Viking Air Workers Vote 94% in Favour of Strike Action

Click Here to read the release.

Occupy Nanaimo

Let’s have more People in the Plaza

Saturday, November 5, 11:00 am Diana Krall Plaza.

It’s been 3 weeks since Occupy Nanaimo began!

This is an Occupation - An Occupation needs people
It might be inconvenient, it might be wet, it might be cold (but actually the weather forecast looks pretty good!)

It is inconvenient, wet and cold for the Occupiers at Diana Krall square - the Occupiers who have been arrested – the thousands of Occupiers around the world who are making huge sacrifices to bring about global change

Prove to the nay sayers that the Occupy movement is not just a bunch of lazy, ill informed malcontents – bring your energy, your friends, your family, your ideas, your drums, your instruments, your signs, your voices and
be loud!

Stick around for the Grand General Assembly from 1 - 3 Be heard

Spread the word

For more info www.occupynanaimo.ca or
Occupy Nanaimo Group on facebook

Four Sisters

(CAW Local 114 was well represented in Victoria by sisters Sarah Dutsch, Barbie Zipp and Jeannie Blaney when NDP Leadership candidate and CAW sister Peggy Nash, came to our provincial capital.)  

CAW's own Sister Peggy Nash visited Victoria after her recent announcement that she is running to be the leader of the federal NDP.  The event was open to those interested in meeting Sister Peggy Nash and those of us who know her well and were there to show our CAW support.  I was sure proud to be CAW member as Sister Peggy Nash fielded a wide variety of challenging questions. Sister Peggy Nash took on each question and delivered a considerate response. It was refreshing to hear a politician take on a questions and speak directly to the issues and not to give the 'typical' politician response where they end up dancing around the issues.  Sister Peggy Nash is proud of her Social Democratic view and will not apologize or shy away from it.  As she said her Social Democratic values are what guides her on her way to make significant gains for all Canadians.   

Standing there I just knew that Sister Peggy Nash will succeed in her run for the leader of the federal NDP, but why stop there...with our help she can become  Canada's first elected female NDP Prime Minister!

For more information on Peggy's campaign, to get involved or donate, please visit: www.peggynash.ca

- Barbie Zipp -

Raitt’s Three Principles for labour relations only run one way

Stephen Harper’s government has interpreted the rule of law rather flexibly in the arena of labour relations. In just six months in power, the Conservative majority has intervened three times to end or prevent work stoppages. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/raitts-three-principles-for-labour-relations-only-run-one-way/article2221394/

Federal Election 2011‏

A federal election has been called for May 2, 2011.  We need to work together to defeat the Harper Conservatives.

Over the course of the campaign, we will be e-mailing information on the election and the parties.  To start, visit http://100reasons.ca for 100 reasons not to vote Tory.

We can all make a difference: volunteer for a campaign; make a financial donation; request a lawn sign.  It is vital that we work hard to defeat the Harper government.

You can make a difference.  Thank you.

For more information, contact political.action@caw.ca

African Heritage Month

http://www.caw.ca/en/7342.htm

Local 114 Supports the Lotus Children’s Centre in Mongolia

When most people go on vacation, they think of sun surf, sand, camping or just relaxing.  Ann Cody, Local 114's Southern B.C. Member at Large has different ideas.  This summer, Ann and her partner visited Mongolia and helped out a children's orphanage.  Please click on the attached link to find out the story.  Good work Ann!

http://cawlocal114.tripod.com/annmon.pdf

The High Price of Foreign Control

by Ken Lewenza

December 10, 2010

Canadians just undertook a high-profile and timely national debate about the costs and benefits of foreign control of our major corporations, culminating in the federal government’s decision to block the proposed takeover of Potash Corp. But the issue of foreign control is not going away.

Indeed, in the weeks since the Potash decision, two other foreign corporations have demonstrated through their actions exactly why Canada needs a very different approach to regulating foreign investment. U.S. Steel locked out its workers in Hamilton, continuing a ruthless drive to suppress compensation and pensions here in Canada. And the Brazilian mining giant Vale dealt a body blow to Thomson, Man., by announcing closure of the former Inco smelter there — destroying the lives of hundreds of families.

Those are concrete manifestations of exactly why so many Canadians, myself included, are concerned about the foreign conquest of our major businesses.

Incoming foreign direct investment has grown dramatically in Canada in recent years, rising from 20 per cent of our GDP in 1994 to 36 per cent today. That’s the highest level of foreign control since the Second World War. Three hundred billion dollars of foreign investment surged into Canada in the last decade, like an economic tsunami. Over half was concentrated in our mining, oil and gas, and primary metals sectors. Canada lost corporate icons — such as Stelco, Dofasco, Inco, Falconbridge and Alcan — whose presence was so central to our historical development.

