Winston Churchill famously said, “democracy is the worst form of government—except all those other forms that have been tried.” We could also say that “free enterprise is the worst form of economic distribution—except for all the other forms that have been tried.”

Free enterprise needs to be tempered with sensible regulation, and its success requires that people adhere to strong value systems.

In 2008, Lehman Brothers collapsed, precipitating a crisis in the financial markets that sent the Western world into a major recession. But the signs of excess and unrestrained capitalism were present long before.

Think of the Tyco CEO who, in 2001, threw a $2 million toga party for his wife’s birthday, charging half of the cost to Tyco.

Or think of the collapse of WorldCom in 2002. Management knew the collapse was coming, but they pressured employees to invest their earnings into the firm, right until the company imploded amid massive accounting scandals. The result: when the company when bankrupt, employees and investors were left destitute.

Sid Ryan’s ego is coming under attack from within his own ranks. Not only is he continuing to play power politics outside the OFL, but inside of it.

He is taking a gamble that progressive union leaders within his ranks will be forced to come back to him, after distancing themselves from him in the past few weeks.

But his actions and arrogance are exposing the irrelevance of the OFL. Union members are starting to see that the OFL does not speak for them, and it adds no value to the realm of labour, or the Ontario social and political arenas. Progressive leaders within the labour movement realize that they need to be very careful these days if they want to maintain public support. The old ways of union leaders muscling their way around—the way Sid Ryan still operates— don’t work anymore. Those who insist on operating this way, will become increasingly irrelevant.

But it’s not just me who thinks this way. Click on this link to a recent Toronto Star article on Boss Sid.