Are London EMD workers facing a Hobson's choice?

Are the locked out EMD workers facing a Hobson's choice?

The London Free Press reporter Scott Taylor reported in the Thursday paper that the lock out at the Electro-Motive plant in London is a local conflict with global causes. The reporter quotes Anil Verma of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management to back up this position. "Workers in China can make locomotives as well as they can here, so they're now facing the competition," the university expert told the paper.

I was puzzled. The threat facing the London jobs comes from Muncie, Indiana. The last time I checked Muncie was in the United States and not China. In the expert's defence, my guess is he was given a cold call by the reporter and the professor gave the caller his generic response.

Still, the paper reported Professor Verma "Thinks a deal can be reached . . . " Why? How? I was puzzled. I have been working on a piece of the Digital Journal, so I decided to give the professor a call. It turns out that he is in Chicago at a conference and unavailable until next week for an interview. But, he graciously sent a brief response to my e-mail.

Anil Verma wrote:

"You are probably right in terms of the immediate threat. I referred to China as competition, in general, for a wide range of manufacturing jobs. I do not know enough about EMD's specific competitive position in the industry in terms of costs, productivity, quality, etc."

I was right. He was called cold, given little background to the story, and being a gracious gentleman, he gave the reporter his generic China response.

Allow me to examine the the threat of closure facing the London EMD plant. A lot of stuff going into locomotives assembled in London originates in McCook, Illinois, located just outside La Grange where the EMD head office is located. The parts are shipped about 685 km from McCook to London, crossing the Canada/US border at one point. It is about an eight hour trip by truck — an expensive eight hour, international trip at today's exchange rate.

Progress Rail Manufacturing Corporation, a totally owned subsidiary of Progress Rail Services, now has a plant in Muncie, Indiana, less than 400 km and four and a half hours, from McCook. The Muncie plant, originally built by Westinghouse, then purchased by Asea Brown Bovery (ABB), has been rebuilt as a locomotive assembly plant at a cost of $50 million.

The 740,000 sq. ft. plant is massive with a main floor 1,960-feet in length, a 99-foot ceiling in the former transformer assembly area and locomotive-sized entry doors with railway tracks running through the building. It took only a year after its purchase for Progress Rail to hold the plant's opening ceremony.

Like London, a lot of what goes into the Muncie produced locomotives originates in La Grange, Illinois.  Unlike London, the Muncie workers are non-union, always a plus in the Caterpillar/Progress Rail playbook. Recently, Progress Rail posted a job opening for an HR Manager at its new Indiana assembly plant, they stipulated that the candidate should have "experience with providing union-free culture and union avoidance." The job is now filled but the union avoidance line is still shown on the online posting as I write this.

Welding jobs at the new facility are reportedly paying from $12-$14 an hour. Do the math. That's $24,960 annually to start for a 40-hour work week. This places these workers squarely in the ranks of the working  poor. There are a lot of working poor in Indiana according to The Working Poor Families Project.

Glassdoor, a site for employment information in the States, carries this comment:

"For a company [Progress Rail Services] that says that safety is number 1, they don't practice that. Employees are treated like dirt; both in pay and the softer sides unless you are a YES man. Unfair and inconsistent discipline and promotions, confidentiality is breached on a daily basis, safe work practices are bypassed in the interest of more and faster production, very little integrity in local management." 

Why should the London workers be concerned about China when they've got Indiana? Companies like Progress Rail and its parent, Caterpillar, don't have to go to the third world, they bring the third world to North America. David Olive, of The Toronto Star, looked at this development in an article: America, the world's sweatshop.

Welders in London make a living wage of about $35 an hour. It's good money and a lot of it stays in the community. It is good for the worker and good for the community. And in return, the company gets good work  — excellent work in fact.

This doesn't mean that Progress Rail, and EMD before it, is not taking advantage of what the third world has to offer. At least as early as 1998 EMD was working closely with Bombardier in Mexico. Recently, the first order of 32 EMD diesel-electric locomotives was assembled under contract at the Ciudad Sahagún Bombardier plant, Mexico. Progress Rail (South America) also has a new facility in Sete Lagoas, Minas Gerais, Brazil.

