Plant closure offers a lesson in politics

(November 24) - When will working people learn? We constantly receive lessons from the experiences of others, and just as constantly ignore them.

When workers have a chance to join a union, why do they believe the chorus of nay-saying from people who profit from a non-union environment? Maybe they believe the employers who say either of two things: you don’t need a union, we will look after you; or, if you join a union we will shut down and move away. Or maybe they believe the conservative think tanks who say unions served a purpose 50 years ago but aren’t needed any more.

As we saw last week with W. C. Wood, when push comes to shove, employers look after themselves. They will abandon people who loyally punched the time clock week after week, year after year. When it suits their financial balance sheet, they will close down whether there is a union or not.

Unions do not plunge a company into bankruptcy. Poor management does. If anything, during this recession we have seen unions help companies survive.

The main thing unions do – as important and relevant today as it was in the dirty thirties –is protect workers from callous and arbitrary managers. Wages, working conditions and workplace safety are all better in a unionized workplace.

Could a union have protected these workers from the catastrophe of going into receivership? The CAW did for the men and women at GM and Chrysler, but those companies wanted to stay open. The Wood family gave up when they sold out to an American financial holding company that couldn’t have cared less about what happens to families in Guelph.

There is a bigger injustice here, though. Also an awful irony.

My guess is that the Wood workers who bothered to cast votes on election day chose either the Conservatives or the Liberals. These are the parties that passed the law that left workers wages at the bottom of the list of debts to be paid by bankrupt companies. First in line are the secured creditors. The banks, mortgage companies and anyone from whom Woods borrowed money and put up property as collateral.

Workers wages, vacation pay, severance pay and the like are unsecured. They have already earned the money, but they stand at the back of the line when it comes time to collect. The best they can expect is a one-time payout of $3,200, at most, from the federal government’s Wage Earner Protection Program. Most long-service employees are owed a whole bunch more than this.

Compare this to the wage protection fund put in place by the provincial NDP government in the early 1990s. All companies contributed to the fund. In the event of a corporate bankruptcy, workers who were owed back wages and severance pay would be paid from the fund. In full. No $3,200 cap. The government would then pursue the corporation for repayment. The workers and their families did not suffer an additional hardship on top of losing their jobs. The Conservative government of Mike Harris dismantled this fund and threw workers back to the back of the line.

As they contemplate a future without manufacturing jobs, the Wood workers should look at what they could have had and what they do have. Those of them who vote Conservative should know they put themselves on the slippery slope that has led them to where they are. Those who vote Liberal should wonder why the provincial government has done nothing to protect their earnings when their employer went belly-up.

All of them should vow to never make the same mistake again.