quote:

---

(Toronto) The future of Ford Motor Co.'s assembly plant in St. Thomas, Ont., is uncertain after the automaker revealed changes Monday that will cut about 1,200 workers there.

"Clearly, in the wake of today's announcement, the long-run future of the St. Thomas assembly plant is in jeopardy," said Buzz Hargrove, president of the Canadian Auto Workers.

The St. Thomas plant makes the Crown Victoria and Grand Marquis large rear-wheel-drive sedans, which haven't been selling well lately.

Ford said Monday it is going to reduce the plant, which has 2,300 hourly workers, from two shifts to one next year.

Hargrove called that announcement "a very negative and surprising development."

---

Personal worries aside, most disturbing was Bill Ford's recipe for the future, which is to trott out new models, and new innovations.

What they need to do is focus on evolving cars, fixing the things that are wrong with models that are basically sound in the market.

It would make more sense for them to listen to people on the plant floor! They keep churning out big cars that don't sell any more (fortunately)...

Of course, as you know I'd rather they produced trams and buses, for cities anyway, but I guess that remains a pipe dream, especially with the bloody ReformaTories at the helm.

quote:

---

Originally posted by lagatta:

But it is shocking how stupid management is...

---

quote:

---

Middle-class working families are people who've had a slice of the American pie -- and for them to be told now that their slice will be taken from them and their children is not merely to shred the social contract and throw it in their faces, but to dissolve the social glue that holds our big, sprawling, brawling country together. It's the betrayal of the middle class. And, as Robert Paulk put it, "This is the thing that revolutions are made of." The elites who are so smugly dismissing middle-class wages and benefits as "excessive" will not be able to build walls and gates high enough to stem the tide of anger coming at them.

---

Everytime something goes wrong--or someone just wants more money--, the answer to the powers that be is to take it out on the working person, either through higher prices, lower wages or job cuts.

We are the ones held accountable for the mistakes of a class of priveleged elites who have perverted the democratic process to insulate themselves from responsibility.

Like I pointed out all over this board in the past few weeks, no political party in North America is even willing to mention putting even the smallest brake on this process.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
It's not even on the table to discuss.

---

Which is okay with me, as long as I get a good seat for the riegn of terror.

quote:

---

the answer to the powers that be is to take it out on the working person, either through higher prices, lower wages or job cuts.

---

Then what's the answer? Keep making cars that no-one wants? Stop making the cars but keep paying people to not make cars?

quote:

---

Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
The problem is that there is no leadership on the left with a coherent view of the ultimate way out.

---

I don't believe that. The problem is the contrary: the religious right and the neo-cons (or neo-libs) are leading the charge and the sheep are following.

quote:

---

Originally posted by abnormal:Then what's the answer? Keep making cars that no-one wants? Stop making the cars but keep paying people to not make cars?

---

quote:

---

The answer has been staring Ford in the face for years: make better cars.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Boom Boom:
I heard Bill Ford say that Ford is going to be really aggressive with more hybrids...

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ross J. Peterson:
I'll bet they are still assembling those yellow schoolbusses in St-Hyacinthe and St-Eustache long after the hightech assembly has gone south of the border.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cougyr:
air in a fully loaded school bus with the windows up (all winter) is un-healthy to the extreme

---

Not to mention the air quality inside the school rooms. Schools are newly built or already sit on sites where particulate pollution levels are at their highest. Traffic, industry, catch zones of polluted air from central cities.

This bad air should be tested, then abated or other sites for schools should be chosen.

quote:

---

"We're not looking for a bailout," cried William Ford, the CEO whose company bears his great grandfather's name, but, as reported in the Washington Post, he and his company, as well as General Motors, are looking for a package of bailouts from Washington. At least one, a request that the Japanese revalue their currency to make their products more expensive, is silly. "We can compete with Toyota, but we can't compete with Japan," quoth Ford, ...

America's domestic auto industry, or what's left of it, is also asking for help in dealing with its pension obligations and healthcare costs for its workers and retirees. There is a certain irony in these calls for assistance from the business world, which for years fought against "socialized medicine." If they had supported it then, many companies would not be in the fix they are in now.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by scooter:
And what does that have to do with Ford closing plants and laying off people in Canada?

