When Electro-Motive/Caterpillar locked out workers at its London, Ont. plant on January 1, telling them to take a 50 per cent pay cut or they would close shop, so began 2012, the year the middle-class Canadian job came under heavy fire.
No one eliminates decent paying work and replaces it with low-wage jobs without a supportive narrative to smooth the way. The frame in place today focuses on powerful "union leaders" -- villanized as "union bosses," "the oppressors ... responsible for having forced labour to be exported."
The newspapers, who long ago replaced labour reporters with business reporters, warn of the "co-ordinated attack on unions" and note that the union movement is getting "militant." Throughout the mainstream media, the common narrative reveals that "union-busting" is accepted as legitimate activity because "unions have too much power."
Essentially, the history books will reveal the narrative of 2012 as the year of the unionbot. It reads like a science fiction plot: an immutable, greedy beast that bears no human resemblance to actual workers invades Planet Earth and therefore has to slayed like a dragon.
The history books will describe how multinational corporations such as Caterpillar conscripted governments to serve with them on the battlefront, to dismantle the unionbot.
No one eliminates decent paying work and replaces it with low-wage jobs without a supportive narrative to smooth the way. The frame in place today focuses on powerful "union leaders" -- villanized as "union bosses," "the oppressors ... responsible for having forced labour to be exported."
The newspapers, who long ago replaced labour reporters with business reporters, warn of the "co-ordinated attack on unions" and note that the union movement is getting "militant." Throughout the mainstream media, the common narrative reveals that "union-busting" is accepted as legitimate activity because "unions have too much power."
Essentially, the history books will reveal the narrative of 2012 as the year of the unionbot. It reads like a science fiction plot: an immutable, greedy beast that bears no human resemblance to actual workers invades Planet Earth and therefore has to slayed like a dragon.
The history books will describe how multinational corporations such as Caterpillar conscripted governments to serve with them on the battlefront, to dismantle the unionbot.