Before Progress Rail and its parent Caterpillar Inc. came on the scene and purchased the entire EMD operation in 2010, most (but not all) EMD locomotives were assembled in London, Ontario in one plant approximately two thirds the size of the refurbished facility opened in Muncie. Some limited EMD assembly and painting was done by SuperSteel Schenectady, Inc. (SSSI), Glenville, N.Y., and, as mentioned earlier, by Bombardier in Mexico. Sometimes, after assembly at SSSI, some locomotives were sent to Alstom in Hornell, N.Y., for finishing and final paint. I have heard reports, see comments after this story, that some work might have also been done in St. Catharines.

With so many plants available for locomotive assembly, why was an entirely new plant created in Muncie?  — a plant with a much larger floor area than the one in London and with a proposed staff, when fully operational, approximately the same size as London's? Well, for one thing, the SSSI factory which produced everything from streetcar shells to locomotives was shut down in 2008. The SSSI closure underlined the need for a U.S. assembly plant to meet the made in America demands. I believe the new Muncie plant was designed right from the start to replace the London operation.

I fear that the EMD/Progress Rail/Caterpillar hierarchy of companies extended the contract in London in order to buy time to get the plant in Muncie operational. Remember, if problems should arise at Muncie, Progress Rail does have options when it comes to assembly and painting of new locomotives.

If the London workers don't accept the pay cut and the present lock out begins to hurt the company's bottom line, maybe the company will fold their hand and shelve demands that would not look out of plane in a book by Charles Dickens. But, I doubt it. What ever happens,  when Muncie is up and running, backed by a plant in Mexico, I believe the London facility will be shuttered.

If  the workers take the pay cut, they will return to work but their lives will be in tatters. Mortgage payments, car payments, monthly food bills, possibly tuition for children in university, all will take massive chunks out of their vastly shrunken family budgets. I predict marriages will fail under the stress. After earning a decent wage for years, it will be economic hell for the EMD workers.

I see the London EMD workers facing a Hobson's choice. No matter what decision the locked out workers make, in the end they will find themselves out of a job.

Locomotives: They're big, expensive and U.S. workers build 'em for $12.00 / hr. and up.

Addendum: This report reflects a correction sent anonymously. The correction can be seen in the comment section.

After the fences, comes the security detail

The Electro-Motive Diesel plant in London, Ontario, is showing all the signs of preparing for a strike or a lock out. First the fence went up. Yesterday I noticed the security gurards were in place. When I walked up to the fence to take a picture, a guard sitting in a car took my picture.

I posted a story about the plant to Digital Journal. This is a story that should be told to the world.

The fence is up. What's next?

A fence restricts entry to the Electro-Motive Diesel plant in London, Ontario

The fence is up and the question now being asked is: "What next?"

I talked with the plant chair in search of answers and I have posted a story on Digital Journal. If interested, please click the link.

There's more to this soup than Campbell's

As a boy a bowl of warm soup left me cold. It was awfully dull stuff. My mom's idea of a great soup was Campbell's frozen potato soup. I recall it was much better than the condensed variety but there's no way to check that today. Campbell's frozen soups from the '60s are no more.

It was not until I was in my thirties and visiting some friends in Connecticut that I had a memorable soup. It was a cream of vegetable soup that was came from a gourmet food shop. It was thick. I mean it was really, really thick. It was a soup with body, texture, and lots and lots of flavour. I was won over; I was a soup fan.

Fast forward to today. I am now married to an amazing cook. She makes soups on par with that oh-so-memorable Connecticut soup from three decades ago. Her cheese with broccoli and carrot cream soup is wonderful. It made a great intro to our family Christmas dinner and the following day it was lunch. With a slice or two of homemade bread, it made a great midday meal.

Before giving you the recipe, let me say that I have noticed my wife making great use of both her food processor and her large, stand mixer. Both are made by KitchenAid. For this soup, she uses her food processor to shred the cheese and chop the carrots. The soup, minus the cheese, is first heated on the stove and then the hot soup is puréed in the mixer. She whisks the grated cheese into the hot soup immediately before serving.

And both can be quite expensive but stay alert and you can pick them up on sale. Canadian Tire had a KitchenAid stand mixer on sale before Christmas for under $200.


