Okay, fine.

So nobody wants to talk about sports, at least not hockey. Got it. Let's get back to the decay of Western Civilization, then. Specifically, let's look at another example of how leftist philosophy in action is chipping away at our influence in the world as we give up and let other nations call the shots. I'm still going to tie it in with Canada, though.

There's a nickel mine in Sudbury, Canada, that's been around for over 100 years. The unionized workers there have been on strike for a few weeks. In fact, they might be better at striking than actually mining nickel since it seems they strike more often. Take a look at this timeline of strikes at the mine. There are two, one in the late '70s and one in the '80s, that have been glorified to the point of legend and I think they even made a movie of one of them. Workers still talk about the "gains" those labor pioneers made with a sense of awe. That's why they're striking now, because the evil corporation that cuts their paychecks, Inco, wants to take all of those gains away.

The thing I can't figure out when I read their reasons for striking and then I look at that timeline is why they have been striking so damn much in the past 15 years. The glorious strikes of the '70s and '80s were historical and yielded incredible gains, right? So what's going on? Apparently their company is always trying to scale back all of those historic union wins. One might wonder if perhaps all of those union wins were a little too incredible and are making the company unprofitable because they have to pay out too many pensions and nickel bonuses. That's not how the union sees it, though. They are convinced that Inco simply wants to take all that stuff back so they can make more money, presumably so a CEO somewhere can roll around in a pile of thousand dollar bills, or looney bills, or whatever Canada's currency is.

Did I mention that Inco was bought out by a Brazilian company a couple of years ago and is now Vale-Inco? This has become a sort of nationalist rallying cry for the downtrodden workers as they've put a new spin on the whole "they took our jobs" line. Now the line is that the foreigners are paying us to work, but they're trying to take our money. Nevermind that the unions have driven Canadian ownership away so that a company from the opposite continent had to come save their jobs. They are still greedy foreigners who are trying to roll back important things and take advantage of the working man. Of course, the left reminds us that the unions are going about this the wrong way:

Instead, [Gary Kinsman, a Professor of Sociology at Laurentian University in Sudbury] urged strategies that emphasize international solidarity among workers. Nationalist rhetoric, he argued, “sets up a precarious position if you are trying to build long term relationships among working-class people around the world in the context of global capitalism.”

Hmmm.International worker solidarity? Haven't we heard that sort of talk before somewhere else? Did that prove to be a successful economic blueprint? How strange that this website calls itself "New" Socialist and talks about radical ideas for change, but there's nothing new about it. Very surprising.

This situation gets more interesting as the CEO of Vale-Inco has apparently told the unions to go screw themselves. They are going to hire new people, are already training them, and are planning on resuming operations in a few weeks. The unions don't like that too much:

Peter Digby, a 21-year veteran with Vale Inco, said starting any production at Vale Inco’s operations with inexperienced staff could be dangerous.

“I think it’s an extremely dangerous precedent (to set),” he said. “They don’t have people who are qualified or capable of doing a lot of jobs. I would be extremely concerned for those people and their safety because this company doesn’t care about anyone’s safety.”

So you see? The unions aren't the ones who are worried about the money. They just care about safety. Whoever these new workers are, they don't have 20 years of experience standing around drinking coffee and reading the newspaper while seven people do the work of two. I'm actually worried about the safety of those new workers, too, but more about their safety as they cross the picket lines and whether or not union thugs will try to threaten and intimidate them out of work.

Unions are largely detestable because they are businesses in themselves that force people to pay for something they already have in many Western nations under government laws: worker protection. They are also one of the worst types of pyramid schemes as the only way to move up is to be a member until the people over you die off or retire and make room. Union members are rewarded solely on seniority, not performance. It doesn't matter how hard you work, you'll be waiting in line just as long as the next guy, and that's if you're actually able to get work and it's not all being taken by more senior members. Unions are out for their own self-interest at the expense of whatever company their members work for. Unions produce nothing and they cannot exist on their own. They are parasitic organisms that feed off of the productive private sector but pretend to be doing workers a favor as they slip their grubby hands into the workers' wallets. They make businesses less profitable, more inefficient, and often bankrupt which means everybody loses their job. Unless, that is, the taxpayer at large can be made to subsidize them. Here's a great example of what I mean from an "anonymous picketer" in the New Socialist post above:

He continued, “[Vale-Inco] want to never have a loss. That’s not realistic in the mining industry.” He said that the history of Inco has been one of occasional losses alternating with periods of huge gains. In the current market, the company is going to briefly lose money “unless we come in here and do volunteer work.”

That's right, because there is no middle ground between extravagant pay and working for free. Who are these greedy, selfish CEOs who want to make a profit every year? I wonder...how many years do the union bosses tighten their belts, take pay cuts and operate on losses? In the end this isn't different from any other progressive pipe dream. They assume that people will always need nickel and that Vale-Inco will give in to them because they want to make money from the mine. Somehow, they are incapable of understanding that if Vale's management doesn't make what they consider to be enough money, or if they end up losing money because of union tributes, it's not going to be worth all of the time and energy and they'll just pull out. I wasn't in on the Vale board meeting, but when they decided to buy Inco I'm pretty sure their reasoning wasn't, "You know, if we buy that mine in Sudbury I bet that we can eke out a meager profit after making grotesque payments to the local labor unions."

What would happen if Vale did pull out? Who knows? The Canadian private sector has already proven unwilling to run this mine. I'm guessing Sudbury would be considered too big to fail and the government would take it over, and the Sudbury mine would have the exact same problem with profitability they've been having since those courageous and bold strikes of yore. Even worse, if the Canadian government were hypothetically in a lot of debt of its own with massive entitlement spending, high unemployment and falling tax revenues, Canada and the residents of Sudbury may quickly decide that they're so desperate for income they'd be willing to take any sort of deal on Vale's terms. That's the sort of big picture thinking that these buffoons are incapable of, though, because it's not happening now, so who cares? Some people just don't know how good they already have it.

Hats off to you, Local 6500 of Sudbury! With one hand you would take the paycheck from the foreign corporation and with the other would try to punch them in the face. You expect the company that gives you a job to go without profit for an indefinite period of time so you yourself don't have to lose any of your union privileges. You can't put two and two together to figure out that your company running at a loss is actually a very, very bad thing for you. If Vale-Inco doesn't break you, though, I will be quite amused to see your rage when they decide to pack up and leave you high and dry. Then you'll be demanding that somebody do something to make them stay and keep paying you, and they're so greedy and this and that and the other thing. Everybody is greedy except for you because you have compassion and safety concerns as your only motivation. I smell an Oscar-winning film adaptation of this strike on the horizon!