My Cat Sheds...

I first posted this article on the Mine Mill / CAW website for Labour Day 2005 before I retired. Clearly nothing has improved over the last seven years. The toll of government policy has taken on working people in this country is nothing short of appalling, Stelco, Vale Inco, Electromotive, John Deere, MABE… the list is long and growing. The right is not planning on letting the union movement sit back and lick their wounds. They are out to kill it, plain and simple. If the organized workers do not begin to act in their own interest the future for the next generation will be bleak indeed.

Working people need to realize that they aren’t going to enjoy the part they will get to play in the future Stephen Harper plans for Canada.

Labour Day - 2005

History, as it is taught to our children in the schools, is not the story of how this country was built. It is for all intents and purposes the continuation of a myth. What they study are the stories of the wealthy and the ruling classes. Our children are taught that they need to know all about the “Captains of Industry”, and how they built this country. They are taught about the lives and policies of long dead politicians. They are taught that this country is great and strong and that these people, whom they have studied in class, are to be honoured and respected. This view is reinforced in the media where politicians and business leaders receive most of the coverage on the nightly news.

The reality is that none of the great projects that have been built in this country could have become reality without the sacrifice, skills, and sweat of working people. In our society it is all too easy to take for granted the things that make life as comfortable as it is. When you turn on the tap, you take for granted that you will be getting clean safe water. You seldom consider all of the people that make that happen from the water treatment plant down to the crew that dug the hole and repaired the water main that froze and broke on Christmas Eve. You probably didn’t consider the miners who made the copper pipe and stainless steel fixtures possible. Possibly you failed to realize just how much you rely on the people who maintain the electrical systems that our society has come to be so dependent upon. Our society wasn’t built by a man who arranged the financing to build a railroad. Our society was built by workers; workers with skills, dedication and dreams of a better life.

Yet, in our culture we revere the businessman who became impossibly wealthy in our history books, and still ignore the people who made it possible, working people. As a society, we set aside one day a year, to pay lip service to the workers who built this country and made it what it is, Labour Day. It is a day that in modern society that has become less and less relevant as people are drawn into the premise that everything they have achieved, they have achieved on their own. They have come to believe the mantra that taxes are a bad thing and if they could just get another break things would get better. But that is the flaw in the logic of the political right. Many believe that if they could just work harder or longer things would improve, but cannot quite escape the uneasy feeling that we are somehow walking on very thin economic ice and could break through without warning.

In Canada today, approximately 30 percent of the workforce enjoy the benefits of union membership. Generally union members are paid higher wages; enjoy a benefits package, and pensions. They work under collective agreements that afford them protections from unfair practices and have a measure of job security that is simply not available to unorganized workers.

For unionized workers the status quo cannot be good enough. We must work for democratic reform. We must continue our fight for improved social programs, and justice in a wide range of areas from poverty, violence against women, and human rights. For those in the Union Movement, the struggle for a better society will never end.

On this Labour Day, we must resolve to remember why we set aside this day. We need to build bridges to bring together those workers who are still unorganized, and we must dedicate ourselves to educating young workers so that they can continue the work to build a better a quality of life for all Canadians.

Bob Beck

Unit Chair – Falconbridge

Mine Mill / CAW – Local 598

original link: (about half way down the page) http://www.minemill598.com/editorial.htm

The media, in large part, have ignored the protests that have been taking place on Wall Street. The buzz in the social media is however, becoming too loud to ignore. Many news organizations seem to be clearly befuddled as to how to deal with this ongoing situation. When trying bring the coverage up to speed, they try come to grips with it by labelling the activists with labels that range from, “a bunch of deluded hippies”, to Kevin O’Leary’s comment this evening on the CBC’s, “Lang & O’Leary Exchange” when he referred to the protesters as, “left wing bozo’s…” If they cannot pigeon hole who is protesting, they are really having difficulty in portraying what the protests are about, and what they hope to accomplish.

I would contend the Wall Street protest, and the others springing up elsewhere, are ultimately about the roles of the citizens, government, and capitalism in our society, and in the final analysis, who is in charge. It is becoming apparent that the way we have organized our society is not fulfilling the needs of the vast majority of people. The way things are simply does not represent the best we can do in meeting our needs. Government policy is too often controlled by corporate, and special interests. Governments under a democractic system, function under a contract to the citizens who put them in place, to adiminister those services that are deemed to be in the common good. In many ways the governments we have set up no longer function for our sole benefit . It is not necessarily the governments that have been corrupted but the people we have put in place to administer our interests.

Capitalism is the system we have put in place to define how we structure our economic activity. This system is no longer providing economic benefits for all. An unconscionable portion of the benefits of economic activity is accruing to an ever diminishing group of extremely wealthy people, while many on the bottom of the economic ladder, have difficulty in meeting the most basic of needs of daily life.

We need to question the systems we have put in place. Government must function for the benefit of the population is existing to serve. In order to bring it back under control, it is vital that people become politically involved in their own futures. Apathy is simply not an option. One only has to look around to realize that we can do better. We must insist that our politicians act in the best interest and for the benefit of the citizens who have elected them. Responsible government is achieved by an involved and demanding electorate.