Judy's Broccoli Soup

750 ml or 3 cups of broccoli coarsely chopped
250 ml or 1 cup of coarsely chopped carrots
250 ml or 1 cup of coarsely chopped onion
125 ml or 1/2 cup water
500 ml or 2 cups of cheddar cheese, old Canadian style
1/4 teaspoon of pepper
And here's the cheat: She adds two ten ounce cans of  Campbell's condensed cream of potato soup, plus two cans of one percent milk.

— First, microwave the broccoli and carrots until soft.
— Then microwave the onions in the water until the onions are soft.
— Now, mix broccoli, carrots and onion/water mix together.  Add two cans of soup and stir until smooth and follow this by adding the two cans of milk. The soup will be somewhat lumpy at this point.
— Pour the mix into a food processor and puree. Don't blend too much. You want to retain some of the texture of the vegetables.
— Microwave on high until the soup is bubbling hot. This should take less than ten minutes. Make sure to stir the mix at least twice while it is heating.
— Remove from microwave, stir in the grated cheese and the quarter teaspoon of pepper.
— Serve immediately.

I think my dear, old mother would have liked this soup. It contains Campbell's condensed soup. Ah, if only it was the frozen variety.

Rebranding

I don't think much of  cities rebranding themselves. It can be expensive and, in most cases, I think it can be shown to not be worth the expense.

That said, the city of Oak Park in Illinois, the place than Frank Lloyd Wright called home at one point, hired the well known Tennessee-based company North Star Destination Strategies to rebrand their community. These folk have rebranded more than a hundred communities across the United States.

From the Chicago Tribune:

The new tourism logo for progressive western suburb Oak Park is meant to portray its people as “rebels” and “rule breakers.” Instead, some less sophisticated minds believe the logo’s tubular shape resembles a male body part.

Rich Carollo, president of the Oak Park Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the logo was presented to the Village Board as part of a larger study on reinventing Oak Park’s image to attract more tourists. The rebranding proposal, by North Star Destination Strategies, included billboards of famed Oak Park residents Frank Lloyd Wright and Ernest Hemingway, with the words: “Nonconformists” and “Boatrockers.”

The proposed slogan: “Oak Park: Step Out of Line.”

A commenter at the Tribune’s website said it best: "If your visit to Oak Park lasts more than four hours, contact your doctor immediately."

And a thank you to The Underground Conservative for this smile.

What's London; What's The London Free Press

I live in London, Ontario. I live here by choice and by necessity. The choice part comes from having moved here from Toronto back in 1976. I moved here; I stayed here; I raised a family here.

Celebrating family, I live happily in London.

The necessity part developed simultaneously with family. Both my daughters have stayed in London. They work here and they are raising their children here. With two beautiful granddaughters in London, my wife and I have pretty strong bonds with our adopted hometown.

It was with great interest I began following The London Free Press series examining London: What's London. Sadly, with every new installment my disappointment with the long-running series grows. At first, I blogged about the hollow claims being made by the paper — claims that could easily be disproved with just a few minutes of searching the Web and a few long distance phone calls.

For an example, read my post Hove to, actually. It is a classic example of shoddy reporting. When I pointed out to the paper that the claims made in the article were simply not true, the reporter told me: "Interesting how Hove and Brighton took a shot at another brand. The point," he continued, "was how Hove took a negative and made it a positive."

Huh? Doesn't the reporter realize he just smeared Hove and Brighton into one. The whole point of his What's London story was that "Hove, England, had a little identity problem . . . it was connected by name and geography to Brighton."

Randy Richmond, after a call to a Toronto professor, wrote about a fictional campaign to make Hove stand out as separate from Brighton. It was a campaign that never happened according to both local papers, a number of residents and others whom I contacted at some expense. The Toronto professor was dreaming, I was told.

I have one up on Richmond; I can make overseas calls. He can't. When I worked for the paper, overseas calls were not possible without a special code. Randy can call Toronto for a story on Hove but he can't easily call Hove to confirm the story.

The worse thing is, Richmond can't quit flogging the rebranding idea. "There's little interest among Londoners in branding ourselves the Food City, or Market City, or Agribiz City. Perhaps it's an inferiority complex," he writes. "Our neglect of our rural roots is understandable in a way. Since its start as a backwater town in the forest, London has always struggled to get and stay connected with the rest of the province."

