OPSEU ROAD TRIP DIARY - Day one

Today was a travel day.

Aura Aberback (who makes great homemade biscotti), Jason Alward, Anna Jover Royo and me, Bill Gillespie, pulled our Dodge Caravan on to the 401 and headed south for Sarnia on our way to Michigan.

Crossing the border is no simple matter for a camera crew.There is paper work and lots of it. We had to record every piece of camera and electronic equipment we have with using a legal document called a Carnet stating its make, its value and where it was manufactured. Then we had to have the document reviewed and certified by both Canadian and American customs.

It took an hour and a half but with the help of Willie our friendly US border agent (Off the record that Willie is no fan of Obama and referred to CNN as the Communist News Network) by 1:30 p.m. we were in Michigan.

We were headed for the State Capital in Lansing because Michigan just became the 24th state to pass an anti-union labour law disingenuously called “The Right to Work”. Labour leaders call it the “Right to Work for Less” because it lowers everybody’s wages. 

This is one of the American style labour laws Ontario Conservative leader Tim Hudak is promising to bring to Ontario. So OPSEU has sent us here to interview American workers and find out how these laws really work in practice.

We’ll start tomorrow by going to the State Capitol Building to talk to a state employee to learn how this newly passed law will affect his wages and benefits.

On our way to Lansing though, we saw a sign for Flint Michigan.

Flint is a sad, textbook case of what has happened to ordinary working people in the United States. Flint used to be a prosperous city where the Big Three automakers employed thousands of workers in good paying Union jobs with benefits.

What we saw today was devastation.

We saw boarded-up, derelict houses on every street.Abandoned houses with smashed windows and gang slogans splashed across them. Houses that used to belong to autoworkers making decent salaries before the big American automakers decided to move their factories to Mexico where they could hire cheaper labour.

But that is just half the story. By the early 1950’s 35% of American workers were Union members. Largely as a result of anti-union labour laws such as “Right to Work”, many workers have lost the right to collective bargaining and today the number of unionized workers has been cut to12 percent.

In addition, when unions disappear everybody’s wages go down including non-union members. Proof of that is the minimum wage in most US States is $7.50 an hour. In Ontario its $10.50 an hour.

So that is it for today.

But if you want more click on the video link and you’ll see my rant. I am no Rick Mercer for sure but you’ll see pictures of Flint and I finish up by showing you a very cool video camera I can fit in the palm of my hand.