Notes from Day Seven: On plant closures and offshore call centres

One of my older friends doesn't get around much anymore. Parkinson's keeps him in his chair most of every day. Thirty years ago, in his prime, he owned one of the largest heavy equipment companies in Nova Scotia. Most of his excavators and earth movers — 20 of them — carried the name that's no stranger to London: CAT, also known as Caterpillar. Trade magazines published articles about him with pictures of big machines and the open-shirted, grinning men who operated them.

I think the article of which my friend is most proud is the one telling how he modified one of the largest CAT excavators you could buy, a "245." He added 21 feet to the boom so it would reach down to the bottom of the Halifax Harbour. This allowed him to dredge the dock areas.

Engineers would travel in from other parts to observe my friend's creation. He does admit now that the extension was hard on the rest of the 245. Occasionally a hydraulic seal would blow. That wasn't really important, though. The main thing was that the "job got done."

My friend remembers his relationship with Caterpillar as a neighbourly one. He believed that the company was trying to do well for him and he in turn tried to do well for it. Yes, it was a business relationship and everyone paid attention to the bottom line. But, as I hear my friend talk about his CAT machines, it seems that for him it was about more than profits. It was about being a neighbourly business partner.

Are the days of the neighbourly business relationship numbered? Maybe. Could you actually run a business on the basis of a handshake and friendship? Probably not. Many people have found out the hard way that nothing ruins friendship quicker than thoughtlessly adding money to the mix.

In today's world, especially in Ontario where manufacturing and jobs have taken some big hits, it's all the more difficult to have a neighbourly business relationship. Caterpillar leaves London, not because its company executives have anything against the area or against graduates of Fanshawe. There are other considerations. The company will apparently get tax breaks for moving jobs to the U.S. Cheaper labour is available in, say, parts of South America.

It may have been downright unneighbourly for Caterpillar to leave after whatever financial help it got from Canadian government agencies was maxed out and spent. It may have been a tad hostile to insist on deep wage cuts or else, and then the "or else" happened. But the company apparently didn't break any laws, so who's going to blame them?

One sector that won't be blaming them is the mutual fund managers who buy Caterpillar stock. It would not be a surprise to find that some of those managers look after your money or someday will. And the increase in dividends that comes from the relocation and increased profitability of Caterpillar is something you, dear reader, and I too, may very well benefit from.

Warning! Reading further may raise some tricky questions.

Mutual fund managers demand steady, if not rising, profitability. But is that their fault? After all, it's we down here below, toiling in the trenches, who want "freedom 55" or something like that. And if we are going to make money in our sleep, someone else will have to pony up. And we depend on our fund managers to make it so.

But that's not our fault, is it? After all, we keep being told that by investing in companies we are making the world a better place. We are helping to lift the poor employee of Caterpillar — or fill in any company name here such as Apple, Nike, GAP or the International Banana, Pineapple and Kiwi Conglomeration (okay, I made that one up) — who otherwise would have no job.

Well, to be honest, it's not that they would have no job. It's just that they would have different jobs. They would, after all, be living in Asian villages and eating locally grown crops they had grown themselves. They would remain in the countrysides and jungles of the planet, carving tools by hand rather than buying them at Canadian Tire (or Peruvian Tire?). They would be living in igloos and maybe hunting seal or caribou. They would be living near family and longtime friends.

Thank goodness!! They can now live in the burgeoning slums of the world's great cities and labour in steel plants, in call centres and on assembly lines — free of the backward occupations, small villages, and frugal lifestyles of their ancestors. (To be continued.)

Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.