Day: June 7, 2008

Canadian Auto Workers Think Strike

Canadian Auto Workers President Buzz Hargrove said the union is considering all options of protest including a strike after General Motors Corp.’s top leadership failed to give any hope that the automaker would keep the Oshawa, Ont., truck assembly plant open.

Hargrove said the CAW will decide how to proceed following its convention next week. Among the options, he said, would be taking the issue to the Canadian labor board, taking GM to court, pursuing expedited arbitration or even a strike.

CAW Local 222 leaders, who represent the Oshawa truck plant slated to close in 2009, said the blockade of GM’s Canadian headquarters in Oshawa that began Wednesday would continue for now.

The CAW signed a new contract with GM just two weeks ago and says GM had committed to keeping the plant open and appointing it with future new product.

The contract language said the company intended to allocate next-generation trucks to Oshawa, “dependent upon market demand and in light of the increasingly uncertain North American truck market.”

CAW members said the market has not changed so drastically in two weeks that GM could have entered into its contract in good faith.

“They’ve fractured our relationship,” said Local 222 President Chris Buckley. “There is no trust.”

What Will She (Clinton) Do?

I have been asking all you supporters, what does she want?  VEEP?  Just what does she want?  Today she will make a major annoncement, but again what will she say?

The Clinton supporters are grieving, and some of them are still stuck in the anger stage and said they will be for awhile. They are incensed by how they said the media treated Clinton and by how some in the Democratic Party treated Clinton supporters.

Ellen Malcolm, whose fundraising helped California be the first state to have two female senators, said she is confident Clinton supporters will do the right thing and support Obama. As president and founder of Emily’s List, which was formed in 1985 to help elect women to the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, she knows many people, herself included, are let down by Clinton coming so close.

“But what’s important is that Hillary emerges from this process as an extraordinarily powerful national leader,” she said. Her campaign “boosts the credibility of all women candidates and has cleared the way for more women to run.”

Personally, I think she will recognize Obama as the presumptive nominee and that she will work for a unified party, yada, yada; she will stop short of endorsing Obama outright.