(The following article is from the April 1-15, 2010 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)

PV Ontario Bureau

Hamilton - In early March, Siemens announced it will close its 100 year old operations in Hamilton. Effective July 2011, the company will move its gas turbine plant to North Carolina, where it will expand its low-wage, non-union operations at the expense of 550 Canadian jobs.

     It was a shocking announcement, since management recently boasted that the plant was extremely productive and efficient. The company cited Ontario's shift away from fossil fuels for the move.

     But the real reason is the non-unionized work force, poor labour laws and working conditions in the US Sunbelt states, and the low corporate taxes and tax concessions offered Siemens by the city of Charlotte and the state of North Carolina.

     Siemens, a German multi-national, took over the Westinghouse operations less than 10 years ago. Now, it has decided that bigger profits can be made in the US South, not in Canada where manufacturing is still largely unionized.

     At a rally organized immediately after the closure announcement, a visibly angry CAW President Ken Lewenza blasted this latest plant closure and the governments that allow it.

     "This isn't a company that's losing money. It's a company that in their opinion isn't making enough. But we have to ask ourselves, our governments and our MPs, "What kind of country do we want? It's not the country of continual job loss, manufacturing decline. We have a responsibility. Others have done it before us. We're going to fight and we're going to win."

     Lewenza said the fight isn't only about Siemens, "it's about all the closures". Speaking about the almost half a million manufacturing jobs that have disappeared in Ontario in the last five years, and the stripping of the Canadian economy and the misery of joblessness that has followed, Lewenza said "enough is enough".

     "We're thinking about the next generation. Who's going to pay the taxes, who's going to pay for our public health care, who's going to pay for our infrastructure? Who's going to pay for education? Who's going to save jobs? Who's going to protect the interests of Canada, the interests of Canadian workers?"

     He said the labour movement has to think about how to fight back, and called for a broad coalition of labour and its allies to mount an effective political and economic struggle to stop the closures and layoffs.

     "These rallies work. You know just walking down the street and begging - that never worked. At the end of the day, if we have to take over workplaces to fight for justice and fight for community, we're prepared to do that.

     "We have to fight in a more militant fashion. We can march till the cows come home. But until we deal with capital moving from one city to another city, from one country to another country, moving workers from one side of the globe to the other end of the globe, we will always be under constant pressure from these global industries who think they have no responsibility from the communities that made them these incredible profits," he said.

     Representatives from a number of unions were present, all of which are under attack by greedy corporations and reactionary governments.

     The new CAW President has been making a series of speeches in Ontario about the need for a united fightback by labour and its allies. Newly elected OFL President Sid Ryan has made similar speeches. The CAW's re-entry into the OFL, after an absence of almost a decade, is expected shortly. Progressives are hopeful the move to re-unite labour in Ontario will bear quick results.