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I guess I must have got it wrong because I thought I recalled reading the union had 90 days after notification to discuss the situation and try to see if they could come to an agreement to keep the plant open.
Usually with something like that the conditions of sale won't allow the same type of operation to start up at the site. The owner also has the option to get a permit and level the building to the ground. Taxes on vacant land tend to be less.
To open some other type of food processing plant you run into the same problems. High local taxes and high wages. Also they tend to use a lot of energy which is expensive.
I guess I must have got it wrong because I thought I recalled reading the union had 90 days after notification to discuss the situation and try to see if they could come to an agreement to keep the plant open.
Usually with something like that the conditions of sale won't allow the same type of operation to start up at the site. The owner also has the option to get a permit and level the building to the ground. Taxes on vacant land tend to be less.
To open some other type of food processing plant you run into the same problems. High local taxes and high wages. Also they tend to use a lot of energy which is expensive.
If the company wants to get anything for the site I think that they have to sell it as a functioning plant. If they level it they will get pennies on the dollar on their investment and I am sure that Warren Buffett won't go for that. It is questionable that someone would be willing to spend much for the site in the middle of the town that has lost their major employer. Their task is going to be hard enough because it is a very large plant. Other local plants that were food processing plants sat vacant for periods of time as I recall but ultimately were sold to other food processors.
The local General Motors Plant which closed some years ago has not been knocked down. They use it to run trade shows and parts of the plant are used for paintball if I am not mistaken. I recall seeing signs offering cheap warehouse space as well. The Chrysler plant that didn't continue was knocked down on the other hand so I guess it depends on how suitable the plant is for other uses.
If the company wants to get anything for the site I think that they have to sell it as a functioning plant. If they level it they will get pennies on the dollar on their investment and I am sure that Warren Buffett won't go for that.
I will be surprised if it's sold as a functioning Ketchup plant. It becomes a competitor.
Whatever they do with it, I think it would be a one time charge against discontinued operations. The practice is so common it even has a name.
By the way, I would expect the machinery to be moved out of the building or sold out of country or used elsewhere.
Plant closures: there's more to them than meets the eye
Seems that this plant closure was predicted by UFCW some time ago. The Harper regime changed and weakened Canada's food packaging regulations earlier in the year.
Originally posted by UFCW
"The Harper government's proposed changes to weaken Canadian food packaging regulations "is a recipe that could kill thousands of good food processing jobs in Canada," says UFCW Canada National President Hanley.
"What is being proposed will cause irreparable harm to Canada's food chain and economy, and as such should be withdrawn," said the leader of Canada's food workers union in an open letter to Gerry Ritz, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food who is promoting changes that would allow foreign food processors to flood the Canadian market with products that do not currently meet Canadian standards for uniform package weights and volumes for many processed food products."
Heinz spends $28 million to expand Ohio plant, create 250 jobs
Less than a week after Heinz announced it would close its 104-year-old Leamington plant, news has emerged that the company will invest $28 million to expand its facility in Ohio and create almost 250 new jobs.
“If money were ketchup, a whole lot of the red sauce would appear to be oozing into the city in the near future,” reads the lead sentence of an online story from CantonRep.com, reporting on the upgrade planned next year for the Heinz frozen food processing plant in Massillon, Ohio....
Mind you, it's not just Canadian workers hurt by the closure ...
Originally posted by CD
The 4000 Mexican farm labourers that come to Leamington to harvest up to half a billion tomatoes a year are not afforded the same means for making Canada their place. Since 1974, an agreement between the Canadian and Mexican governments and private sector has established the conditions under which Mexican workers come to and work and live in Leamington. Min Sook Lee’s 2003 National Film Board film, El Contrato or The Contract, illustrated poignantly the exploitation of this new migrant Leamington population. She narrates in the film, “They are wanted as labourers, not as citizens. The program only accepts men who are married, with less than a grade school education and with strong ties and families back home, men who will go back after months of painful separation.”
