That’s right Conifex, share those profits with your workers, they helped you earn those profits.

Where are the workers when there’s losses? Stepping up to the plate to share them, too?

Still with the questions hey socredible. The answer to your questions is: the unions either take pay cuts or receive no pay increases.

In fact this happens regularly even when the companies are doing well, as in the attached Caterpillar case.

“Corporate profits are higher than ever, but for many workers, things just keep getting worse.”

“Take the situation unfolding at Caterpillar Inc.’s London, Ontario plant. The company, the world’s largest heavy machinery manufacturer, is insisting that Canadian workers take a 50 percent pay cut, give up their current pension plan and swallow a significant reduction in benefits. On Jan. 1, Caterpillar locked out the plant’s 465 workers, refusing to let them do their jobs until they make these sacrifices.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/19/caterpillar-inc-london-ontario-lockout_n_1214305.html

I feel unions just cave into these companies, divert a stike in an already stricken zone.

Unions are only as strong as its members, but if the members are stronger than the union, they just cave, averting a closure or a layoff.

Peeps, old news, they already closed the plant and moved to the US. Workers voted for a severance and the company moved south of the 49. If there are unions south of the border in the good old US of A wiling to work for half of what Canucks are willing to accept for the same job we will be seeing.a lot more of this, not just in the automotive industry but all around in manufacturing

so credible where are the workers?
good question, when things get that bad they are usually laid off and looking for work to feed their families and this usually happens just before Christmas!!!

True enough slinky, but this is not just a slap to the workers faces, here the kick to our collective groin!

“In an interview this week on The Sunday Edition, Dennis Howlett, executive director of Canadians for Tax Fairness, says these multinational corporations set up subsidiaries in tax havens such as Ireland, Switzerland and the Cayman Islands and devise ways to transfer profits there from Canada. There are no laws to prevent this.”

“There’s been a proliferation of tax havens,” Howlett explains to host Michael Enright. “Now, a quarter of all direct Canadian foreign investment going abroad is going to tax haven countries. That’s about $170 billion sitting in tax havens, so it’s become a huge problem.”

“An additional concern for Howlett’s organization is Canada’s low corporate tax rate, which the Conservative government established with no guarantee or requirement from corporations that they spend it on job creation or other benefits to the country.”

http://www.cbc.ca/news/corporate-tax-avoidance-scheme-hurting-canada-expert-says-1.2572712

Poor socredible, it’s so hard to defend these corporations when they are robbing us blind, and getting away with it.

Comment Posted by: ice on April 1 2014 8:25 PM
so credible where are the workers?
good question, when things get that bad they are usually laid off and looking for work to feed their families and this usually happens just before Christmas!!!
———————————

Exactly. While shareholders and management continue to roll in the dough!

Lets go back to the good ole days!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZrgxHvNNUc

If the shareholders of Conifex, some of the largest being also the management, are “continuing to roll in the dough”, it’s been more borrowed dough than any that outfit has ever earned since its inception. Since all its previous losses are deductions from shareholder equity, and there’ve been several years of them now, they’ve got some catching up to do just to get back up to the level of their initial investment. If they can.

Socred at least is in the industry and has some idea of what he’s talking about. Peeps on the other hand is a paid shill who does not a whole lot from what I can tell.

Peeps, $ 170 billion in tax havens is a rather insignifigant amount of money compared to the size of the total Canadian economy.

The CBC has a notoriously ‘left-wing’ bias, and also engages in highly selective reporting.

When former Finance Minister, and later Prime Minister, Paul Martin over-ruled his own Ministry’s tax experts, after the wealthy Bronfman family of Montreal sought to move some of their dough out of Canada tax free to an offshore tax haven, and were told by Revenue Canada such a move would be taxable, where was the CBC?

Scared it might get the ‘anti-Semite’ label attached to it if it criticised the back-room dealings of some of “the Chosen”?

It’s always been interesting to me to watch how the ‘left’ focuses on some miniscule problem whenever it comes to anything ‘financial’. Like this tax haven thing. It’s ‘petty cash’.

While financial problems of far greater magnitude and much more universal detriment completely escape their attention.

It’s almost as if control of the ‘news’ and control of ‘finance’ are concentric.

Always there’ll be great emphasis on the notion that ‘more taxation’, (so long as its on someone else, the ‘rich’ who generally can’t be touched anyways, they’ve already protected their dough tax-wise, or even better, some faceless ‘corporation’), is the great cure for all economic depredations.

Do the Naturally Dumb People not realise that EVERY corporate tax, unless it is levied on exports and paid by foreigners, only accentuates what people are already short of ~ money itself?

Posted by: socredible on April 1 2014 7:29 PM

Where are the workers when there’s losses? Stepping up to the plate to share them, too?

The answer to your question is “Yes” In Chetwynd, Canfor Sawmill we took a $5.00 an hour cut in pay! In the Mackenzie Mill that we are talking about they took $2.50 an hour during the down turn, that was after being shutdown for 2 years.
Yes the union workers stepped up to the plate to share losses!

Some more local examples of union workers “stepping up to the plate” there socredible, thanks for providing those examples Farnorth.

