VIHA Nominated for Corporate Villain of
the Month
This month, our winning
nominee for Corporate villain of the Month is VIHA
Yes, VIHA for:
-their lack of listening skills - with the closure of
Cowichan Lodge and the need for more seniors beds, their failure to
listen to the community is shameful
-for their lack of watching over
seniors in private for profit care facilities such as the Lodge on 4th
who's owner is using public dollars at the expense of quality care for
the seniors at this site - shameful
-for their lack of action in
dealing with the C outbreak at NRGH and other sites due to their
continued contracting out of the vital housekeeping services - shameful
- for their high paying executive wages - shameful
-for
their lack of address with their management team, who've made unsafe
decisions that have resulted in worker injuries - shameful
-for their funding cuts to women/children programs - shameful
If any group has the most shameful acts here on the Island it must be
VIHA.
Heather Arnold HEU
Catalyst
Paper Seeks 30% Wages Cut
Just months after Catalyst Paper lost it's court case after
it refused to pay more than $6 million in municipal taxes to four bC
communities, including North Cowichan, Catalyst Paper president Richard
Garneau is demanding a 25 - 30 % roll-back of labour costs at it's four
BC pulp mills.
Ten days earlier, Catalyst walked away from a meeting with the
Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, who had offered to
reduce wages by 10% and to forego two future wage increases already
agreed to in their contract.
Catalyst Paper is the largest newsprint and paper producer in Western
Canada, and is blaming the global recession for the need to cut costs.
Garneau is stepping down next month, and his 3 year tenure has seen
agressive attempts to cut costs and taxes.
SKLAR
PEPPLAR BOYCOTT ANNOUNCED
The Canadian
Labour Congress has endorsed a National Consumer Boycott against Sklar
Pepplar, Alan White branded furniture and its manufacturer, AW
Manaufacturing.
The boycott is at the request of the United
Steelworkers and is in support of 100 workers who lost their jobs and
were cheated out of their severance pay when Sklar Pepplar filed
bankruptcy August 2008. In late 2008, the President of Sklar Pepplar
bought the
company's assets out of bankruptcy, closed the facility, and bought AW
Manufacturing Inc in Mississippi and now uses product from that plant
to sell to Sklar's customers.
“Official Restaurant” of the Olympics
pays lowest wages in the country
February 18, 2010
B.C.
Federation of Labour President, Jim Sinclair is calling on the
"Official Restaurant" of the Olympics to stop paying new employees less
than BC's minimum wage which is already the lowest in Canada.
"I talked to several McDonald's workers in the past
few days
who are making less than $7 an hour and they are not impressed with the
company," Sinclair said. "These workers deserve a fair wage and
respect. That's the real Olympic spirit."
British Columbia has the lowest minimum wage in
Canada at $8 an
hour. It has been frozen for eight years. However, McDonald's in the
Lower Mainland use the so-called training wage to lower starting
salaries to as little as $6.35 an hour. The Liberal government
introduced the training wage by lowering the minimum wage by 25 percent
for new workers and immigrants.
"For those watching the McDonald's commercials
celebrating the
spirit and values of the Olympics, it might come as a surprise that one
of the largest global restaurant chains pays new employees the lowest
wages in Canada," Sinclair said. "The company can't just pay lip
service to the spirit of the Olympics."
"As part of our Olympic sponsorship we honour the
hard work and
exceptional performance of our restaurant crew...." said McDonald's
Senior Vice-President of Global Marketing, Dean Barrett. Sinclair
called on McDonald's to honour the hard work of all its employees by
eliminating the low wages.
"This company can find hundreds of millions of
dollars to sponsor
and promote the Olympics but they pay less than the lowest minimum wage
in Canada to new workers," Sinclair said.
Sinclair called on McDonald's to pay all starting
employees a
minimum of $10 an hour, the wage necessary for a single person working
full-time to reach the poverty line.
Help
Needed to
Stop The Killing of Union Leaders at Coca Cola Plants in Colombia.
Dear Brothers and Sisters:
We need your help to stop a gruesome cycle of
murders, kidnappings and torture of SINALTRAINAL
(National Union of Food Industry Workers) union leaders and organizers
involved in daily life-and-death
struggles at Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia.
In July 2001, the United Steelworkers of America
and the International Labor Rights Fund
(www.laborrights.org) filed a lawsuit on behalf of SINALTRAINAL,
several of its members and the estate of
Isidro Gil, one of its murdered officers. The lawsuit and campaign aim
to force Coca-Cola to prevent further
bloodshed and to provide safe working conditions.
Coca-Cola bottlers “contracted with or otherwise
directed paramilitary security forces that utilize extreme
violence and murdered, tortured, unlawfully detained or otherwise
silenced trade union leaders,” the lawsuit
states. It also notes that Colombian troops connected with the
paramilitaries have trained at the U.S. Army’s
School of the Americas (SOA) at Fort Benning, Ga., where trainees were
encouraged to torture and murder those
who do “union organizing and recruiting;” pass out “propaganda in favor
of workers;” and “sympathize with
demonstrators or strikes.” This was made public when the Pentagon was
forced to reveal the contents of training
manuals used at the school. (For more information, see www.soaw.org,
the website of SOA Watch.)
The year that the lawsuit was filed, The Coca-Cola Co. made $4 billion
in profits and paid its CEO, Douglas
Daft, more than $105 million. Coca-Cola continues to rake in billions
each year, yet the frightening conditions at
the Coke plants remain unchanged. Labor unions and human rights
advocates in the United States can stop
these atrocities at Coca-Cola’s bottling plants.
