CAW president Ken Lewenza speaks at the union’s convention Monday in Toronto on Monday, August 20, 2012.
The economy is recovering in fits and starts, but there’s one area
where growth is accelerating: the number of employers telling workers to
abandon any hope of winning wage increases.
The word to workers is that they must agree to freeze their wages – a position the Ontario government is taking in negotiations with teachers and a point the Canadian units of the Detroit Three car companies have made clear to the Canadian Auto Workers union.
But the most extreme example comes from Caterpillar Inc., whose workers at a plant in Joliet, Ill., capitulated to company demands after a three-and-a-half month strike and agreed to freeze their wages for the next six years.
The heavy equipment giant, which posted a profit of $4.9-billion (U.S.) in 2011, is “essentially saying that what you can expect from competitive success is less to workers,” said Harley Shaiken, a professor at University of California, Berkeley, and a long-time observer of U.S. labour.
“And that unwinds the history of the U.S. in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, where competitive success resulted in more for workers, which in turn fuelled purchasing power and economic growth.”
The attitude among companies that the coffers are empty when it comes to sharing with workers will be tested over the next month in CAW contract talks with the Detroit Three.
The union is insisting that workers be rewarded for the concessions they made to help save two of the companies during the recession.
The companies have no moral right to demand more concessions, CAW president Ken Lewenza told a throng of workers gathered Monday in Toronto for a CAW convention.
The pressure on unionized workers is not new, but stubbornly high unemployment levels and the fresh memories of the 2008-2009 recession are giving employers powerful leverage not only to hold the line on wages, but also roll back benefits built up over decades.
In Canada, companies in some cases have enjoyed extra help in the form of the federal government, which legislated employees back to work at Air Canada and Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd.
Continue reading here.
The word to workers is that they must agree to freeze their wages – a position the Ontario government is taking in negotiations with teachers and a point the Canadian units of the Detroit Three car companies have made clear to the Canadian Auto Workers union.
But the most extreme example comes from Caterpillar Inc., whose workers at a plant in Joliet, Ill., capitulated to company demands after a three-and-a-half month strike and agreed to freeze their wages for the next six years.
The heavy equipment giant, which posted a profit of $4.9-billion (U.S.) in 2011, is “essentially saying that what you can expect from competitive success is less to workers,” said Harley Shaiken, a professor at University of California, Berkeley, and a long-time observer of U.S. labour.
“And that unwinds the history of the U.S. in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, where competitive success resulted in more for workers, which in turn fuelled purchasing power and economic growth.”
The attitude among companies that the coffers are empty when it comes to sharing with workers will be tested over the next month in CAW contract talks with the Detroit Three.
The union is insisting that workers be rewarded for the concessions they made to help save two of the companies during the recession.
The companies have no moral right to demand more concessions, CAW president Ken Lewenza told a throng of workers gathered Monday in Toronto for a CAW convention.
The pressure on unionized workers is not new, but stubbornly high unemployment levels and the fresh memories of the 2008-2009 recession are giving employers powerful leverage not only to hold the line on wages, but also roll back benefits built up over decades.
In Canada, companies in some cases have enjoyed extra help in the form of the federal government, which legislated employees back to work at Air Canada and Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd.
Continue reading here.
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