If foreign takeovers actually resulted in the installation of new productive capital in Canadian workplaces, that would be one thing. We could then benefit from new equipment, technology or marketing opportunities. But the actions of U.S. Steel and Vale give the lie to that hope. They’ve been shuttering or idling strategic Canadian capacity in many communities, including Hamilton — all in the interests of reducing excess capacity, selling assets to pay down debt and intimidating Canadian workers.

Canada incurs many costs when key productive assets are sold off to foreign giants. We incur a long-run liability for the payment of interest and profits to the foreign owner; dragging down our balance of payments (by around $40 billion this year). We lose the jobs that result from the presence of head offices. Takeovers have also contributed to Canada’s visible deindustrialization, since foreign owners are interested only in our resources and bulk commodities — not in developing Canada as a diversified, sophisticated nation.

Another key consequence of takeovers is that they reposition productive Canadian assets, reducing them to mere cogs in a bigger global machine. Key productive jewels such as Stelco or Inco, which once stood on their own feet, are suddenly vulnerable to the bean-counting of foreign financial engineers. Sure, we had our ups and downs in the Canadian steel and resources industries over the decades, but the Canadian facilities always maintained a critical mass — and we always knew they would still be there at the end of the next roller-coaster cycle. Now we can no longer have that confidence. Foreign parents have no qualms about shutting Canada right out of the picture, if cost calculations or head-office political concerns push them that way.

Of the many failed takeovers we’ve allowed in the past decade, the U.S. Steel case may be the most infuriating of all. It flaunted sombre commitments to preserve Canadian jobs and production, before the ink was dry on the deal. It threatened workers — first at Lake Erie, now in Hamilton — with the loss of their livelihoods, for refusing to accept corporate extortion.

The humiliating failure of our federal government to enforce the original net-benefit deal with U.S. Steel proves that those backroom arrangements, cooked up between foreign tycoons and Ottawa bureaucrats, are not worth the paper they are printed on.

What’s happening in Hamilton today is nothing less than an affront to Canada’s national status as a serious, developed country. It’s not just the members of Local 1005 that are being bullied; it’s our whole country. The Investment Canada regulations must be scrapped, and replaced with a genuine law that allows us to put the right conditions, backed up by meaningful sanctions, on those foreign investments which genuinely enhance Canada’s economic interests.

And if U.S. Steel won’t use its Canadian facilities to produce the output and jobs we need, then those assets should be given to someone else who will. Newfoundland’s Premier Danny Williams proved, in his showdown with Abitibi-Price (when it shuttered the community of Grand Falls), that a government has both the responsibility and the ability to stand up to corporations which disrespect their responsibility to the communities where they do business. Let’s see our government do the same thing with U.S. Steel.

Ken Lewenza is National President of the Canadian Auto Workers union.

Shannon Devine
Communications Director
CAW-TCA Canada

Office/ Bureau: 1-800-268-5763 x.6544

Cell/ Téléphone cellulaire: (416) 302-1699

Fax: (416) 495-6552

205 Placer Court
Toronto, ON M2H 3H9
http://www.caw.ca/en/

shannon.devine@caw.ca

End Violence Against Women: December 6 | Canadian Auto Workers | CAW

On December 6, CAW members across the country will organize memorials, forums and events to commemorate the 14 women who were murdered at L'École Polytechnique in Montreal in 1989. The day, marked as the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence against Women, provides an opening for all citizens and activists to challenge the issue of gender-based violence in Canada.

Check out End Violence Against Women: December 6 | Canadian Auto Workers | CAW

Here are events planned in B.C.

New Westminster, BC
CAW Local 111: The CAW Women’s Committee invites you to an evening of Remembrance, Memorial and Celebration
Please join the CAW Women’s Committee in a ceremony dedicated to ending violence against women and girls at the CAW Union Hall, 326 12th Street,New Westminster, BC
Monday, December 6th, 2010 at 6:00 pm
RSVP: Womenscommittee@caw111.com or Sister Christine Morrison 604-992-1784; Sister Ruth Armstrong (778) 837-3835
All women are welcome; please feel free to bring your daughters, sisters, mothers and friends! 

Victoria, BC
CAW Local 333 is holding a full day of events on Dec. 6th, beginning at 10:00am at the local union hall:
2nd Floor, 4248 Glanford Ave.
VICTORIA, B.C. V8Z 4B8
Phone: 250.384.4423
Click here for Poster http://cawlocal114.tripod.com/dec6postvic.pdf

Larry Hubich: President of Saskatchewan Federation of Labour at BC FED

Larry Hubich, the President of the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour which represents over 98,000 unionized workers in that province took time to say hello to CAW National Rep Gavin McGarrigle and Local 114 Vancouver Island Member at Large and Vice President Nanaimo, Duncan & District, Labour Council, Jim Sadlemyer during the B.C. Federation of Labour convention being held  in Vancouver.  Larry is also an active blogger and user of social media.  You can check out his blog here:
http://larryhubich.blogspot.com/

The CAW represents members at the Hotel Saskatchewan in Regina, Moose JAW Transit, DHL and more.   If you are interested in the Canadian Auto Workers, click on the following link. http://www.caw.ca

Canada's foreign investment laws need a reboot, by Ken Lewenza

Canada's foreign investment laws need a reboot

By Ken Lewenza, Special to The Windsor Star
November 10, 2010

  

Last week's decision by the federal government to block the hostile $40 billion takeover of Potash Corp. touches on a much deeper challenge facing Canadians. In the face of rampant globalization, Canada needs more tools to regulate foreign investment, to make sure that it helps our economy (rather than hollowing it out). The current Investment Canada Act does not do this; it's been mostly a rubber stamp since it was implemented in 1985. It should be scrapped and replaced with more powerful measures.

Indeed, the potash decision represents only the second foreign takeover ever turned down under the Investment Canada Act. The only other case was Ottawa's refusal to allow the sell-off of the space assets of MDA to a U.S. armaments giant in 2008. In that case, the CAW helped lead the opposition; that takeover would have badly undermined our already-weak high-tech capabilities. Ironically, it was the Stephen Harper government -- perhaps the most pro-business government in our history -- that blocked both of those takeovers.

I give full credit to Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall for putting the broader issue of foreign takeovers once again squarely on the national agenda. He's a conservative, business-friendly politician, to be sure; and many of his policies have hurt working people in his home province. But this time he put the province's interests (and the country's) ahead of his own ideology. And in so doing, he did us all a favour, because our foreign investment policies are well overdue for a fundamental rethink.

The Investment Canada Act supposedly ensures that each takeover provides some kind of "net benefit" to Canada. But in practise that test has been applied so loosely it has become meaningless. Most takeovers aren't even reviewed, because they don't meet the thresholds under the Act. When reviews do occur, they are perfunctory, secretive, and unenforceable.

The philosophical presumption behind the Investment Canada Act is that foreign investment is generally a good thing, and Canada wants as much of it as we can get. This philosophy is hardly surprising. After all, the Act was the creation of Brian Mulroney's government -- the same one that brought us continental free trade. Only when a takeover struck a particular political nerve with Canadians, did it even get a second glance from the regulators.

The CAW is not opposed to foreign investment on principle. After all, our entire auto assembly industry is 100 per cent foreign-owned. Many other valuable, high-value sectors (from computers to aerospace to machinery) are also heavily foreign-owned. If a foreign company brings something to Canada that we don't have (such as technology, real capital equipment, engineering and design capabilities, and more), and if that company actually builds a business here (rather than just taking over one that Canadians built), then foreign investment is clearly beneficial.

But foreign investment has its drawbacks, too. It results in an outflow of profits and interest to foreign owners, dragging down our national balance of payments to the tune of about $40 billion per year. With foreign control, crucial decisions regarding the future of Canadian operations are made somewhere else. (We constantly face that challenge in the auto industry, where it's often a struggle just to get foreign-based executives to recognize Canada as a separate jurisdiction.) And it negatively affects the structure of our economy: Foreign investors have been interested more in our natural resources than anything else, reinforcing our backwards evolution as a resource supplier to the rest of the world.

To overcome those inherent costs and disadvantages, a foreign investor needs to demonstrate -- concretely, publicly, and enforceably -- that it will deliver other benefits that genuinely enhance Canada's economic capacities.

I get angry when business lobbyists and commentators (like last week's Economist magazine) denounce any measure to control foreign investment as "protectionist" -- as if it is somehow illegitimate for a government to protect its citizens' best interests. But it isn't emotion or "nationalism" that motivates our concern about takeovers. It's bread-and-butter economics. Because the reality, contrary to free-market doctrine, is that many foreign transactions do not benefit Canadians.

