Now their rail inspectors and repair crews are on strike!

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Union leader William Brehl says picket lines are going up across Canada right away.

He says he doesn't expect his union to reach a deal with Canadian Pacific in the next few days.

CP Rail officials say it will deploy 1,300 trained management employees to do the tasks normally performed by striking workers.

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Institutional ignorance and arogance? The railway workers are payed very well. They are the second best paid workers in Canada. Prime miners can get $150,000; hydro workers, tar sand workers and railyway engineers bring in $100,000; and these railway workers earn something like $70,000. You have to have a little perspective about these things.

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Corporate apologism really is a factless crusade.

First, the maintenance-of-way folks, are among the lowest paid workers--about 3000 of them earning about $14 an hour--that's barely enough to feed a family and keep a home in the Maritimes, let alone hyper-price-inflated areas like BC or Ontario.

Second, CP Rail has sucked record profits out of the economy in the last few years, and much of this, as usual, has gone into the pockets of multi-millionaire executives and bureaucrats, key insider stock-holders and other assorted upper-class lay-abouts and drones. It's time for some of the gravy to go back to the workers who made it in the first place.

Third, even at $70,000 or $100,000 a year, the hard economic fact is that it is these workers who, along with the lower paid folks, who do the productive work that meets the both the market demands and the actual needs of people that gives the company its wealth and value, which is clearly far, far more than they take home in pay.

Fourth, to get these yearly incomes, most of these people have to work long hours or overtime, many extra days off and often away from their homes and families, pushing the bounds of health and safety, just to keep the trains running, the oil flowing, the ore moving, the planes flying, etc.

Fifth, add to this fact, it is mainly the investment of consumer dollars that comes mostly from working people in general, not capitalists, elite investors, bankers and bureaucrats, etc., that creates the markets in the first place that stimulates the economy and creates jobs.

Finally, as to CP bosses' "institutional arrogance" supposed not being an issue, this is a top-down dictatorial capitalistic venture that was at the center of slave labour and colonialist plunder of this country.

It has the shameful legacy of using bonded labour, Chinese slaves (known as coolies) and other desperate immigrants and sweatshop labour to bulldoze First Nations out of the way and claim their traditional hunting, gathering and farming lands--thereby destroying their local economies and subjecting them to poverty and starvation. Then let's not get into how it would literally swipe that First Nations land, lease it to settlers and then hold those settlers at ransom for everything from water supply to access to the railroad.

And of course any time the workers rebelled and demanded recognition (which was constantly since things were so bad), they were met with CP's own private police force to brutalize them.

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Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:
these railway workers earn something like $70,000.

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Yeah, every two years roughly.

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The railway workers are payed very well. They are the second best paid workers in Canada.

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What a crock. Haven't you noticed that the general level of quality on babble is a bit higher than this? People who make statements that look ridiculous will at least have the decency to cite a source. Don't bother, I know you haven't got one.

[ 19 May 2007: Message edited by: unionist ]

The media as usual continues to spin it that its all about $$$, but for these guys, its about survival. Fat cat, overstuffed panty weights like Bruce the Vii, don't know what it means to go out and fight for your job and your livlihood. A company goes out and makes record profits, not only in terms of yearly profits but also in terms of quarterly profits, and yet won't negotiate in good faith with its employees?

Proposes job cuts of 2000 workers to a unit that has 3200? And offers wage increases that don't reflect the inflationary condition of this economy. Not too mention the fact that this unit of CP Rail is behind the rest of them in terms of compensation and benefits. The concessions that CP Rail wants wipe out and even set back this unit any supposed percentage increase in wages that they are offering. And this from a company that boasted record profits last year???

While I agree with your general partisan stand on behalf of the strikers (obviously), facts are important - otherwise we end up looking stupid.

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Originally posted by keglerdave:
Rarely is a strike just about money, and this one is no exception.

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I agree heartily. But in this case, the main issue is money - the desire of the union to break the monetary pattern of 10% over 3 years (already negotiated with the other unions) and go for 13% over 3 years instead. That's substantially more than the increase in the cost of living (as was already the other unions' settlement). But the Maintenance of Way, being the lowest paid railway workers, could certainly use a one-time catch-up.

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Proposes job cuts of 2000 workers to a unit that has 3200? And offers wage increases that don't reflect the inflationary condition of this economy. Not too mention the fact that this unit of CP Rail is behind the rest of them in terms of compensation and benefits.

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Where did you get the idea that CP is proposing job cuts - especially on this enormous scale? I think you've possibly confused the story. CP announced it had trained 1300 managers to replace the most important and urgent of the work the strikers do - urgent track work. They will simply postpone other capital projects till later. This certainly doesn't mean they have proposed job cuts, and nothing I have seen in the union literature talks about job cuts.

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The concessions that CP Rail wants wipe out and even set back this unit any supposed percentage increase in wages that they are offering.

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Well, not really. There are benefit premium concessions (co-pay) being asked for, but I'm quite sure the union can get those off the table. It won't do so, however, as long as it's asking 3% more than the other unions have settled for. I'm not part of their bargaining team, so I'm sure I don't know the whole picture, but I'll bet they have the talent to work their way through this with a substantial improvement to real purchasing power.

