solutions movement and the CSN is part of it. I'm not very old but I do not remember ever sitting with managers to work together to improve the situation.

It is important to bring these things to the public. Before, there used to be some mechanisms in the system through which we could raise issues and discuss what is happening, but the reform of the health system has abolished this. Minister Barrette tells us not to make our issues public and we are constantly reminded of our duty of loyalty to our employer that pressures us to be silent, but we have no choice but to go to the public to get our message out. In fact, even managers are beginning to speak publicly because the reforms adopted under the gag order are unmanageable.

It is important for the public to get the Minister to understand that public services are important, that we are ready to fight for them, that we want to keep our public services and keep them as quality services. The Minister is very fond of privatization, with his private groups of family physicians. Their goal is supposedly to offer family doctors to everyone, but they are getting their people from our CLSCs, who are migrating to the private sector. The CLSCs are a flagship, they must be improved, not destroyed.

We see that the people who hold economic power do not lead us towards more social solidarity and there is plenty of fighting to do.

Notes

1. Bill 10, An Act to modify the organization and governance of the health and social services network, in particular by abolishing the regional agencies, was passed under closure on February 7, 2015 by the Liberal government of Philippe Couillard despite massive opposition from health care workers and people from all walks of life. It concentrates the decision-making power of the entire health system in the hands of the Minister of Health through administrative bodies whose members are appointed or authorized by the Minister. It greatly expands the notion of a healthcare institution becoming a mega-institution that can cover an entire region, giving the Minister more direct authority to dismantle or privatize services on a vast scale.

2. Bill 10 imposed a merger of union accreditations, which means that local collective agreements must be renegotiated in all unions affected by the mergers. The deadline for negotiating local issues is very tight. Unions have just over 12 months to negotiate and if the parties do not agree, a mediator-arbitrator decides. Local bargaining deals with things that have not been adopted in bargaining at national tables, such as labour mobility, scheduling of daily hours and the configuration of the work week, arrangements regarding overtime, being called back to work and availability for work, etc.

Nova Scotia

Nurses Achieve Success in Fight for Their Rights
and the Rights of All

Signs from the 2014 Nova Scotia nurses' strike.

In early January, 167 registered nurses organized in the Nova Scotia Government & General Employees Union (NSGEU) scored a small victory in the face of the McNeil Liberals' attack on the rights of workers. On April 1, 2014 these nurses went out on a strike despite the McNeil Liberals' Bill 27, the Essential Health and Community Services Act, which declared illegal the right of certain workers deemed "essential" to withdraw their capacity to work. Through other similar legislation passed since then, the McNeil Liberals have sought to impose their dictate on public sector workers, teachers, health care workers using police powers masquerading as legislation.

Faced with unacceptable conditions, the 167 nurses took action in 2014 to defend their rights and as a result were suspended by the Capital District Health Authority for two days following the "illegal" strike. The NSGEU filed 167 grievances at that time -- arguing that the discipline was unfair, excessive and arbitrary.

The case went to mediation-arbitration with the arbitrator ordering the letter of suspensions be removed from the nurses' personnel files. Further, the two-day unpaid suspensions were reduced to one-day unpaid and one-day paid suspensions. NSGEU President Jason MacLean said following the decision, "The NSGEU is proud of its nurses and their willingness to stand up to governments who try to legislate away their rights. During this time, nurses went out on the illegal strike and the legal strike a few days later. They stood up ... and those nurses forced to stay at work and provide emergency services showed their support in countless ways."

Indeed, workers standing up to defend their rights take up their social responsibility to defend themselves and the rights of all. For public service workers, defending their own working conditions defends the level of service to the public --- whether it be education, health care or other public services that Canadians rely on every day. Workers' Forum congratulates the nurses in both Nova Scotia and Quebec who stood up and put themselves on the line to defend their rights and the rights of all to social programs and public services the people need and deserve.

Chronic Underdevelopment in Atlantic Canada

Closure of Former McCain Food Plant in
Saint-André, New Brunswick

Once again the people of Atlantic Canada have been delivered a cruel blow to their working lives and economy. The Dr. Oetker food empire announced it will close the former McCain food plant in Saint-André in northwestern New Brunswick this coming May.[1] It said it will move the factory's food production to facilities it controls in London, Ontario and Lodi, New Jersey.

The loss of 180 manufacturing jobs is a significant blow to the community of 18,000 in the Grand Sault/Grand Falls region where Saint-André is located. The disappearance of the reproduced-value in wages, benefits and pensions for those directly working in the plant is coupled with the loss of revenue from supplying and transporting the produced social product and any possibility of reinvestment in the plant and community from future added-value.

