Talk About Neutrality in Labour Relations
The Ontario government and the Labour Relations Board and the mediators it assigns are said to be neutral to give the impression that they do not favour either side. How does this pose itself at this time? Stone Canyon Industries Holdings Inc. is showing that they need not negotiate. It is using its global monopoly on salt extraction and processing to extort the workers and the community.
Extortion
is the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force
or threats. In this case, those engaging in extortion will accept
nothing but submission to their dictate and are using both force and
threats. They are doing everything in their power to divide, intimidate
and
pressure the workers, their families and their community as a whole.
The threat is that they could dispose of the workers and their
facilities as they did in Lindbergh. Alberta; and the force is that
they will continue to fill their orders from their other operations as
they already did to workers
in Pugwash, Nova Scotia to get them to agree to a concessionary
contract.
Using scabs at the Windsor mine and evaporation plant has almost become a moot point as the cartel just fills orders from its operations in the U.S. and other parts of Canada. This wrecking of production and attacks on workers' rights in the form of demands to weaken and even eliminate the union through contracting out is legal and permitted under existing labour law. In fact, only the workers have been made the subject of injunctions, arrest and private investigations; the company has been able to carry on with impunity.
The Ford and Trudeau governments have emboldened the company by remaining silent in the face of this attack by a foreign holding company on Ontario workers and a Canadian natural resource. When foreign cartels like those in the electric battery industry extort these same governments, they respond by handing over billions in public funds. This submission shows other cartels, like Stone Canyon, that they can do as they please and governments will act in their service.
These cartels have taken over political parties in power and the governments they form. A fiction is created to hide this, which promotes the notion that the governments are just trying to create or keep jobs. The people are then supposed to debate whether this is a good or bad policy.
The rich and the governments they have taken over see Canada, its people and territories only as an appendage of the U.S. war machine. Workers are coming to terms with the fact that their security lies only in their unity in the fight for the rights of all and in their resistance to the anti-national, anti-social, anti-worker and pro-war offensive of the rich and their governments.
This article was published in
Number 37 - July 17, 2023
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/WF2023/Articles/WO10372.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca