The Pain Of It!

Growling and snarling their disaffection with the process they could no longer avoid the Canadian Auto Workers' membership voted ratification of a tentative agreement that would bring Fiat aboard on its mission to help rescue Chrysler - and ensure that the Government of Ontario and the Federal Government would be persuaded to release taxpayer funding to help them survive, at least in the short term.

Chrysler had demanded concessions to total $240-million, in line with government demands as a demonstration of good faith and reliable intentions for the future of the company. The agreement doesn't touch existing base wages and pensions, but does represent an unwilling but necessary compromise, relinquishing what the union terms 'hard won' concessions for its members over the years.

"We did what we had to just to survive", Local 444 president Rick Laporte gloomily reported. This agreement ensures that workers can now anticipate no cost-of-living increases, and no expectation of their $1,700 Christmas bonus. Nor their one-time $3,500 vacation buy-out. How sweet that was...! How painful to give it all up. But wait, that is by no means all that has been relinquished.

To bring costs at Chrysler in line with that paid to un-unionized Honda and Toyota workers, requiring a reduction of $19 an hour, the workers also had to agree to contribute $30 per month toward their health coverage, and an increase by $20 per year for drug co-payments. They will also, in the process lose their semi-private coverage. Nothing said about lawyer fees for home acquisition being subsidized.

Is that about it for the perks? Not quite; the employee car purchase and tuition rebate programs have also become fabled history. Base wages will remain at about $36 an hour. A very good wage for any line of work, come to think of it, even without the additional benefits. And then there's the trifling matter of their pensions - which workers did not themselves pay a dime toward.

But which they now insist that the Government of Ontario and the Federal Government fully guarantee through tax-payer funding. These well-remunerated and previously cossetted workers have rather high expectations. That taxes collected from a huge portion of the population whose wages don't come anywhere close to the CAW's, many of whom never had the security of workplace-sponsored pensions, should happily support theirs.

Dalton McGuilty (sic) bemoans the end of an era, remarking that "the great Canadian dream" of expectations that each succeeding generation of workers would earn substantially more than their parents, had come to an end. He's guilty of feeding a frenzy of regret over an unsustainable wage packet that did more than its bit to ensure that a vehicle manufacturer incapable of producing a reliable product was doubly-bled; by its workforce, by purchaser-rejection of its product-design ineptitude.

Ken Lewenza, CAW president, now lashes out at any entity that he can, in the heat of his anger at circumstances he could no longer control; facing up to reality is difficult for the swaggering union boss who was obviously once convinced that the sky was the limit - and beyond. Now the province's dentists, with their high professional fees, which auto workers must now be prepared to pay themselves for services, are under attack.

"The CAW has made every dentist rich", he growls. And since reimbursement for prescription drug dispensing fees will be slightly lower, he targets pharmacists as well: "Do you think it's coincidental that there's a pharmacy [in Windsor] every two blocks? Drop your fees or we'll put a not-for-profit pharmacy office in our plants", he warned. It's all right for CAW workers to demand high wages and benefits; no one else need apply.

Now bargaining will have to be undertaken to satisfy Ford's and General Motors' stability into the near future. One sad hit after another, this pampered, overpaid workforce having to face the reality it so long denied existed. Until that other reality intrudes; plant closures and employee layoffs; inevitable, sadly enough.