Machines And Jobless Results

On October 21 Bombardier said it has plans to eliminate 7500 more jobs or 10 percent of its workforce including 2000 in Canada. This comes on top of the 7000 jobs to be eliminated by the end of 2017, which they announced in February. Their spokesperson, Simon Letendre, was pretty blunt about it, ''These are tough actions we need to take to make the business more profitable and succeed in the future''. The main words being "more profitable''. 

Surprisingly the Prez. of their workers' union, Scott Mcilmoyle doesn't seem too worried,''Right now we don't know for certain, but it appears to be indirect jobs,'' he said, referring to management, administrative and support jobs, instead of direct production ones. 

Well, ''Earth to Scott, these are workers too and will be adversely affected by lay-offs''. 

This is another example, if needed, of how bad things are getting for the working class. Because capitalism is a boom - slump system we know sooner or later things will pick up. Some capitalists will buy stock at dirt cheap prices and the economy, world - wide will pick up. However, this doesn't mean the unemployment figures will go down considerably. 

Automation means machinery will do work previously done by people and globalization means unemployment won't decrease much in the major industrialised countries. So don't expect things to get much better because they won't. 

John Ayers