---

quote:

---

We got sidelined

---

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Spurious model changes, lifestyle marketing of consumer durables, engineered obsolescence and letting our kids go to schools next to highway interchanges and industrial park has everything to do with the decline of auto in North America.

And we don't need more cars. We need busses and safe seats in anything that can get us from point a to point b without polluting the environment.

How can we protect workers' rights and jobs against such obtuse, shortsighted management decisions?

quote:

---

Originally posted by lagatta:
How can we protect workers' rights and jobs against such obtuse, shortsighted management decisions?

---

Well, first we have to understand that most
managers have very little power and are in the same boat as the rest of the workers, struggling to keep afloat. The main decisions are made at the boardroom level.

Crucial to understand: those who buy the cars, trucks and buses are not the customers for the Board of Directors of Ford. The end product is never important at the boardroom level. No, for them, the share holders are the customers. Keeping stock price up, each and every quarter, is job one. (Remember the 90 day balance sheet.) Making vehicles is very much a minor sideline to those who make the big decisions. These guys are allocating obscene amounts of capital; moving it here, removing it there.

quote:

---

Originally posted by lagatta:
Cougyr, I was using "management" in the old trade-union sense, labour vs management. Not just middle-managers, certainly the boardroom and major stockholders exercise far more power.

I could talk about "great capital" if you prefer.

---

Yeah, I know. Unfortunately, "great capital" makes the great decisions. From a worker position, it is hard to realize that the CEO is a pawn; an expensive one, admittedly, but a pawn nevertheless. When "great capital" moves, the CEO is out on his ass.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Boom Boom:
Originally posted by lagatta:
How can we protect workers' rights and jobs against such obtuse, shortsighted management decisions?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ross J. Peterson:
** Some rambling comments **
Political Parties do not address the plant closures. Well where do the politicos find a forum to even speculate on alternatives?
* * * just rambling thoughts

---

Just like they insisted they wouldn't happen at GM.

Until they did.

I'd be interested in hearing from Tommy or any other CAW members about their thoughts on the CAW's strategy throughout. I know elsewhere some folks
are raising questions about the CAW strategy of kissing Liberal ass to get public subsidies for automakers (including non-union automakers) who then turn around and fire CAW members - or in the case of Toyota, replace CAW members jobs.

quote:

---

Originally posted by skeptikool:
. . . since most innovation has come from offshore.

---

quote:

---

CAW demands . . . public subsidies for automakers (including non-union automakers) who then turn around and fire CAW members

---

Ever since auto won bargaining rights in exchange for no-strike during war(s) and other trade-offs the same picture has emerged, Buzz Hargrove or no.

What this country needs is a good synergy, between a political party for social democracy and unions that have the rankandfile guts to dump their leaders real fast when it matters and they need to elect new ones.

Is it not obvious - first that we are nowhere near some syndicalist dream and - second, that it is too late for most manufacturing in North America? Maybe the only near-hemisphere in bluecollar rest with Mexico.

Anyhow, if a company renegs on a govt guaranteed loan the union plus the political electoral party should punish said company. This is starting to sound utopian, I know, but that is the honest truth. Some of you may think this sounds revolutionary, like the end of Capitalism. That is BS. It could and should be accomplished in our present ecolo crisis. Recognition of class struggle and a party based on class interests is not revolutionary. Doesn't mean it has to be pure appeasement for the Fords of the world either.

quote:

---

And short sighted unions. Don't forget that most of these auto plants bid on the right to produce vehicles and their parts. I don't remember hearing any auto union demanding to build more environmentally friendly cars or to stop building SUVs?

---

I recall CAW Local 303 which used to represent workers at the Scarborough GM Van Plant (now closed) doing a campaign to try to get an environmentally-friendly vehicle put into their plant back in the early 1990's.

I recall reading about the UAW back in the late 1940's campaigning to try to get the big U.S. auto companies to build smaller cars...at the time the market "threat" was coming from Europe.

quote:

---

(maybe) these kinds of campaigns haven't been consistent...but it would be wrong to say the unions haven't raised these issues

---

If there is some leverage to open these issues inside the unions, I foresee that this will become increasingly crucial ground for the future of Canadian jobs. The more initiative the unions take toward retooling Canadian manufacturing the better. But, of course, it could all be framed as neoliberal and / or protectionist if all the signals come from on high.