[ 21 May 2007: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

[ 21 May 2007: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

[ 21 May 2007: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

[ 21 May 2007: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

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Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:
Actually I work as a courier for $10 an hour, the minimum you have to pay for reliable help in Toronto.

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Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:
Anybody that says I should count my luck stars for earning the defacto minimum wage isn't exactly going to win the Lech Walesa Factory Floor Oratory cup.

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Either approach your fellow workers and organize a union, or be happy with your lot. Unless you are stuck in low-wage jobs because of some disability you haven't mentioned, in which case I'm sorry for you.

Fight or acquiesce - not really sure what the third choice is. Griping about those who do organize and fight won't win you any sympathy in my camp. Amazing that you would complain about unionized workers, and never once about all these 40 employers who have had the benefit of your labour at poverty wages all these years.

I originally was just saying as better paid workers the plight of the railway workers is not very gripping.

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Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:
I originally was just saying as better paid workers the plight of the railway workers is not very gripping.

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Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:
The railway guys I know say it's up there with Ontario Hydro, probably the best place to work for a high school graduate. That's my information.

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Actually I work as a courier for $10 an hour, the minimum you have to pay for reliable help in Toronto.

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You don't seem to understand that folks like me think it's a spit in the face to be asked to work for such unsustainable rates of pay, especially in a hyper-inflated market like Toronto. That's a blatant injustice. It's one thing, however, that, as history proves, is greatly alleviated by workers organizing into unions.

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I've worked at the bottom for minimum wage for 20 years now and am on to about my 40th employer.

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And you aren't alone. About 35 per cent of the work force is stuck in this situation, and that's partly why there is so much poverty and stagnation, even during so-called "boom" periods. It's also, again, to varying degrees, alleviated by workers organizing into unions and getting a greater say, which results in getting a greater chunk of the pie and all sorts of rights and freedoms with it.

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It's sucks, but not as badly as you do arguing about workers rights.

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Of course! We suck. How dare we talk about workers' right, which, as said, is exactly what is needed to resolve these oppressive problems! We should just all shut up a take it like the mindless spineless lemmings the corporate media wants us all to be, right!

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Fourteen an hour is the objective on many of the people at the bottom, not the problem.

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And that shows just how unjust and oppressive and destructive our corporate capitalist dominated economy is.

The truth is if $14 an hour, given the cost of living/CPI, was the top rate for most Canadian workers and professionals, you would not see most big universities, community colleges, well-paved streets and nice-looking suburbs, most coffee shops, night clubs, big shopping malls, cell phones, yuppie sports cars, vacation resorts, ski slopes, etc., since the wage rates would be insufficient to create the consumer markets to support all these businesses and economic sectors.

Now we can discuss whether or to what degree these various sectors can be helpful or harmful. But that does not change the fact they wouldn't not exist without working people earning enough money to re-invest as consumers and tax-payers to support them.

In addition, the poorer economies are, the more politically repressive they tend to be, so you likely couldn't count on showing up on a site like this (assuming you could even afford a computer) to complain about it either, without cops coming to "visit" you afterward.

Again, the injustice isn’t that many working people earn more than $14 an hour. Rather, the injustice is that so many working people are being forced to work for less than what is needed to not only survive but prosper and improve one’s self.

So if you have resigned yourself to being so brutally treated in the work force without trying to make things better, that’s truly sad, although it is your fate to choose. But don’t rag on others for organizing together against the dictatorial and exploitative power of corporate bosses and institutions to get more freedom and improve their economic lot—because history shows that is by far the main way people have even changed anything for the better.

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I'm not listening.

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One wood factory I worked at was a speaker box shop. They saw walnut and oak into speaker boxes. A shop like that has almost no market power as anyone can saw up boxes. No market power, no one makes any money but it does keep people employeed for a while. The whole bottom of the economy is like that.

[ 21 May 2007: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

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I would say one point we disagree on is the power of these unions. Basically workers organized in big institutions that have market power so they could push wages up.

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I would say that you are ignoring the fact that corporations involve individual owners of capital POOLING that capital to force wages down.

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I think that it's difficult to organize small business and that's why it isn't done.

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Not quite correct. It's largely a corporate media myth that unions don't exist in small business.

In fact the opposite is true. Although I don't have any federal stats, here in BC, almost 50 per cent of union shops are firms with less than 20 employees. Many are certified bargaining units with the Labour Relations Board, while an almost equal number are organized in different ways (voluntary recognition, employee-owned firms, co-ops, etc.).

There are legions of small shops with only a handful of employees, where even the owner (as long as s/he works along side the employees) is a union member. That's known as the guild model or the share agreement.

In addition, there are an estimated sixty thousand union members in BC who are self-employed in a whole variety of industries and professions.

Some unions, like the Machinists and some construction groups, literally offer financial assistance and assurances to individual or groups of members to start their own firms.

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I don't get all this union cheerleading stuff.

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Who's cheerleading? Around here many of us express our support for working people like ourselves who organize together as democratic cooperative associations (which is what unions are) and stand up for their rights and advance their concerns and interests against the undemocratic and exploitative power of the employers, corporations and the governments.

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Originally posted by maxcdr:
I work for cp rail as a heavy duty mechanic.

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Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:
lol, I actually know four railway workers and what I've been told is they do well.

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