The Caterpillar crisis is now Ontario’s crisis

Workers picket at locomotive Electro-Motive in London, Ont., on Jan. 20. The Caterpillar Inc subsidiary locked out some 450 locomotive manufacturing workers in London on Jan. 1 after the Canadian Auto Workers rejected a contract proposal.

Martin Regg Cohn, Opinion, The Toronto Star:

Canada’s union movement faces an existential struggle to protect its members — and rally public support.

London, the sleepy former insurance capital of Canada, is now ground zero for a labour dispute that is shaping up as nasty, brutish and long. It will have ramifications across Ontario’s industrial heartland, which is why all of us — and the politicians who govern us — need to pay close attention.

If London has a problem, we all do.

At the old locomotive plant now owned by U.S.-based multinational Caterpillar Inc., the Canadian Auto Workers union is not even on strike. The CAW has been locked out since New Year’s Day because it refused to sign its own death warrant by agreeing to slash wages in half for most workers from $34 an hour to $16.50.

When a powerful multinational negotiates in bad faith, it becomes a story that governments in Queen’s Park and Ottawa can no longer wash their hands of. To put it in language that resonates with Premier Dalton McGuinty: When a bully tries to humiliate people, you can’t just watch in silence.

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