Editorial

“Made in Canada”: Lining Up Workers Behind the Agenda of the Monopolies

Over the past two years approximately 200,000 manufacturing jobs have disappeared in Ontario alone. This is largely the result of the overproduction crisis which exists for many commodities and particularly in the automobile sector. Increasingly, the big monopolies are either shutting down plants in North America and relocating them to China or modernizing their technology in order to reduce their labour costs or both.

Within this situation, intense ideological pressure is being exerted on workers to divert them from seeking alternatives to the status quo. In one way or another, workers are being told that they can achieve job security by lining up behind their own monopolies in their competition for markets with foreign monopolies. One such example is the “Made in Canada” campaign of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union. According to the CAW, the goal of this campaign is to “protect Canadians by keeping jobs in Canada”.

Of course, no one can argue with the goal of keeping Canadian workers working in good-paying jobs. In fact, that should be the goal for workers in every country. However, the issue is how trade unions such as the CAW propose to accomplish this goal. The example of the Ford assembly plant at St Thomas, Ontario provides a good example.

The St. Thomas plant is one of the plants slated for downsizing or closure by Ford as it seeks to rationalize its North American manufacturing facilities and free up capital to expand its production facilities in China and other low-wage countries. At the same time that it is closing several plants and laying off 30,000 workers in the United States and Canada, Ford is planning to build a new plant somewhere in North America for the production of small cars. The CAW has submitted a detailed proposal to Ford making a business case for building this new plant at St. Thomas, adjacent to the existing plant. The essence of the proposal is that, if Ford builds the plant at St. Thomas, the CAW will agree to lower wages and streamlined job classifications. Wages would start at 75 percent of the master Big Three agreement and gradually increase to 100 percent over a period of six years. During those first six years, the CAW would also eliminate several days of special paid absences that auto workers now enjoy and guarantee that there are no strikes. The CAW is also promising to lobby the Ontario and federal governments to pay 20 percent of the capital costs of the new plant. According to CAW president Buzz Hargrove, the CAW’s proposal would generate profits averaging 18.3 percent annually over seven years, compared to projected returns of 4.9 percent for a plant in the U.S. and 9.3 percent for a plant in Mexico.

The CAW is also trying to broker a deal between Ford and Frank Stronach’s Magna International whereby Magna would build and own the new plant in St. Thomas and produce cars for Ford. Magna currently produces cars in Europe on contract with BMW, the Chrysler and Mercedes division of Daimler-Chrysler and the Saab unit of General Motors. It is extremely interested in developing an assembly site in North America. During the last federal election the CAW endorsed Belinda Stronach, Frank Stronach’s daughter and the Liberal candidate in Newmarket-Aurora. Around the same time, Magna announced that it would be dropping its long-time opposition to CAW organizing drives in its Ontario parts manufacturing plants.

In addition, the CAW recently agreed to the re-opening of its collective agreement with General Motors in Oshawa for the purpose of contracting out 388 unionized jobs and making a number of other concessions. Once again, the rationale was to “save jobs in Canada” by assisting the employer to remain competitive.

In the steel industry, which is also in the midst of global restructuring, similar calls are being issued by the unions to “save” the Canadian steel industry through a combination of government handouts and protectionist measures against steel imports from abroad, especially Asia. These calls are also couched in language about “protecting Canadians” and the Canadian economy and saving local communities.

The problem with all of these calls to “keep jobs in Canada” is that they are selling workers a bill of goods. At present one of the main factors in the elimination of jobs in the manufacturing sector is rapid technological change, which is, in turn, necessitated by fierce global competition. Therefore, any government handouts will be used by the monopolies to modernize their technology and eliminate jobs. If the unions were honest with workers they would admit that their schemes amount to little more than attempts to “keep a few jobs in Canada”, that is, attempts to merely slow down the inexorable destruction of manufacturing jobs in Canada. However, the unions would then have to explain to workers what their long-term strategy is to reverse this trend and, of course, they have no such strategy.

Worse yet is the mentality that the unions are instilling in workers in the name of “saving jobs”, the mentality of submission to the demands of the monopoly capitalists. The issue is not just a matter of making concessions to the capitalists. In fact, sometimes it is in the short-term interest of workers to make concessions in order to keep their jobs. However, in this situation the issue is that by convincing workers that their long-term interests are served by lining up behind their “own” capitalists against the capitalists (and workers) in other countries, these unions are blocking any possibility for workers to actually defend their long-term interests. They are also setting the stage for the wholesale slaughter of workers when the current inter-monopoly and inter-imperialist trade wars become all-out shooting wars.

The entire experience of the working class of all countries during the past century has been that there is no common ground between their interests and the interests of the monopoly capitalists. Monopoly capitalism is synonymous with reaction and war, with corruption and parasitism. There can be no “protection” for Canadians or any other people so long as this system dominates Canada. Supporting the agenda of the monopoly capitalists can only lead to the further elimination of Canadian jobs and even greater disasters for the Canadian working class and people. Standing up for Canada and the Canadian people necessitates ending the domination of Canada by monopoly capital and not the further enslavement of Canadians to monopoly capital as the CAW and various other unions are advocating.

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