Magna International Inc. Intervenes

Magna CEO Don Walker made a big scene early in the Ontario election by saying the monopoly has no plans to open any new plants in Canada despite a lower dollar. Walker made the statement even though the roughly 10 per cent decline in the Canadian dollar relative to the U.S. dollar makes commodities produced in Ontario cheaper and more competitive on the global imperialist market.

Autoworkers Day of Action, Windsor, October 27, 2010

For Walker, the Ontario economy apparently no longer favours his monopoly enough. In his anti-worker campaign for retrogression, Walker cites a list of ways in which the owners of his auto parts monopoly may no longer take value out of the provincial economy to the extent they have enjoyed up to this point. His primary target is the pensions of Ontario workers and more specifically the pensions of his workers. Walker believes that Magna and other Ontario workers do not have a legitimate claim on the value they produce to secure a Canadian standard of living in retirement. Where that value should come from for pension benefits rather than the social product of Ontario, which Ontario workers produce, Walker does not explain. He is adamant that any value the 19,000 Magna workers produce at the company's 46 factories in Ontario should go to the company's ownership and not towards workers' pensions. According to Walker, private monopoly ownership and control give the company the right to claim the value workers produce and any newly elected Ontario government must recognize that monopoly right and not bring in any pension laws or regulations that restrict that right.

To pile on retrogressive pressure on the issue of pensions, he denounced any initiative of any political party that would create a legal pension claim on the value Magna workers' produce. To sling mud at any genuine pension plan that would guarantee Ontarians the right to security in retirement, Walker denounced the proposed Ontario Liberal pension savings plan. To stop any analysis and discussion of the Liberal pension proposal, Walker denounced it outright as an intrusive claim on the value Magna workers produce.

Often with these angry denunciations amongst themselves, representatives of monopoly capital hope to give an opposite impression and set up the working class to support a proposal, which is not in its interests. For example, the proposed Liberal savings plan is not a pension plan that defines benefits but simply creates yet another pool of social capital to be plundered by owners of monopoly capital and forestalls dealing with the problem of guaranteeing pensions for all at a Canadian standard. The Liberal plan along with similar plans from the federal Conservatives are diversions from the real task to guarantee the right of all to security in retirement.

Walker does not want a genuine analysis and discussion on pensions and reduces the issue to the very narrow one of how the Liberal plan will affect the claim of his owners of monopoly capital. Walker said the proposed Liberal Party savings plan would mean an annual claim of $36,100,000 on the value Magna workers produce, which according to him is unjust and contrary to monopoly right and would force him to take counter measures such as reducing workers' wages by a similar amount or moving factories out of Ontario, which he is threatening. Walker's attack adds further neo-liberal pressure against any proposal to guarantee workers' security in retirement and shows that the independent politics of the working class requires stern courageous measures to deprive owners of monopoly capital of their right to deprive workers of their rights.

Walker's outburst against the Ontario Liberal Party on this issue yet his attacks on the Hudak Conservatives on the issue of provincial and federal pay-the-rich handouts to the auto monopolies, which will be discussed in another item, show how complicated imperialist politics can become when a proposal that does not solve a problem and does not serve the working class nonetheless is denounced by representatives of owners of capital. Can this mean that a proposal is pro-working class if an avowed representative of monopoly capital does not like it? This diversionary politics can be seen in the ugly dogfight amongst the parties with seats in the Legislature as to which one has the "best" anti-worker austerity agenda. The infighting and propaganda highlight the necessity for the independent politics of the working class and a thorough concrete analysis of all proposals no matter how they are presented or who likes or dislikes them.

Retrogressive attacks such as Walker's outburst against any pension claims on the value Magna workers produce dismisses workers' rights as impermissible violations of monopoly right. According to his neo-liberal logic, workers' rights, interests and needs are not even worthy of discussion let alone do they present real problems that require real solutions. For Walker and others of his social class, "one nation economics" means that what serves the narrow interests of the owners of Magna monopoly capital is in the best interest of the economy regardless of the fact that it opposes the interests, needs and rights of Ontario workers and ultimately will damage the economy, as value is taken out of Ontario and claimed by owners of Magna capital wherever they may live.

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