MONEY, POWER & CORPORATIONS- SAVAR, BANGLADESH

Does it get any worse than this? The latest update to the Waterloo Region Record's story has more than 300 people dead. It also details workers having hands amputated to extricate them from the rubble. The title of the story is "Factory ignored evacuation order". This is why Europe and North America had unions form. Corporations and capitol have neither heart, soul nor morals and ethics. Bangladesh is clearly controlled by monied interests when even police orders to evacuate a collapsing building can be ignored.

Joe Fresh, Walmart and other North American retailers have their clothes made in these factories. Excuses abound regarding North American retailers holding Bangladesh manufacturers to labour standards. These are exactly that, excuses. We just had a clothing manufacturer close up shop in Cambridge a few weeks ago. Where do you think their production and orders went? Arrow Shirts in downtown Kitchener has been closed for ages. Where do you think their business went? Do you remember NAFTA? How about all the other free trade deals that sent Canadian and American manufacturing to the lowest cost jurisdictions on earth. Lowest costs isn't just crappy, starvation wages. It includes working and living under conditions that here in Canada would be illegal for dogs to live in.

Do we remember Brian Mulroney aka "Lyin Brian" telling us how Canadians standard of living would rise as we exported all these manufacturing jobs abroad? What he meant to say was that already rich Canadians would become even richer as they exported your job and mine overseas and lowered their costs while keeping their domestic prices high. They pocketed the increased profits not you or I. It's all about short term profits. Long term as our unions die here in Canada we will undergo a renaissance of sorts. This however will not be a good renaissance. Our factory jobs will return when our labour force have been sufficiently cowed and intimidated into submission. When we are willing to work in dangerous conditions for $2 and hour or worse, these jobs will come back. For now there are many more billions of people around the world who are desperate and starving and who can be exploited by corporations, money and power. Do not expect politicians to help Canadian citizens. They caused this mess and they did it knowingly and have been rewarded for it.