Shunpiking Online Vo.6 No.3

HALIFAX (31 January 2009) - On January 22, 2009, Kentville's ACA Co-operative announced massive job losses at its New Minas processing plant, as well as the permanent closure of its Eastern Protein Foods plant. The cuts affect more than 300 workers, with still further layoffs forecast for the near future. These layoffs compound the devastation wreaked upon the Annapolis Valley's economy and its constituent communities, who are still reeling from the closure of Maple Leaf foods' Canard processing plant in January of 2007, which likewise ended the jobs of over three hundred workers.

Both federal and provincial politicians appear not only impotent, but complicit. Mark Parent, Kings-North MLA and Nova Scotia's Minister of Labour and Workforce Development, mused that "this is an extremely trying time for the people at ACA and Eastern Protein and we are there to ensure that they receive any outstanding salaries, vacation pay and severance and to help them find other jobs." Last fall, the provincial government was also there to ensure that ACA Co-operative was approved for a $3.5 million working capital loan, only to be followed up by massive lay-offs and likely by the further dislocation of members of the cooperative's surrounding community.

Parent also announced that Peter MacKay- the MP responsible for Kings-Hants, Minister of ACOA and the so-called Minister of National Defence- has allocated $1 Billion for agriculture, forestry and fisheries in Atlantic Canada. Parent incredulously claimed that "it couldn't have come at a better time." Such callous insensitivity is not only a belated form of cold comfort to the workers who have already lost their jobs, but is also an instance of a cruel irony in which jobs have been allowed to be eliminated on the heels of the latest anti-worker Federal Budget which promised job creation and other economic "stimuli."

The latest round of lay-offs in the Annapolis Valley are one among many sobering illustrations of the fact that Stephen Harper's economic "stimulus" plan is hollow indeed, and that the Canadian political and economic elites at all levels have no solution to the wrecking of the Canadian socialized economy, and in fact have a vested interested in accelerating it.
As is shown by the combination of the province's $3.5 million dollar gift to ACA and the latest anti-worker Federal Budget, the working people of the Annapolis Valley have been forced to pay tribute to the financial oligarchy at the federal and provincial levels, while that cabal of parasites has calculated that these workers, their labour and their communities are expendable in the drive of the food monopolies to "consolidate" their operations and render them more "efficient."
In this case, the "efficiency" of ACA's operations is being achieved through partnership with Maple Lodge Farms, a major poultry processing monopoly based in Brampton, ON that is set to possibly assume a controlling interest in the former company. (1)

While all of this economic and political manoevering is going on, the local bourgeoisie of the Annapolis Valley have assembled a "worker support team" whose supposed purpose is to "assess" the skills of workers and provide "re-training." In the context of the 21st century neoliberal labour market, such euphemistic language and gestures are geared toward facilitating the transition of long-time plant employees into a cheap labour market in which many of them will be forced into migrant labour, and into increasingly lower paying and even less secure work.

At the same time, ACA Chairman and CEO Ian Blenkharn is now announcing the prospect of re-employing some of the laid off union workers in the company's New Minas operation. "Some of the lost wages will come back", said Blenkharn. "That's our medium to long-term goal."
Blenkharn's capital centered outlook assumes that wages will "come back" as if wages fall out of thin air rather than from the labour of those that he has decided to lay off and/or hire back. Moreover, the fact that only "some" of the wages are expected to "come back" can be taken as a tacit admission that ACA intends to use the spectre of unemployment and poverty as a weapon with which to extract concessions from workers. However, if the monopolies and their state have no solutions to the current crisis, why should workers accept any concessions at all?

This question becomes all the more acute in the wake of Blenkharn's pronouncement that another 60 job losses may be on the way, and in light of the obvious fact that neither ACA nor any level of government is either prepared or motivated to recognize the right of workers to a guaranteed Canadian standard of living. There is no better example of such a world-view on the part of the ruling class than Blenkharn's feigned optimism regarding the possibility of further job losses. Regarding the possible lay-offs, Blenkharn blithely says that "the good news is that maybe we don't have to."

In other words: accept concessions now, and we might consider the possibility of not laying you off.

How generous of the bleeding hearts (and bloated pockets) of the bosses of the ACA!

The bosses are holding the sword of Damocles over the head of the workers of the Annapolis Valley, and have doubtless set the stage to blame any further aggression on the unions. They intend to divide workers on the basis of union and non-union membership, all to cover up the fact that the crisis currently facing the working class- in the Annapolis Valley in particular, and throughout Canada in general- is not of the workers' making. In response to this unrestrained offensive on the part of the bourgeoisie, the Canadian working class and its fighting members in the Annapolis Valley must continue to proclaim their right to a guaranteed Canadian standard of living, and assert that they are the centre of production in the socialized economy and not mere "costs of production."

NO CONCESSIONS WITHOUT SOLUTIONS!
Endnote
1 For more on this drive for "efficiency" on the part of the food monopolies, see "Maple Leaf Forever; the Crisis in Farming and Food, Shunpiking Online, Vol. 4, No. 4, May/June 2007).
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