In 2002, a workers’ centre opened in Leamington, offering counsel and advocacy for the farm labourers. In 2003, the time of the filming of El Contrato, the migrant farm workers worked seven days a week, ten hours a day for a flat rate of $7.25 per hour, no overtime, no holidays.
I don't believe that ketchup was the only thing that they did there though I hadn't visited the plant since about 2001 when I was working at Electrozad. I know at one point they were bottling pickles there because one of my brother's friends had a summer job there.
Last edited by Vlad Drkulec; Friday, 22nd November, 2013, 03:35 PM.
In today's Globe and Mail they have a writeup on the large Ring of Fire Chromite project being suspended. I'd give you a link but it's for subscribers only. Apparently the terms for the environmental assessment aren't even in place let alone any firm plan for access and infrastructure for the area. The article refers to it as being a 50 Billion dollar bonanza. The provincial government isn't moving very quickly and time is money in the mining business.
Maybe this will get some action on the infrastructure. But I suspect that considering the weather that will wait until next spring.
Re: Plant closures: there's more to them than meets the eye
I don't know the wages in Ohio for that kind of work. I seem to recall it's around an average of $25. and hour here. I also don't know the taxes they would pay or the cost of electricity.
You live in BC. What happened when the paper plant in Campbell River was closed?
I was reading the site has finally been sold.. Something about LNG. I worked with Natural Gas. How much would I want to work with Liquid Natural Gas? There is no amount of money for which I'd work with that.
What you describe as "neo-liberalism" actually sounds like the Sean Hannity show on FOX News.
Hi Paul, the term "Neoliberalism" also through me for a loop when Nigel used the term. So I did some investigation.
Have a listen to Naomi Klein. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKTmwu3ynOY
Neo-liberalism: "People were in jail so that prices could be free."
Professor David Harvey has written extensively about neo-liberalism and there are plenty of YouTube videos with him.
Here is a synopsis of his justly famous book ...
Originally posted by reviewer
Neoliberalism - the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action - has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. Its spread has depended upon a reconstitution of state powers such that privatization, finance, and market processes are emphasized. State interventions in the economy are minimized, while the obligations of the state to provide for the welfare of its citizens are diminished. David Harvey, author of 'The New Imperialism' and 'The Condition of Postmodernity', here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage. While Thatcher and Reagan are often cited as primary authors of this neoliberal turn, Harvey shows how a complex of forces, from Chile to China and from New York City to Mexico City, have also played their part. In addition he explores the continuities and contrasts between neoliberalism of the Clinton sort and the recent turn towards neoconservative imperialism of George W. Bush. Finally, through critical engagement with this history, Harvey constructs a framework not only for analyzing the political and economic dangers that now surround us, but also for assessing the prospects for the more socially just alternatives being advocated by many oppositional movements.
People in Latin America know this term and have been using it for decades. The military dictatorship of A. Pinochet was accompanied by such political doctrine, as was the regime under the Argentinian generals, the Uruguary military regime, etc., etc.. As Eduardo Galeano described it, so brilliantly,
"People were in jail so that prices could be free."
Dogs will bark, but the caravan of chess moves on.
Hi Paul, the term "Neoliberalism" also through me for a loop when Nigel used the term. So I did some investigation.
Have a listen to Naomi Klein. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKTmwu3ynOY
Thanks Bob, good links. From what I'm gathering, this term "neo-liberalism" seems to come from Latin America, where their summers are our winters and vice-versa. No wonder the word "liberalism" is turned on its head. Here in North America, liberalism is equated (by most) to social programs for the needy and big government make-work projects, so it's interesting to see it suddenly mean free markets and governments only attending to the needs of the strong and wealthy.
The etymology of the term isn't that important, just interesting. Imagine Donald Trump described as a liberal! (well, a "neo" liberal, makes a huge difference, I guess!).
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
Wealthiest 1% earn 10 times more than average Canadian
The richest of the rich in Canada earn about 10 times more than the average Canadian income of $38,700 and are generally married, middle-aged, white men, the final release of data from the National Household Survey shows.
