A union leader called for more militancy yesterday as workers fortified a blockade of the General Motors of Canada headquarters in Oshawa after its parent rejected pleas to keep a nearby truck plant open.
Keith Osborne, plant chair of the Canadian Auto Workers at GM’s Oshawa complex, told cheering members in front of GMC headquarters that the union needs help to reverse the automaker’s decision to close the truck plant in 2009.
"I know it’s really hard to play baseball without a bat," Osborne said. "In the plants, we need support. We need to start getting a little bit more militant.
"Fighting back does make a difference. I’m not going to advocate a work stoppage. But I’ll tell you what. If it happens, I’m behind you 110 per cent."
There were rumblings that workers would halt GM truck and car production nearby to protest but support inside the plants for a walkout fizzled and production continued yesterday afternoon.
Chris Buckley, CAW Local 222 president, said the union would not lift the headquarters blockade, now in its fourth day.
"If they give us our truck (plant), I’ll give them their building," Buckley told the afternoon crowd that swelled to more than 200.
The blockade on the road in front of GM’s shiny Oshawa headquarters has forced about 1,000 staff to work from home.
Spokesperson Stew Low would not comment on the blockade’s impact on head office administration. But he said the company has not applied for a court injunction to gain access.
Buckley said the union, hammered by auto layoffs in the region, will reveal phase two of its fight to reverse the GM decision today.
He has stressed the union wants to be responsible and continue producing quality vehicles but, at some point, that may not be possible given workers’ anger and frustration.
"The fight has just begun," Buckley warned. "This fight is far from over."
One worker, who requested anonymity, described the mood at the blockade as "the calm before the storm."
At the truck plant, workers were sombre and worried, coming off the day shift http://us-no-fax-payday-loans.com.
"We’re very disappointed, but we’re hanging tough," said Kathy Ferris, a 27-year veteran. "I’ve never seen the industry this unstable. It’s very scary."
CAW national president Buzz Hargrove said the union contemplates more action in the next two weeks. He did not rule out plant disruptions.
Earlier, Rick Wagoner, chief executive officer of parent GM Corp., told Hargrove and the other union leaders in Detroit that the company would not change its decision because demand for pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles is plunging in the key U.S. market.
Wagoner shocked the industry Tuesday by announcing the Oshawa truck plant and three assembly operations in the U.S. and Mexico would close within two years.
He said soaring gasoline prices have abruptly driven motorists to smaller cars and there is no sign fuel costs will ever decline. The Oshawa plant produced more than 316,000 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC full size pickups in 2007.
The closing would end more than 2,000 plant jobs and several thousand others at parts suppliers.
Greg Moffatt, the truck plant union chair, told those at the blockade that he asked Wagoner why GM would close its best pickup operation for quality and productivity but got no answer.
CAW is considering a grievance against GM for allegedly breaching its recent three-year contract regarding production commitments. Labour law experts said they are unaware of any legal precedent where a court, labour board or arbitrator has forced a company to reverse a decision to close a plant. Ontario labour boards have fined companies and compensated workers after ruling firms violated operating commitments in contracts.
World food production must rise by 50% by 2030 to meet increasing demand, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon told world leaders Tuesday at a summit grappling with hunger and civil unrest caused by food price hikes.
The secretary-general told the Rome summit that nations must minimize export restrictions and import tariffs during the food price crisis and quickly resolve world trade talks.
"The world needs to produce more food," Ban said.
The Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization is hosting the three-day summit to try to solve the short-term emergency of increased hunger caused by soaring prices and to help poor countries grow enough food to feed their own.
In a message read to the delegates, Pope Benedict XVI said "hunger and malnutrition are unacceptable in a world which, in reality, has sufficient production levels, the resources, and the know-how to put an end to these tragedies and their consequences."
The Pope told the world leaders that millions of people at threat in countries with security concerns were looking to them for solutions.
Ban said a U.N. task force he set up to deal with the crisis is recommending the nations "improve vulnerable people’s access to food and take immediate steps to increase food availability in their communities."