Posing as a socially responsible company, Dr. Oetker's Executive Vice President Cécile Van Zandijcke said, "We care deeply about the people on our Grand Falls team and we will sit down individually with them to discuss their own specific path forward. That will be our immediate focus now."

Van Zandijcke said, "There is nothing our Grand Falls employees could have done differently. Food manufacturers have been facing severe economic pressures over the last few years and today's market has become ultra-competitive. In order for Dr. Oetker to continue operating efficiently within this challenging environment, we needed to restructure our Canadian Manufacturing Operation."

The Dr. Oeteker website says: "Employees will receive a severance package that exceeds the statutory requirements in addition to employment counseling, resume support and career planning assistance. The Company will continue group medical and dental benefits until December 31, 2018.

"Dr. Oetker will also establish a $4 million Grand Falls Community Fund to assist with job retraining and economic development, working with all levels of government including the Mayor of Grand Falls."

The fact is that this is a company on the prowl for the highest return on its investment, like any other. Public relations about "the family's environmentally oriented approach to corporate management, its initiatives aimed at securing jobs as well as its general social and cultural commitment," are to disinform the polity so that it accepts its allegedly god-given fate and even sympathizes with the company instead of fighting for an economy whose direction is set to serve the needs of the people and nation-wrecking is outlawed. The family-owned company took over the plant less than four years ago when the owners purchased the McCain frozen pizza business. In a statement announcing the closure, it repeated the now common refrain of an "increasingly challenging ultra-competitive food market" and the need "to restructure our Canadian manufacturing operation."

This simplistic statement hides the fact that at the time it bought the McCain frozen pizza business in 2014, it was already constructing a new food factory in London, Ontario using $19 million in federal and provincial pay-the-rich subsidies and would only lease the plant in Saint-André. Those who control the McCain empire had to be fully aware in 2014 that the new owners had no intention of maintaining production at the Saint-André plant. McCain previously had no plan to renew the facility using new value workers produced at the plant and neither did the Germans once they seized control.

The words of Andrea Davis, McCain's director of government and public relations are quite disingenuous, expressing "surprise and disappointment" to learn the plant is closing. "We had been given no indication that the plant is experiencing difficulties and given the short notice of Dr. Oetker's planned closure, we've not had time for future considerations," Davis said.

The Saint-André plant is leased from the McCain empire. Will McCain bring it back to life after having already sold the frozen pizza division of their business? Not likely.

The problem is clear. The working people in the Atlantic region have no more say or control over their work, economy and fate than the working people in any other part of the country. The workers require an all-sided self-reliant economy. The McCain empire for decades, and the German billionaire owners of Dr. Oetker for the last three years, have taken the added-value workers produce at the Saint-André plant and other facilities for use as company profit, interest profit, rent profit, investment in new facilities elsewhere or for other schemes. Obviously the added-value has not been poured back into the Saint-André plant either recently or when it was part of the McCain empire. Otherwise it would not be in need of serious renewal.

Without constant renovation and renewal, the reality of depreciation makes it simple for the private interests to just say the plant is old and leased, and nothing else can be done but wreck it and move production to the U.S. and Ontario. The private owners of Dr. Oetker do not live or work in New Brunswick where the unemployment rate in December was 7.8 per cent, compared with the national average of 5.7 per cent. Private interests are focused on staying ahead of the competition so that they, not others, reap the profits on a global scale. In 2014, the Oetker business empire was valued by Forbes at $12 billion, and each of eight children inherited an equal share of 12.5 per cent, or about $1.5 billion each. Atlantic Canada does not fit into their plans other than to exploit within the moment.[2]

Following the announcement of the plant's closure, the monopoly-owned media dragged out their experts and politicians to explain away the problem with the familiar refrain that nothing can be done and no alternative exists. The words are meant to discourage working people from discussing the situation and exploring alternatives.

The media quote Sylvain Charlebois, Dean of Business at Halifax's Dalhousie University, rationalizing the wrecking of Atlantic Canada from the decadent outlook of the imperialists saying, "Foreign employers facing high Canadian costs and a volatile currency are reluctant to spend millions on robotics and automation to upgrade older Canadian factories, preferring to close up and move production to other plants. The high concentration of foreign ownerships makes the food manufacturing sector vulnerable to job losses. It's been going on for more than a decade. Canadians don't have much control over these decisions.... I don't think it's going to stop here. There are going to be more closures."[3]

That's it! Nothing to discuss because Canadians have no control anyway. Nation-wrecking is inevitable and nothing can be done. The professor describes a situation but gives no vantage point favourable to Canadians, no analysis or more importantly a synthesis of what could develop if the power of the state were in the hands of the working people, not the private interests. Foreign interests are in control and Canada is a backwater, so these companies are only doing what's to be expected. End of story.

