Should Not the Radical Left Take into Account the Attitude of Workers Towards Their Own Jobs? Part One, The Case of Magna International Workers

Introduction

One of the few things that I agree with the academic leftist Jeff Noonan, professor of philosophy at the University of Windsor, Ontario, is that leftists must start where workers are at:

Political engagement begins from trying to understand where people are coming from.

But where people are coming from can be interpreted in at least two ways: objectively–what their real situaiton is, and subjectively, what their attitudes towards their interpreted situations are. In relation to workers, there is their objective situation of being treated as means towards ends defined by employers (see The Money Circuit of Capital).

Subjectively, though, there are undoubtedly a variety of attitudes and interpretations of their own work and life situations.

Some among the radical left do not even address the issue of what workers think of their own jobs. It is hardly idealist to inquire into such attitudes.

I will start to gather evidence about the attitudes of some workers in unionized (and non-unionized) settings where I have calculated the rate of exploitation of those workers. I will also in the not-too-distant future start a similar inquiry process for unionized public-sector workers with the largest employers in Canada and in various Canadian cities.

Objective Exploitation and Oppression of Magna International Workers

In a previous post, I calculated the rate of exploitation of Magna International workers for 2019 (see The Rate of Exploitation of Workers at Magna International Inc., One of the Largest Private Employers in Toronto, Part One). I will copy part of the conclusion from that post:

So, with the adjustments in place: s=2,258; v=2,862. The rate of exploitation or the rate of surplus value=s/v=2,258/2,862=79%.

That means that for every hour worked that produces her/his wage, a worker at Magna International works around an additional 47 minutes for free for Magna International. In an 8-hour work day, the worker produces her/his wage in about 4.5 hours, and the remaining 3.5 hours works for free for Magna. In a 10-hour work day (the worker produces her/his wage in about 5.6 hours and the remaining 4.4 hours works for free for Magna International.

In practice, Magna International workers work for more than necessary to produce the equivalent value of their wages and benefits, and their surplus labour produces Magna International’s profits (surplus of value).

But this is not all. Even during the time when they work to produce the equivalent value of their wages and benefits, they are subject to the power and dicates of a minority called supervisors and managers who represent the employer over the majority of workers–certainly not a democracy (for the characterization of working for an employer as a dictatorship, see Employers as Dictators, Part One):

In the case of Magna International, the rate of exploitation, as noted in the previous post on this topic, is 79%. That means that in an 8-hour work day, Magna workers produce their wage in 4.5 hours, and they work for free for 3.5 hours. However, in addition to working for free for 3.5 hours for Magna International, and being subject to the control of the supervisors and managers, they are also subject to such control during the 4.5 hours that they produce their own wage.

You would think that, given these circumstances, Magna workers would find their work situation mainly negative. Indeed, there are leftists who have argued that workers explicitly experience alienation from their work. David Graeber (2018), in Bullshit Jobs A Theory, states (page 19):

The result was to reveal that men are far more likely to feel that their jobs are pointless (42 percent) than women do (32 percent).

Drawing upon data provided from another survey, he states:

… the survey makes abundantly clear that ( 1) more than half of working hours in American offices are spent on bullshit, and (2) the problem is getting worse.

In another survey, we read the following (Peter Fleming (2015), The Mythology of Work: How Capitalism Persists Despite Itself, page 3):

A recent survey … reveals that only about 13 per cent of the global workforce considered themselves ‘engaged’ by their jobs. The remaining 87 per cent feel deeply alienated.

Subjective Attitudes of Magna International Workers Towards Magna International and Their Working Situation

The data provided below, however, does not substantiate such views.

To obtain such data, I provided a review of my last employer–Lakeshore School Division–for the website Indeed in order to gain access to company reviews.

There were 5,669 reviews at the time that I started this post; this number seems to apply to all employees as well as to employees in Canada. I have limited consideration of evaluations and commentary to Canada–1,225 reviews at the time that I first consulted the website. I provide further statistics for the various subcategories, but I may not do so in the future for other employers; it requires a lot of time, and the additional information may not be worth the effort.

Of course, the numbers above will have changed in a relatively short period of time.

Magna International Workers’ Attitudes Towards Magna International and Their Working Conditions

Conclusions First

As usual, I start with the conclusion in order to make readily accessible the results of the calculations for those who are more interested in the results than in how I obtained them. The ratings are from 5 to 1, with 5 being the most positive evaluation and 1 the worst.