Please read the enclosed exposés. The Campaign to
Stop Killer Coke will move the fight to the doorsteps and
into the boardrooms of Coca-Cola and its key financial ally, SunTrust
Banks. As long as SunTrust, “the bank of
Killer Coke,” maintains its intimate ties to Coke through board
interlocks, large stock holdings and credit
relationships, SunTrust, along with Coca-Cola, will be a principal
target of this campaign.
We ask you to take part in this most important struggle. Any
contribution you can make to the campaign will
serve as a critical building block and act of solidarity to help end
one of the ugliest chapters in labor history.
Please make a financial contribution, participate in protest activities
and mail in the coupon below. By working
together, we can protect our sisters and brothers and restrain
corporations like SunTrust and Coke that behave so
immorally and irresponsibly. Any support you give will be greatly
appreciated and acknowledged.
In solidarity,
Javier Correa, President, Sinaltrainal
William Mendoza, President of SINALTRAINAL, Barrancabermeja.
Ray Rogers, Director, Campaign to Stop Killer Coke
Download PDF
Campaign to Stop Killer Coke
P.O. Box 1004, Cooper Station
New York, NY 10276-1004
You can email us at: stopkillercoke@aol.com
You can call us at the following number:
(718) 852-2808
(718) 852-2412 (Fax)
Ray Rogers, Campaign Director
Corporate
Compensation at "Obscene" Levels
In 2007 the 60 CEOs of Canada’s largest companies
were paid
$647,133,700 or an average of $10,785,600. That’s over $200,000 per
week and up 41% from the amounts paid in 2006. Almost half of this was
profits realized from the exercise of company options. Compensation
ranged from $550,000 per year for Michael Grandin at Fording Canadian
Coal Trust to $51,516,000 for Michael Lazaridis at Research in Motion.
It would take a little over 16,200 Canadians with an
average income of $39,915 each to make as much as these 60 CEOs
did.
Did
the 41% increase in total CEO compensation translate into a
comparable rise in
shareholder return. In a word, NO. The average total
shareholder return in 2007 for
the companies involved was 13.2%
meaning
the CEOs got 27.8% more in compensation than shareholders got in
return.
The CCPA released figures showing that
individual total
compensation packages in 2007 for the top 100 CEOs at publicly listed
Canadian companies increased an average of 22% to $10.4-million as the
economy thundered along. This compared to a pay hike of 3.2% to $40,237
for the average Canadian worker during 2007.
In 2004, the New York Times reported comparative
ratios of CEO pay to employee averages. In Japan,
CEOs earned about ten times that of the average employee. In Germany,
the ratio was 11 to 1, in the UK
25 to 1, and in the United
States, 531 to 1!
In 2007, Canada's top 50 CEOs earned 398 times more
than
the average worker compared with 85 times in 1995. Mr. MacKenzie said
between 1998 and 2007 the average compensation of top CEOs increased by
147%, adjusted for inflation. This compared with a 3% decline in
inflation-adjusted weekly wages for average Canadians and a 6% rise for
those on the minimum wage.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Food
and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says it would only take $30 billion
a year to launch the necessary agriculture programs to completely solve
gobal food insecurity. (Severe hunger afflicts 862 million people
annually.)
Walmart
To Rip
Off Girl Scout Cookie
Design
The
Girl Scouts in Canada and the U.S.A. make most of their money to run
their organizations by selling Girl Scout Cookies door to door.
But Walmart doesn't care about that. A few weeks
ago, in Chicago, they began testing a cheaper version of the
Girl Scout cookies that will sell all year round, poised to snatch
cookie sales right out of the hands of the Girl Scouts.
One woman
who spent years as "Cookie Mom" for her daughter's troop says
Wal-Mart is copying two of the most popular Girl Scout cookies -- Thin
Mints (pictured) and Tagalongs -- to sell under its own private label.
The
furore which has arisen as a result has shown middle class families the
real Walmart and they don't like it much. The woman, C.V.
Harquail complained on her blog that "Walmart can sell all the
hunting equipment, cheap plastic gizmos and clothes made in sweatshops
that it wants to sell, but why must they encroach upon the market of a
non-profit? Why do they have to go after the Girl Scouts?"
The Girl Scouts have just learned the same facts as the garment workers
and others whose jobs are jeapardized by companies that make cheap
foreign knock-offs of their products. Walmart doesn't care about
anything but profits.
Wal-Mart
Attempts To Censor UFCW Website
FRIDAY, 07 AUGUST 2009
Wal-mart, by falsely claiming that the UFCW's website, www.walmartworkerscanada.ca
is infringing their trade mark infringement and
passing off, Wal-Mart is attempting to chill free speech - and labour
organizing in Canada.
Wal-mart has asked for an injunction in Quebec Superior Court
to shut down the Union's website, to stop using the trade names
"Walmart" or "Wal-Mart", and the expressions "Union for Walmart
Workers" and "Get Respect, Live Better".
According to the UFCW, the campaign to stop
Walmart's attack on freedom of speech has captured widespread attention
on the internet, and the news media, including the New York Times and
the Wall street Journal. The best part is that since Wal-Mart launched
its court case, and the UFCW responded with a camapign to prevent the
world's largest corporation from dictating wording on a website
dedicated to workers and their rights, traffic to www.walmartworkerscanada.ca
has increased in a huge way.
The UFCW has asked free
speech supporters
to go to www.walmartworkerscanada.ca/freespeech
and sending a
protest
message to Wal-Mart. It only takes a few minutes and sends the message
Canadians won't be intimidated by Wal-Mart. You can go to the website
yourself and ask whether anyone would reasonably be confused that this
was a Wal-Mart website.
Big
Box Mart - The Video
For a cheeky, irreverent and accurate video about "You Know
Who" Big
Box Mart