The media then turn over the microphone to a dutiful retinue of politicians who spout essentially the same thing but this time, in the name of the people. The office of T.J. Harvey, the federal Member of Parliament for the area, issued a statement saying the company felt it made no sense to invest in new equipment for a plant that it leased. "Government could not have affected this decision as Dr. Oetker's was difficult but final," the statement said.

Only when the working people decide to represent themselves directly will they begin to give voice to how problems can be solved with a pro-social aim. A new direction that serves them and the economy of Atlantic Canada is not rocket science but it does demand that the working people take up nation-building themselves.

(See also "Campbell Soup to Shut Down Canadian Manufacturing Plant," Janice Murray, Workers' Forum, February 1, 2018, on the closure of the Campbell Soup factory in Toronto and the plan to supply food to the Canadian market from U.S. plants. Other food makers that have closed their factories in Canada in recent times include HJ Heinz Co., Kellogg, Unilever Canada Inc., and Smucker's.)

Notes

1. The Dr. Oetker companies in various countries around the world are managed by Oetker International in Bielefeld, Germany. Although activities centre on the markets of Western and Eastern Europe, Dr. Oetker also maintains a presence in North and South America.

Dr. Oetker was established in Canada in 1960, known at that time as Condima Imports Ltd. The company underwent a few more name changes before finally settling on Dr. Oetker Ltd. in 2003. In 1992 Dr. Oetker Ltd. Canada purchased the Shirriff line of products. In 2003, Ristorante Pizza was launched, and "has maintained an overwhelming amount of success in the market place." The success of Dr. Oetker products is said to stem from "a constant drive towards continual innovation."

Without mentioning that its founder Rudolf-August Oetker was a member of the Nazi Party which used slave labour during the Third Reich and built itself as a leading German manufacturer in the post-war period by reaping the benefits of this legacy, the company presents the following sanitized version of itself:

The Canadian company is a subsidiary of the family-run Oetker Group. Established in 1891 with the launch of Germany's first baking powder, today Dr. Oetker carries out a legacy rooted in the belief that "quality is the best recipe" and a commitment to building a sustainable presence in the countries in which it does business. In 2016, worldwide Dr. Oetker sales were $3 billion.

2. Forbes.com: Forbes World's Richest People.

3. Quoted in the Globe and Mail.

Mining Companies "Swimming in Cash"

The Workers Know Where the Money Goes 

Bloomberg News reports, "Mining companies are swimming in so much cash that investors aren't sure where the industry will spend it all." But the workers know what the investors know which is that some of that "free cash flow" is used to extort concessions from workers and governments worldwide. The global monopolies in part use their accumulated expropriated value as a war chest to force concessions from workers, to pay less taxes, get financial incentives and pay even lower prices for electricity, as in the case of Rio Tinto's deals with Hydro-Quebec, and to keep market prices climbing.

The Rio Tinto Group and Alcoa global monopolies on January 11 locked out 1,030 workers at the ABI aluminum smelter in Bécancour, Quebec. Last year, 371 workers at CEZinc in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Quebec and their allies had to wage a long determined strike to beat back attacks on their pensions and seniority rights by the global cartel Glencore. Mine and refinery workers worldwide are daily engaged in pitched battles to defend their rights against attacks from these cartels "swimming in cash."

The Bloomberg report continues: "BHP, Glencore, Rio Tinto Group and Anglo American Plc generated $31.9 billion of free cash flow during their 2017 fiscal years, which exceeds their haul during the last commodity boom in 2011, according to analysts estimates compiled by Bloomberg. In 2018, the flow will be an estimated $31.2 billion."

The Bloomberg World Mining Index, which tracks 117 company shares, has doubled since January 2016, reporting their highest combined profit last year since 2012.

"Rio Tinto, which made a record $2.5 billion interim payout last year and bought back more than $2 billion of shares, is forecast to make its highest ever full-year dividend and buy back another $1.9 billion of stock. Even Glencore, which usually favors deals over dividends, in December promised to double its payout this year.