Distribution of the Evaluations to the Various Ratings: Quantitative Data

#5 401
#4 388
#3 232
#2 80
#1=124
Total 1225

I will consider #5 and #4 ratings to be positive evaluations of their work experiences with Magna International. I split the #3 into two since some ratings with a #3 rating are positive evaluations while others are negative. I will consider #2 and #1 ratings to be negative evaluations.

I justify the categorisation of #5 and #4 as positive because, in addition to being quantitatively higher than #3–a nominal middle evaluation–comments made by some workers that correspond to the quantitative evaluation seem to indicate a positive evaluation. Further on, I give a couple of arbitrary examples drawn from each numbered evaluation.

Canada
Positive attitude towards working for Magna International
401+388+116=905
905/1225×100=74%

Negative attitude towards working for Magna International
116+80+124=320
320/1225×100=26%

To get a flavour for the ratings, I include immediately below a couple of comments from each rating. They are not meant to be representative since I chose them to reflect the above characterizations of the evaluations.

A Few Comments from Each Evaluative Category: Qualitative Data

Good Atmosphere
Break Press Operator (Former Employee) – Mississauga, ON – 23 August 2018
Magna is great place to work, sometimes the work can be hard and challenging but it is it overall a good company. Great pay and great employees. I would recommend anyone to apply.
Pros
Great Atmosphere
Cons
Long hours
Great place to work.

Production Worker (Former Employee) – London, ON – 23 February 2023

I was there nearly thirteen years and felt it was a great place to work. When covid started, they gave a fund to everyone to stay home so we weren’t collecting EI.
Pros

Good benefits
Cons

Six days a week

Good company. Great people. Safe Place to work.
Supervisor (Current Employee) – St. Catharines, Ontario – 6 May 2024
Magna is highly competitive. A safe place to work. Great people. They promote from within alot. Great quality. A world Leader. Great culture. I have grown with them over the years. Shift work is the hard part of the job. The people there are the best part.
Fast paced
Robot tech (Current Employee) – Etobicoke, ON – 6 March 2023
Good place to work if U want more money otherwise very hectic.There is no work life balance as you have to work on weekends as well and for long shift hours on some day2. for me it was a good place to work, my areas of responsibility offered a variety of daily challenges that were never routine or stagnant
FACILITIES HELPER (Former Employee) – Etobicoke, ON – 23 December 2022
Fast paced environment. Managers look for individual success as opposed to a team effort. I was in a service department and was able to observe a number of activities that were detrimental to the company as a whole but made the department manager look good.
Friendly staff to work with, too much emphases on the bottom line.
Pros
solid company, lots of corporate support, usually on the leading edge of best in practice functions
Cons
crowded and confined work areas

If there is no other work then “ok,fine”
Forklift Operator (Former Employee) – Vaughan, ON – 15 January 2024
Magna is not really a good company for your career. Just a few ones will appreciate your help. The rest will never looked at you. And if you can do 2-3 tasks during your shift with the same pay then welcome to Magna.
Pros
I learnt many new things from multitasks
Cons
No support and always pushing you to work
Overall good
Engineer (Former Employee) – London, ON – 20 December 2023
Overall good experience with decent pay and growth opportunities. Depending upon position individuals can have different experience. Magna is big company.

Learn and go
Human Resources Assistant (Former Employee) – Belleville, ON – 10 April 2024
Many possibilities to learn, high standards of work, good for people without experience, but too much overtime, no work-life balance. Good place to start your career.
Job
Lead Hand (Former Employee) – Concord, ON – 24 September 2018
management needs to be replaced. there was pressure to launch projects that where not ready for production. management always had miss information of what was the goal of the toolroom so we always go mixed messages. they talked from both side of there mouth.
Pros
love working with the toolmakers
Cons
management

Forced overtime on a days notice
Industrial Maintenance Electrician (Former Employee) – Frames – 13 August 2022
Area leaders come in 2 hours early and stay 2 hours late to make overtime, but bust you for a long break. You’ll get 1 or 2 days notice for mandatory overtime the rest of your career at formet. Say goodbye to family and friends on the weekends.
Expect to be pigeonholed in your work environment. All pigeons gets paid the same, all pigeons can do the same work.
Manufacturing Engineer Specialist (Former Employee) – Brampton, ON – 31 October 2020
Deco live and die with fast talking five-minute experts. If you are an experienced real expert with expert skills and want to do a good job then this is not the place. If you want to talk like a five-minute expert and work with five- minute expert contractors and don’t mind following management mis-directions then welcome to the pigeon holed club.
Pros
Lots of long hours
Cons
Hours for free

Conclusions

Evidently, a substantial majority of Magna International workers who work or have worked for this capitalist company do not characterize the work in a negative light; quite the contrary, they judge working for this capitalist employer to be something positive.

