= Maintenance jobs are targets
for contracting out. Norman Garcia

‘Outsourcing’ and contracting
out are seen same in Canada
Just as the Steelworkers and
other trade unions are seeing
their jobs shipped out of the
country, we know that union
jobs paying full union wages
and benefits are chiseled
away at by employers across
Canada. At the union’s
Contracting Out conference in
Toronto, this past May, dele-
gates heard that 66.9 per cent
of Canadian enterprises stud-
ied (in the manufacturing,
transportation and service
industries) had contracted out
work. In Canada, unlike the
U.S., the term “outsourcing”
and contracting out are used
interchangeably. American
regard “outsourcing” as the
loss of jobs to off-shore or
foreign labour markets.

“In many Steelworkers’
operations we are seeing
companies aggressively con-
tracting out bargaining unit
work,” says IWA Council
chairperson Norm Rivard.
“We are seeing that in the for-
est industry where companies
are contracting out both blue
and white collar jobs.”
Brother Rivard added that that
the union is constantly argu-
ing that specialized jobs, like
the skilled trades, can most
often be performed by exist-
ing bargaining unit members
and that employers are only
looking for cheaper alternative
when they hire contractors.

= Nike eliminated unionized hockey stick manufacturing jobs. Protos NORMAN GARCIA

NIKE PULLOUT PART OF CORPORATE GLOBALIZATION

Outsourcing workers’ futures

WHEN NIKE PULLED out of its
Cambridge, Ontario hockey stick plant in
late 2003, unionized workers were
thrown on the scrap heap.

In 1995 the company acquired assets
of the Bauer company, among them the
Cambridge operation certified to then
IWA Canada Local 500 and a United
Steelworkers’ plant in Quebec.

The company’s move marked another
serious blow to Canadian workers. Nike,
primarily a marketing and distribution
company, hired a contractor in Thailand
to outsource work previously done in
Canada.

The Thai contractor, discovered the
Steelworkers, forces employees to work
overtime, violates local wage laws and
exposes workers to adverse temperature
conditions.

Local 1-500 president Bruce Weber
notes that the hockey stick plant, which
first opened in 1905, was owned by Cooper
Canada, before Bauer boughtit. The union
first organized it in 1951 and negotiated
family and community-supporting jobs.

“Our members got hit with Nike’s

global outsourcing
strategy,” says
Brother Weber. “We
got hit by a company
that is pushing the
limits on corporate
profitability -
Canadian workers
and communities be
damned!”

Steelworkers’ District 5 Director Michel
Arsenault has joined with a Portland,
Oregon-based chapter of Jobs for Justice, a
coalition of over 75
union and communi-
ty groups involved in
aworkers’ rights cam-
paign. He questioned
Nike’s willingness to
allow workers to asso-
diate with and form
unions. Brother
Arsenault said Nike
should rethink its
anti-union restructuring program in
Canada to “show that it is not hell-bent on
winning a race to the bottom.”

Bruce Weber

Michel Arsenault

THE ALLIED WORKER DECEMBER 2005 | 35