"Still, even after those distributions to shareholders, the industry will have $80 billion in excess cash over the next three years, according to Macquarie Group Ltd.... With metals from zinc to palladium trading at multi-year highs, four of the world's top producers generated combined free cash flow last year of about $87 million a day. Some of the unprecedented windfall is earmarked for dividends.... Copper, nickel and iron ore (prices) are up more than 50 percent from market lows in early 2016, while precious metals have posted double-digit gains," Bloomberg said.

Negative Consequences of Private
Expropriation of Social Value

- K.C. Adams -

The private expropriation of the value workers produce is highly disruptive within a socialized economy. This presents a problem working people are discussing how to overcome. The privately expropriated value working people produce as a collective social force is put into a contradiction with the socialized nature of the economy. This is the source of recurring economic crises, uneven development, poverty, the growing gap between rich and poor, and the predatory and inter-imperialist wars to wipe out competitors, seize the productive forces of others, and destroy what the most powerful cannot control.

The privately expropriated value is used to perpetuate the unequal and antagonistic social relation between the social class that sells its capacity to work and the social class that buys the capacity to work of working people. Under the current unequal and antagonistic social relation, the actual producers of the social value have no control over the work they do or the social product they produce. The expropriated social value is used to expand the private empires of those who buy the capacity to work of working people. This contradicts the necessity to use social value to expand the socialized economy as a whole in conformity with its interconnectedness and the reality that people in the modern world are born to society and depend on the socialized economy and society for work and their well-being from birth to passing away.

To build their empires, those who buy the capacity to work of others use their power of control over the economy and state to compete with other empires and to extort concessions from the working people and other sectors of the economy rather than allow the economy's different parts to function in conformity with each other, as demanded by a modern socialized economy. They use their power constantly to put pressure on the working class to reduce its claim on the value it produces both individually and socially. Those who privately expropriate the social product cannot bring it under control and end up destroying that which they cannot control within the chaos of economic crises and wars.

They operate as cartels to manipulate market prices to favour their private interests -- both the prices they pay for fixed and circulating value in the production process and the prices they demand for the social product their workers produce, all of which is highly destructive. This is sometimes blatant such as the demand of Rio Tinto and Alcoa during the lockout at the ABI smelter for lower electricity prices from the state, or more covert with the manipulation of market prices, which only seldom become widely known such as the recent case of price fixing of the price of bread across Canada.

They use their power to refuse to pay in a proper exchange for the socially reproduced value of the capacity to work of the working people. This includes payment for the value of the education and health workers possess while working for particular companies and their well-being in retirement, which must be part of the overall exchange for workers' capacity to work.

They refuse to pay in proper exchange for the value they use from the infrastructure and public services without which no part of the economy could function. The payment in exchange for social reproduced-value, infrastructure and public services, including cultural amenities, should be automatically included in a pro-rated price of production of all commodities and returned to those institutions that produced the value in the first place, so that they can continue to function at the necessary level.

They use the social value they expropriate not to build the socialized economy as a whole through even development within all regions of the country and between the department producing means of production and the department producing articles of consumption but to expand the power of their competing private empires. This is commonly seen in resource extraction communities where those who buy the capacity to work of the working people remove the social value workers produce from the communities for use elsewhere in their private empires. This leaves most small communities and regions in Canada in a chronic state of one-sided development or underdevelopment. This can also be seen where the private interests clash with the necessity to reinvest back into a particular facility. Recent examples are the planned closures of the Dr. Oetker food manufacturing plant in New Brunswick and the Campbell Soup plant in Toronto under the hoax that the plants need renewal for which those in control were obviously responsible.

The private interests of the oligopolies militate against the development of an all-sided economy both where their private assets exist and throughout the country. The expropriated social value is taken out of the economy while social programs, public services, infrastructure, health and safety, renewal of the facilities, research and development, all-sided development and the general interests of society are starved for investments.

Those who own and control the productive forces and buy the capacity to work of the working class and expropriate the social product even turn the situation upside down and demand the collective social wealth of the economy controlled through the state should be handed over to them in pay-the-rich schemes, which have become commonplace.

The narrow outlook of those who buy the capacity to work of workers stands in opposition to a broad outlook infused with social consciousness necessary in any modern economy. The socialized economy needs a modern social consciousness that views development not as competition amongst its parts but as interconnected, where the parts of the whole work in conformity with one another for their mutual benefit. Working together the parts and whole are stronger, greater, more stable and secure than when the parts act in competition with each other and are indifferent to the well-being of other parts and the betterment of the whole, and to the flourishing of the human factor/social consciousness and the general interests of society.

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