Papers Not People

London is making continent-wide news this weekend but for all the wrong reasons.  

The same day our unemployment rate dropped by more than half a percentage point, more than 400 people were officially put out of work as Caterpillar announced it would close the Electro-Motive locomotive plant.  Unionized workers have been locked out since the first of January when they refused a contract that would have required many of them to take a 50% pay cut.  Their union, the CAW, had no choice but to fight that and the company knew it.   Here is what I know although I can’t tell you how I know it.  But it’s fact.

Caterpillar bought the London plant only for its patents.  It had no intention of ever keeping it open.  Employees were working on borrowed time from the moment the new owner took over.  Their unseen billionaire CEO lurked in the shadows behind a public relations firm developing a strategy for when the employees’ contract expired.  That strategy was to offer a deal so insulting, so appalling that the workers would walk out.   The best thing the workers could have done was to say, okay, we don’t like it but we will take the deal.  That would have screwed up the company’s plan and forced it to keep the plant open until that contract expired.  But Caterpillar knew no union worth its dues would ever advise its membership to sign.  So it got what it wanted.  It has the coveted patents and no longer has to operate in London.

We can be as horrified and disgusted as we want over the company’s greed, we can refuse to buy their products and whatever else we can think of to show our distaste.  But unless locomotive orders go down, it won’t mean a damn thing.  And the companies that are ordering locomotives are just as greedy and care just as little about the working man and woman so don’t hold your breath.  Corporate ethics?  It’s not catching on.

400+ people in a city of our size might not seem like a lot but the spin off effect is major.  That’s 400 families who shop, eat and play here and won’t be able to do so much of any of that.  But I’ve come to understand that ranting over the evils of Caterpillar is pointless.  It’s like shouting at the devil or telling Hitler he’s not a nice guy.  At the end of the day the man who orchestrated this symphony, CEO Douglas Oberhelman, is just a man with a family and a life who apparently doesn’t care a lick about anyone else’s.  I can only hope that karma will come back and bite his ass hard.