Is this a problem? If so, why?
Bob A
P.S. I assume that the $ 38,700 is a single individual income. If so, I am surprised that it is this high these days. It seems to me that many in the 25-40 year olds range, are having difficulty finding decent paying full-time jobs, and that many are underemployed (many with first University degrees), many working more than one low-paying part-time job just to survive. Is anyone else surprised by the individual average?
Re: Rob Ford and the ideology of "dark politics"
Do you have classical liberalism in the U.S.? Does it differ much from the tea party?
I once played a couple of games of CC with a classical liberal from B.C. Pretty decent player. We argued politics on a message board and played chess in email. It was around 20 years ago.
... this term "neo-liberalism" seems to come from Latin America ... it's interesting to see it suddenly mean free markets and governments only attending to the needs of the ... wealthy.
It's actually not at all surprising for those familiar with history and the so-called "classical" liberals (like Adam Smith) or with the fact that, once in government, it's often hard to tell the difference between "Liberals" and "Conservatives".
Tommy Douglas and other NDP leaders have often used terminology like "Tweedledum and Tweedledee" to describe these twins of orthodoxy. Like Pepsi and Coke, the choice is a false one if a person wishes to avoid harmful food and a diabetic future. The BC "Liberals", for example, are liberal in name only, just as the former Premier of Quebec, Jean Charest, had no difficulty moving from the Federal Conservatives to the Provincial Liberals.
The fact that NDP leader Bob Rae jumped to the Federal Liberals also shows, I think, how this ideology "has become so dominant in thought and practice", drawing NDP leaders into the same political quagmire and cul-de-sac of market idolatry and all the other "blessings" of neo-liberalism we know today.
When the Harper government rejects the very idea of preparing those imprisoned in Canada for their life outside of prison, and replaces rehabilitation with views of prison as just and merciless punishment, and closes their eyes at the social causes that leads to a situation in which Canadian prisons are alarmingly stuffed with Native prisoners ... it's this very neo-liberal ideology that leads Harper to such callous and inhumane indifference to the suffering of others. Prison is just one more way to make a profit off human beings, there are no social causes that lead to 2% of the population making up 24% of the prisoner population, young people can go to hell because they're unneeded, all environmentalists are viewed as terrorists, and austerity, authoritarianism, spying on the population on behalf of private interests, militarism, environmental degradation and the threatened collapse of civilization on Planet Earth are all part of this bundle of delights. Yippie-kay-yay.
Dogs will bark, but the caravan of chess moves on.
Elites lack the patience and culture for classical music. Will chess follow?
Jacobin magazine has an article in which it is argued that, in these neo-liberal times of fundamentalist market idolatry, culture gets affected as well.
So, for example, elites seem to no longer care about classical music. Instead, completely inappropriate standards are applied:
Originally posted by John Halle, Director of Music Studies, Bard College in Jacobin magazine
The longstanding crisis in classical music is treated by the imposition of market discipline requiring institutions to devise “working business models.” This means in practice supporting themselves predominantly by ticket sales, something which virtually no major orchestra or opera company in history has done successfully and which would require jettisoning most of the defining virtues of the medium.
Could the support of chess suffer the same fate? Or has it already? Interesting question.
Just want to butt-in with some of my thoughts on the OP:
1. income != wealth
If you look at most of the wealthy immigrants' tax filings, you will see them with $Millions or Billions in assets, but below avg global income.
2. 1% in Canada simply means [35 mil total population - (35mil *7% unemployed)] * 1% = 330,000.
If we assume on average there are 10 executives in each med-sized and large companies, and executives make more than 10X more than the average employees in their company. Then it's not really that hard to find 33,000 companies in Canada with that assumption. (and we forgot about some self-employed jobs like Dentists, family docs, real estate brokers, etc....)
I don't see anything surprising in the math there. It's more about the misconceptions on figures like 1%, 10times, average income, etc.
Last edited by Neal Pan; Wednesday, 27th November, 2013, 05:22 PM.
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