What foolish talk. How many cities start as anything other than a little backwaters? Cities don't, as a rule, spring into existence fully formed. Toronto, a successful city in the eyes of the paper, was rebranded during its early backwater days by none other than Lord Simcoe. He rebranded Toronto as York. Simcoe, not known for approving of native names for new communities, declared the name Toronto "outlandish". We all know how well that turned out.

Why London would want to pigeonhole itself with an awkward moniker like Agribiz City, as suggested by the paper, is beyond me. To my ear, it sounds downright "outlandish".

Randy Richmond says the Forest City moniker is not true. Oh! Read the truth.

London was once a multifaceted, urban jewel. It was blue collar; It was white collar. It had factories and farms. London was a rich in opportunity and admired by other communities right across Canada. Today London, like the entire province of Ontario, is suffering through a horrendous economic decline.


It is true. My beloved London has problems, just as so many other cities and towns. The problems in London are not unique but they are severe. For instance, when it comes to jobs the unemployment rate in London is the second highest among major Canadian cities.

If the paper's series was simply a waste of newsprint, it would be bad enough but not worth concern. But, the series is posted to the Internet to be found by anyone searching the Web for information on London.

London is a town unable to "shake off  (its) sleepy pastoral past", it's a place with "an inferiority complex", it's a town "in the middle of nowhere with the future passing (it) by." At least, that is what one might come away believing if one believed The Free Press.

The editor-in-chief of the paper, Joe Ruscitti, tells us London is a an island. Worse, it is composed of numerous islands. And, to a certain extent, Ruscitti is right. Where he goes wrong is in his negative approach to the paper's no-surprise-here faux discovery. All communities are, to varying degrees, composed of separate but linked "islands". We even have a word for these: neighbourhoods or districts.

Think Paris and think of the tight pattern of arrondissements and of the more distant banlieues. Many folk living in Paris have little need, and little interest, in traveling outside their own, unique neighbourhoods. They live in their own little section of Paris where they also work and shop. No one heaps scorn on Paris for this.

Children playing a few hundred yards from my front door.

I live in the Byron banlieue in London. It's a lovely neigbourhood that encourages strolling and chatting with neighbours. It is an especially welcoming walk whenever my little granddaughter, Fiona, accompanies me.

I also shop in the area. If I don't feel like walking, and I often don't, I can drive there in mere minutes.

The island community that is damaging to London is The London Free Press itself. Once known to those who worked there as "the mighty Free Press", the paper today is a pale of ghost of its former self. It is a shrinking presence in the city. Recently the paper laid off 17 more staff members, with at least four from the editorial department: three reporters who were also capable copy editors plus a multi-talented photographer with decades of experience. (I have been told, some work once done locally by Londoners at the paper, is now being outsourced as far away as India.)

The paper tells its readers about every layoff at every major employer except for those cuts made at the paper itself. When Pierre Karl Peladeau, the head of Quebecor, the ultimate owner of the paper, was slated to visit the newsroom recently, Ruscitti fired off an e-mail telling the staff:

“This would be a good time to look and act sharp.

“This would probably not be a good time to tell the boss how much better we would be if we had this many more reporters or this or that piece of equipment, etc.

“At least for those 90 minutes, you like the new emphasis on the mobile newsroom and the concept of the mobile multimedia journalist. You think the newsroom redesign will help us be that kind of newsroom. Etc."

The e-mail made it onto the blog of former Free Press editor-in-chief Phil McLeod. Ruscitti, to his credit, ignored the leak. PKP to his discredit, or so I've been told, couldn't. He pressed Ruscitti and Ruscitti pressed the newsroom. The source of the leak was uncovered and given a short suspension.

The Free Press likes to play shrink, putting London figuratively on the psychoanalyst's couch. This is a damn hard thing to do with a city of hundreds of thousands. But, this is an easier thing to do with a paper of only a few dozen tired, overworked staffers.

At a recent retirement party held to honour departing staff members, the most common word I heard to describe the newsroom was "hell". Maybe working in hell has soured Randy Richmond and the other reporters. Maybe Joe Ruscitti is not playing at the top of his game with PKP breathing down his neck. Maybe the sour view from The Free Press newsroom is tainting their series.

. . . and now for the rest of the story

It was coarse language vs slimy, slippery language. Coarse got slimed.

The front page story consumed just about all available space above the fold of The London Free Press, yet the story was sadly incomplete. The paper failed to tell the whole story, and it's a good story to tell.