That means increasing food aid, supplying small farmers with seed and fertilizer in time for this year’s planting seasons, and reducing trade restrictions to help the free flow of agricultural goods.
"Some countries have taken action by limiting exports or by imposing price controls," Ban said. "They only distort markets and force prices even higher."
The increasing diversion of food and animal feed to produce biofuel, and sharply higher fuel costs have also helped to shoot prices upward, experts say.
The United Nations is encouraging summit participants to start undoing a decades-long legacy of agricultural and trade policies that many blame for the failure of small farmers in poor countries to feed their own people.
Wealthy nations’ subsidizing their own farmers makes it harder for small farmers in poor countries to compete in global markets, critics of such subsidies say. Jim Butler, the FAO’s deputy director-general, said in an interview ahead of the gathering that a draft document that could be the basis for a final summit declaration doesn’t promise to overhaul subsidy policy.
Congress last month passed a five-year farm bill heavy on subsidies, bucking White House objections that such aid in the middle of a global food crisis wasn’t warranted.
The head of the summit’s U.S payday loans lenders. delegation, Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer, insisted on Monday that biofuels will contribute only 2% or 3% to a predicted 43% rise in prices this year.
Figures by other international organizations, including the International Monetary Fund, show that the increased demand for biofuels is contributing by 15% to 30% to food price increases, said Frederic Mousseau, a policy adviser at Oxfam, a British aid group.
"Food stocks are at their lowest in 25 years, so the market is very vulnerable to any policy changes" such as U.S. or European Union subsidizing biofuels or mandating greater use of this energy source, Mousseau said.
Brazil is another large exporter of biofuels, and President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva was expected to defend biofuels at the summit.
Several participants won’t even be talking to each other at the summit.
Australia’s foreign minister decried as "obscene" Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s participation in the summit. The longtime African leader has presided over the virtual transformation of his country from former breadbasket to agricultural basket case.
Zimbabweans increasingly are unable to afford food and other essentials with agriculture paralyzed by land reform and the world’s highest rate of inflation.
The Dutch ministry for overseas development pledged to "ignore" Mugabe during the summit.
EU sanctions against Mugabe because of Zimbabwe’s poor human rights record forbid him from setting foot in the bloc’s 27 nations, but those restrictions don’t apply to U.N. forums.
Jewish leaders and some Italian politicians were among those denouncing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s attendance at the meeting. On Monday, Ahmadinejad repeated his call for the destruction of Israel, which is also participating in the summit.
Ahmadinejad was scheduled to give a summit news conference Tuesday afternoon.
Schafer, asked about the presence of the Zimbabwean and Iranian leaders, told reporters in Rome that the two were welcome to attend the summit, but that U.S. delegates would not be meeting with them.
Yahoo Inc executives dismissed a search-advertising deal with Google due to antitrust concerns, one day before Microsoft Corp made its takeover offer earlier this year, according to court documents made public on Monday.
The position came to light in a complaint filed by attorneys representing two Michigan pension funds in a shareholder lawsuit that aims to revoke Yahoo takeover defenses and press the company to renew merger talks with Microsoft.
“We are focused on long-term value creation rather than short-term gains,” said a Yahoo document prepared for Yahoo executives ahead of an “all hands” internal meeting on January 30 — the day before Microsoft made its merger offer.
Bracing for employee questions over whether Yahoo should outsource its search-ad sales to Google, executives were prepared to argue that any short-term gains would derail Yahoo’s long-term push to become a “must buy” for advertisers.
“Short-term analysis of the revenue potential of outsourcing monetization may not take into account the longer term impact on the competitive market if search becomes an effective monopoly,” an excerpt from the company document said http://abc-cashadvance.com. Monetization refers to sales of search-related ads.
These comments appear to contrast with Yahoo’s subsequent position when it announced on April 9 that it was conducting a test with rival Google, the market leader in Web search and related advertising, to rely on Google to sell its search ads.
TURNABOUT
The turnabout was part of a strategy by Yahoo management to seek alternatives for its business instead of settling for Microsoft’s cash-and-stock offer at $31 per share, which the company’s board had rejected as undervaluing Yahoo’s assets.
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