Workers in the public sector are used just as much as means for purposes over which they have little or no control (see The Money Circuit of Capital). The left often denies this implicitly by idealizing the public sector over the private sector. Workers in the public sector, however, are employees, and as employees they are economically dependent on an employer and hence are, economically, coerced into doing the bidding of their employer–as the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) recognizes (although it does not, interestingly enough, pursue the issue. See “Capitalism needs economic coercion for its job market to function” (Ontario Coalition Against Poverty: OCAP)).
A collective agreement is, in general, better than no collective agreement, but it hardly expresses “economic justice” (to use the ideological expression of a union representative here in Toronto). It limits the power of employers, but since employers still have the power to use workers (employees) for ends over which the workers have little say, the collective agreement simultaneously expresses their subordination and subjugation to the power of management, to a particular employer and to the power of the class of employers.
From
COLLECTIVE AGREEMENT Between The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) And
The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO or ETT) September 1, 2014 – August 31, 2019
page 37:
L – A.2.2. All matters and rights not prescribed by this Agreement, shall remain within the sole and exclusive right of the Board to manage its affairs.
This short clause in the collective agreement hides the real power of the Board over the employees of the collective agreement. Since economic coercion is the basic premise of having to work for an employer, the economic dependence of teachers on the Board alters their behavior in a number of ways. For example, in many schools, teachers, when the principal enters the staff lounge, change their behavior or their conversations. Why is that?
Although the principal in the above scenario is theoretically an educational leader, s/he represents the economic power of the employer, and that power is intimidating–unless teachers, like other workers, learn to organize and resist that power in their daily working lives.
Even then, organizing at the local level, ultimately, is no match for the economic power of the employers as a class–unless there is a conscious aim to go beyond such an economic power and to control our lives, along with other workers–in a socialist society.
What is the position of teachers’ representatives concerning the right of management to direct the workforce as it sees fit, subject to the limitations of the collective agreement? Is there any discussion over the right of management to do so? Or is there mere paper phrases, like “economic justice,” or “fairness”, or the most popular these days, “social justice”–without any discussion of why teachers have to subordinate their will to their employer and why other workers have to do the same thing?
In a democratic society, should there not be discussion about why management has the power and rights that it does at work, either implicitly or explicitly?
The Abolitionary 