We learned the hard way from the huge takeovers that Investment Canada rubber-stamped during the last commodities upswing (including Falconbridge, Stelco, Alcan, and Inco) that Canadian facilities, and Canadian jobs, will be jettisoned by foreign executives the minute they need to cut capacity or reduce debt. Every one of those takeovers supposedly guaranteed a "net benefit" to Canada, according to Investment Canada. Yet every one hurt us, and badly.

Now is the time to abandon the presumption that foreign investment is inherently good. Instead, let's put in place the regulatory ability to separate the wheat from the chaff. We must screen foreign investments that are genuinely helpful, from those that aren't.

Ken Lewenza is National President of the Canadian Auto Workers.

Read more:http://www.windsorstar.com/business/Canada+foreign+investment+laws+need+reboot/3803920/story.html#ixzz14tVsSYsM

-------------------------------------------------------

Angelo DiCaro

CAW Communications Department

205 Placer Court

Toronto, Ontario

M2H 3H9

tf: 1.800.268.5763 xt 3754

o: 416.495.3754

c: 416.606.6311

angelo.dicaro@caw.ca

Follow me on Twitter: @sindicato9

CAW Website: www.caw.ca/en

CAW RSS news feed: http://www.caw.ca/en/currentNews.xml

Subscribe to CAW newsletters: http://www.caw.ca/en/newsletters.htm

CAW Local 114 Supports Afrigrand Tour

Brother Jim Sadlemyer (Center) CAW Local 114 Vancouver Island Member at Large, presents a cheque for $350.00 to Sue Creba (L) and Bonnie Eaton (R) of the Nan-Go Grannies in support of the Afrigrand Tour during a recent fundraiser held in Nanaimo.

 From September to November, the Stephen Lewis Foundation is travelling across the country with African grandmothers and granddaughters orphaned by AIDS.

For the first time, individuals in 40 Canadian communities from St. John’s, Newfoundland to Victoria, British Columbia will be able to connect directly with African women and girls at the heart of these community-based initiatives.

The Stephen Lewis Foundation invites you to join the AfriGrand Caravan, engage in meaningful dialogue, and stand in solidarity with us as we do everything in our power to support their efforts to overcome.

Thursday, November 4 – Burnaby, British Columbia 
Friday, November 5 – Vancouver, British Columbia 
Monday, November 8 – Nanaimo, British Columbia 
Tuesday, November 9 – Comox Valley, British Columbia 
Wednesday, November 10 – Victoria, British Columbia

  "The firsthand accounts of the tragedies caused by the AIDS epidemic as told by the visiting grandmothers and granddaughters are very sobering, chilling and at the same time uplifting.  The Stephen Lewis Foundation, the Nan-Go Grannies as well as the community supporters should all be commended for this initiative.  I encourage everyone to attend an event as the tour nears its completion, " said Sadlemyer.

Labour College of Canada - Applications Now Available!

http://www.caw.ca/en/9600.htm

Edgewater Casino - petition to approve expansion

Jobs are important- fighting back makes a difference! I’ve created a facebook group, and there is a big vote by city council at city hall on the 16^th of November at 7:30PM, so show up and let city council know that in today’s economy we need jobs, not lay offs, and most importantly,

sign the petition! ... http://www.PetitionOnline.com/edgeexp/

Thanks all,

Luke Lillemo

Service Representative

CAW Local 3000

P: 1-800-862-3088 ext.6

F: 604-524-6762

C: 604-802-9523

luke@cawbclocals.com

Chinese Union Meets CAW

山东省工会联合会在9月派出一个代表团前往多伦多和温哥华，了解更多的碳原子线。
该联合会是由山东省，在中国最大的之一，全省人口中9400万（近3倍，加拿大的大小）。
在多伦多，介绍了由教育署的碳原子线，妇女事务部及法律部。加拿大汽车工人工会主席肯Lewenza热烈欢迎山东PFTU包括副总统女士汪哩花谁是本次会议与会代表在多伦多表示赞赏。加拿大汽车工人工会全国代表基思奥斯本，以前的碳原子线的奥沙瓦汽车厂椅子，向与会代表介绍，其中包括副总统的烟台市工会，其中包括通用汽车公司在烟台工厂。
碳原子线区主管苏珊斯普拉特等会见了代表团在温哥华。非常感谢平职业健康诊所崔安大略工人，和史蒂夫长，温哥华的碳原子线人权委员会主席为自愿提供的解释。山东PFTU延长一对碳原子线的邀请访问山东明年继续进行交流。


To read this story in English : http://www.caw.ca/en/9455.htm