Righteous Militance

And we think in Canada that unions are out of control and out of whack with reality, demanding excessive wage increases and benefits for their members, particularly those working in public-union sectors, at various levels of government. Whose wages now handily exceed that of workers in the private sector on average, and whose benefits alone are gold-plated and give no quarter to taxpayer-funded exhaustion, particularly in this reeling economy.

Toronto is suffering under the retirement-benefits demands of its municipal employees. Resolute that they will not surrender one iota of privilege that they have assembled over the years from municipalities incapable of establishing firm guidelines for earned entitlements. Municipal services have come to a sudden halt. And a metropolitan area of multiple-millions of people finds itself without its accustomed cushion of a plethora of services.

If the population of the city ever had any sympathy for unions and municipal workers it has now dwindled and diminished to the point of no return. They would gladly hand over those contentious jobs to the growing hordes of newly-unemployed, desperately anxious for work, to forestall their potentially perilous new future of joblessness and new dependence on employment insurance, and ultimately, welfare.

But here's taking things to new heights, in France. One supposes that Canada's municipal workers are looking on with interest.

In a town 250 kilometres southwest of Paris where 366 employees are being laid off by a auto parts manufacturer, New Fabris, which is closing its gates in response to the financial meltdown, particularly as it now affects vehicle manufacturing, workers have barricaded themselves inside the factory.

Threatening that if their demands for a heftier bail-out per employee is not forthcoming by the end of the month they intend to blow the building to smithereens with the gas canisters they have set into place for that explosive demonstration of worker might. "Are we capable of blowing up the factory?" prodded the employees' union official. "Yes, we are capable."

And since the Chatellerault factory has parts worth Euro-2-million including a new Renault machine worth the same amount, their threat has arrested the attention of the owners. A large loss to focus the mind on. The workers and their union insist that automakers Renault and PSA-Peugeot both of which account for 90% of the barricaded factory's custom, pay them $48,300 each on the loss of their jobs.

The factory for which they work has been declared bankrupt. The two car manufacturers insist it is not their responsibility to pay out compensation to the New Fabris workers, reasonably enough. The New Fabris director claims the company is prepared to pay redundancy pay to workers, but not in the amounts demanded.

This new kind of union-worker militancy is perhaps a step up from withholding services, and certainly but a step away from the more common type of protest against job losses - the spate of boss-napping that has swivelled attention from the rest of the industrialized world facing financial hardships, toward France, the country of entitled-citizenship-everything.