[darkpuppet]

Here's a story I bring up from time to time that illustrates what would have happened if CAW didn't give in to demands..

In Thunder Bay, the Safeway grocer store franchise was paying out the ass for labour. Stock boys would start at $12/hour, cashiers making upward of $16-$18/hr.

They asked the employees to take a $1/hr paycut, because they could no longer compete with the non-unionized stores in the city.

The union voted it down and began ther 6 month strike.

Safeway tried to negotiate.. explaining that the stores couldn't stay in business, that they would have to close down if the employees didn't take the pay cut.

So they put it to another vote.

The union voted it down.

Safeway announced that they were going to close the stores and put everyone out of work because the business wasn't competitive anymore.

The union went to city council which went to safeways and asked for one last vote.

Now, keep in mind that the terms didn't change. If safeways couldn't cut salaries, they could not do business in Thunder Bay. what did the union do?

They voted it down.

So the Safeways chain pulled out of Thunder Bay and didn't return for over 2 years. (was it 4 or 5, I can't recall).

And yet, the union continued striking outside the closed safeway store about how Safeway threw their jobs out.

That's a union truly gone wrong. It's one thing when they protect their employees, but there are two great examples of how unions ran the business into the ground.. Safeway in Thunder Bay being one, and the second being OPSEU and the MTO (they striked for 3 months for job security and ended up having 20% of the staff laid off 2 months after the contract was signed).