Electro-Motive rally sends message to PM

The Windsor Star:

London, Ontario - Three weeks into a lockout at Electro-Motive Canada, Frank Kearney will tell you there are good days and bad days.

Saturday was a good day, as thousands of protesters filled Victoria Park in the city's downtown core for a boisterous rally in support of Kearney and more than 400 of his fellow workers, who are fighting company efforts to slash wages and benefits by 50 per cent.

"I think the turnout's great, the support - 11 buses have come from Windsor alone. It's a great feeling," said Kearney, a welder at the plant, which assembles locomotives.

The spirited gathering, which drew demonstrators from across Ontario and parts of the U.S., turned into an unrelenting condemnation of the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S.-based Caterpillar Corp., which owns the London plant.

Caterpillar, which reported a 44 per cent surge in its thirdquarter earnings in 2011 and forecast a 2012 sales increase of between 10 per cent and 20 per cent, has become the "poster child for corporate greed in Canada," said Sid Ryan, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour. "We are sending a message to Harper that we are sick and tired of the corporate greed that exists in Canada.

"Caterpillar is getting a wakeup call they never dreamt of."

Electro-Motive locked out the workers New Year's Day after protracted contract talks hit a snag over company demands which would reduce the average hourly wage from $34 to $16.50.

MP Joe Comartin (NDP - Windsor-Tecumseh) reiterated demands that Ottawa impose stricter requirements on companies receiving taxpayer dollars.

"The federal government has to look at the situations in which they give money to a corporation, as they did here, not attaching any strings to it in terms of employment," he said in an interview.

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