Megan Leslie, MP Halifax (NDP), was critical of the Conservatives "for pulling out of Kyoto." Peter Kent, Minister of the Environment, defended his party by chiding Leslie: "If my hon. colleague had been in Durban . . . "

The problem with Kent's response was, as the Cape Breton Post pointed out, "The government blocked the opposition from attending the UN conference in Durban, South Africa . . . "

The National Post reported: "Trudeau became incensed after Kent suggested that Leslie should have been in Durban for the UN meeting, despite the minister banning all non-government MPs from Canada’s official delegation." As one source put it, "the minister (refused) them seats on the empty government Airbus!"

I think we can all agree Trudeau's angry reaction defending the NDP member was not a parliament-ready response but it does appear on close inspection that he was stating the truth.

Read this from Hansard

Mr. Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, during question period the Minister of the Environment chided the member of Parliament for Halifax for not having attended the conference in Durban after he prevented any members of the opposition from attending in Durban. Therefore, I lost my temper and used language that was most decidedly unparliamentary. For that I unreservedly apologize and I withdraw my remarks.

Hon. Peter Kent (Minister of the Environment, CPC): Mr. Speaker, I too rise on a point of order. I understand that the third party, the Liberal rump, is somewhat out of sorts as this government corrects one of the biggest blunders the previous Liberal government ever made.

    I am not particularly troubled by the unparliamentary language hurled at me by the member of Parliament for Papineau, but I believe he owes this House an abject apology-- 

The Speaker: I believe the hon. member for Papineau just did that.

Read Kent's words carefully. You may come away feeling the Kent uses the approach of a manipulative child feigning to take the high road while carefully hurling insults. In the end, many folk would give Trudeau the nod as the better mannered MP. Trudeau's language was coarse but Kent's words were slimy.

And The Free Press/Sun Media team knows a thing or two about feigning a reaction. In keeping with the we-are-not-amused tone of their story, Trudeau's words were printed by the paper with red-faced, embarrassment. The paper reported than Trudeau called Ken "a piece of s---".

The use of a row of hyphens is out of character for both The London Free Press and the Sun Media chain. A bit of googling shows Sun Media owned papers use the full word, shit, in print and online with regularity. The (Welland) Tribune reported the words of rocker Kim Mitchell without feeling the need to resort to hyphens. They quoted Mitchell: " I don't really give a shit about sales and I don't really give a shit about money . . ."

I even quickly uncovered the offending word in an online post by Free Press columnist James Reaney. Granted Reaney, a class act, ran "language alert" at the top of his post: Raw Power Thought for the Month. He quotes Iggy Pop: "This shit really sizzles . . . "

But I thought that the really interesting story coming out of the house Wednesday was the following.

New Westminster MP Fin Donnelly fed the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans a baited hook and the hon. Keith Ashfield bit. Donnelly asked Ashfield, "Why is the minister bullying DFO employees?"

Ashfield replied, asking rhetorically, "Do I look like a bully?"

Newfoundland MP Ryan Cleary stepped up, set the hook and landed the fish. Mr. Speaker, the answer to the minister's question is, "Yes sir, your department and you, sir, are a bully".

Cleary was smooth, but not smooth enough for the Speaker of the House. He had to apologize. On the other hand, Donnelly had carefully skirted calling Ashfield a bully directly. I do not believe he was required by the Speaker to apologize.

Mr. Ryan Cleary (St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I wish to apologize for using a word that I have been told is unparliamentary. The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans asked a question. He asked this House whether he looked like a bully. I merely answered his question. I would answer the question the same way if he asked it again.

The Speaker: I am afraid that is not an acceptable retraction, so the hon. member may have some difficulty getting recognized until he decides that he may want to respect the House.

The question that started this brouhaha was attempting to examine reckless cuts being made by the minister's department. It was claimed that these cuts were putting fish stocks in jeopardy. Ministry scientists, their jobs on the chopping block, were being bullied in to silence.

These two stories demanded better treatment by The London Free Press and Sun Media. Oh, fuddle-duddle.

If you've got the time, and you haven't already seen the clip, watch the old Peter Kent discussing global warming back in his CBC days. There are reasons the new Peter Kent is losing the respect that the old Peter Kent earned over his years in the public eye.