What really alarms me in socredibles last comment is this statement; “Like this tax haven thing. It’s ‘petty cash’.”

Wow so $170 billion dollars of corporate profits going into offshore tax havens is petty cash?

Relatively speaking, Peeps, yes. Recognise if this were ALL ” $ 170 billion of corporate profits going into offshore tax havens”, legally, under the existing rules CRA is charged with administrating, and those rules were changed, only a PART of that $ 170 billion would be recovered in taxation. Not the whole $ 170 billion. Even the high tax socialist countries don’t tax profits at 100%.

Now so far as workers “stepping up to the plate” goes, when workers take a pay cut on their FUTURE earnings, (which would not even exist at all unless they have employment), they are certainly not “sharing the losses” in the quite the same sense a company shareholder is when his equity ~ what he’s paid for his shares, presumably out of PAST earnings saved or money he has borrowed personally ~ suffers a reduction in value through repeated corporate losses.

If those losses continue to the point where corporate Liabilities continue to increase relative to corporate Assets, and the company’s banker ‘pulls the plug’ by refusing to fund any more of them, (because they have to BE funded, somehow ~ either that way, or by the shareholder putting still more money in to do it), the shareholder’s investment becomes worthless. It’s gone. A dead loss to him.

Because we have a ‘corporate structure’, generally if Liabilities ARE greatly allowed to exceed Assets, (in some usually futile hope of “better days ahead”), the personal loss to the individual shareholder in a larger company, like Conifex, for instance, stops at the amount he has invested. But it is a loss nevertheless. Money he HAD, but now no longer does.

That’s not quite the same as taking a reduction in future earnings while whatever funds have been saved from past ones are still intact.

Socredible..

Don’t expect a logical response from people#1 on that post. Because if people had a job he/she would understand unions, if people owned shares he/she would understand corporate structure,SEC requirements and silly things like balance sheets and cash flows..things like this seem to be voodoo magic in the world of peole#1..

20% tax on 170 billion would be 34 billion, enough to put Canada in the black for the last 3 years. Then maybe governments could tackle some real problems in our society like child poverty.

Money is worthless if not put to use. Harper has created a corporate kleptocracy, in order to stall or starve social programs. He is a Christian in name only. He will be gladly forgotten after the next election.

socredible, well said! However, do you ever get the feeling that some people just don’t get it??

Farnorth, I applaud any workers who are willing to do their part, step up to the plate so to speak during economic slowdowns. Better to take a pay cut than to be out of work altogether, even though nobody likes to take a pay cut.

I have far more respect for Private Sector Union Members as they seem more willing to step up to the plate than our bloated Public Sector Unions do! I’m not sure if working for “Government” automatically includes a sense of self-entitlement, but it seems far more evident in Public Sector Unions than it does in Private Sector Unions!

But, I could be wrong!

By the way Conifex doesn’t pay a dividend so there is no money to be made on the shares unless your a good day trader.. Which you can’t really do with conifex because there isn’t much of a spread and because there isn’t much of a spread you can’t really put or call unless something comes down the pipe where news will dramatically effect the price.. Last time I checked the balance sheet on conifex they were loosing money so I wouldn’t expect a divy anytime soon..

Lol I hate posting with i phones.

What we need to understand is, we are a resource country, and we are the first people that gets impacted when the world economy slows down. Companies are not going to be employing people for the sake of having people in the plants.

as long as your working for someone else, and your toils do not provide a profit to your employer, your eventually going to be out of a job.

Herbster, it wasn’t Stephen Harper who allowed the Bronfman family trust fund to be transferred out of Canada to an offshore tax haven absolutely tax free.

It was Paul Martin, when he was Minister of Finance under Jean Chretien.

Where was the NDP when that happened, Herbster?

Raising right royal hell in the House of Commons at the loss of revenue, not through the failings of existing rules regarding transfers to tax havens, flawed though they may be, but by having a LIBERAL government Minister over-ride the adverse advance tax ruling given by tax experts in his own Ministry, and let that money leave Canada tax free?

They were NOT! They were stone cold silent, Herbster. The only questions raised on it were from the Bloc Quebecois. And they got not one iota of support from that “great Party of the People” that’s supposed to all for fairness and equality in all things tax-wise.

Thank you, Hart guy and Northman. Yes, I do get the feeling that “some people just don’t get it.” Which is too bad, because those kind of people usually end up convincing themselves that they’re “educated” when they finally get a ‘degree’ in something, and then some agency of government invariably ends up employing them at a bloated salary, (to make it seem like the education system IS actually working), even though they’re still functionally useless in almost all respects.

Socredible, I’ve always felt and firmly believe that sometimes some of the most highly educated people among us also happen to be some of the dumbest!!

Your comments ring true!

Oops, sorry I forgot to add:

“But I could be wrong!”

Meh, as long as everyone realizes socredible’s first comment (questions) on this discussion thread was completely erroneous, as multiple examples of union workers “stepping up to the plate” were provided in response.

As for socredible using the Bromfman’s trust fund being sent offshore, yeah I am sure that amounted to $170 BILLION dollars, or a quarter of all Canadian foreign directed investments, going into sheltered tax havens overseas. Can’t put lipstick on the PIG!

It’s definitely time to heave Steve!