Now, I have no illusion about the positive reviews. They are made with a certain standard by workers, and those standards can, at times, change rapidly. However, at least as an initial assessment of workers at Magna International in Canada, the attitude is predominantly positive. One of the tasks of socialists is to shift that situation to one where the attitude towards Magna International is predominantly negative.

There are undoubtedly a number of explanations for this non-coincidence of workers’ consciousness and their reality. I have offerred a couple of explanations in other posts, such as the objective hiding of the nature of exploitation through the specific way in which workers are exploited–through producing surplus value, which makes it appear as if the surplus arises from processes other than their own exploitation (see for example The Rate of Exploitation of Magna International Inc., One of the Largest Private Employers in Toronto, Part Two, Or: Intensified Oppression and Exploitation and. Economics for Social Democrats–but not for the Working Class, Part Three: Critique of Jim Stanford’s Theory of Money, Part Three, or How Commodities and Money Dominate Our Lives).

Another possible explanation is the implicit indoctrination of school curriculua in social studies and history in Canadian schools (and undoubtedly in schools in other capitalist countries), where students do not even come to understand why employers exist in the first place and why they, in all likelihood, will be employees (see the series of analyses of the curricula in the various Canadian provinces and territories, such as A Case of Silent Indoctrination, Part One: The Manitoba History Curricula and Its Lack of History of Employers and Employees).

A third explanation might be that, despite the alienating aspects of their work when it involves working for an employer, they find a certain overall level of satisfaction with their lives (with work being tending to be a mere means towards other ends).

Whatever the set of explanations, the left should take into account the attitudes of workers when formulating a strategy and tactics that will shift such attitudes and activities towards a posture that questions the very basis of the class power of employers.

How are most of the so-called radical left doing this? As far as I can tell, they are not. Ideological struggle simply is not on their plate. Quite to the contrary. They seem to be engaged in either claiming that revolution is around the corner, or they are indulging union reps in their ideology that workers need to strive for decent work, fair wages, fair contracts, fair collective agreements–within the confines of the class power of employers. A few have less illusions about these, and yet they too indulge in illusions by claiming that isolated resistance against the class power of employers must eventually lead to challgenging that class power–wishful thinking as well.

Socialists have a lot of work to do. It is not just a question of organization, but the basis oof the organization. A unified movement whose goal is to challenge the class power of employers needs to make inroads on the positive attitudes of workers towards their particular employers, towards the class of employers and towards various aspects of the capitalist government or state (including the professionals in civil society and their organizations which support the capitalist government or state).

Part of the attempt to undermine the positive attitude of workers towards their particular employers and employers in general is to show that they are being exploited and oppressed. Exploitation in the private sector, at least for some particular firms, can be calculated, and that is the purpose of calculating the rate of exploitation. Would Magna International workers express a positive attitude if they knew that they were being exploited and oppressed (see The Rate of Exploitation of Workers at Magna International Inc., One of the Largest Private Employers in Toronto, Part One, The Rate of Exploitation of Magna International Inc., One of the Largest Private Employers in Toronto, Part Two, Or: Intensified Oppression and Exploitation and The Rate of Exploitation of Workers at Magna International Inc., One of the Largest Private Employers in Toronto, Part Three, Updated, 2020)? I doubt it.

But let us hear what a so-called radical leftist–Sam Gindin– has to say on the issue of exploitation:

Debating whether a job is ‘decent‘ is a misdirection. Everyone pretty much knows, I think, that workers are exploited even if their conditions improve. ‘Decent jobs’ or a ‘good contract’ are a way of expressing defensive gains when radical gains are not even on the table and we – those on this exchange – don’t have the capacity tooter [to offer?] them any kind of alternative jobs. So criticizing them for this hardly seems an effective way to move them to your view – which is not to say you shouldn’t raise it but that you shouldn’t be surprised when they don’t suddenly act on your point.

I sincerely doubt that “Everyone pretty much knows … that workers are exploited even if their conditions improve.” Certainly most Magna International workers do not clearly know that they are exploited; why otherwise would they rate working for Magna International with a 5?

Furthermore, even many radical leftists who claim that they know that workers are exploited do not in practice act as though workers were exploited. Gindin is a case in point; he does not really take the issue of exploitation seriously (see for example Management Rights and the Lack of Criticism of Such Rights Among the Social Democratic Left, Part Three: Private Sector, The United States). In addition, he fails to consider Marx’s critique of commodity fetishism and money fetishism, which makes it appear that the surplus value (profit) produced by workers flows from something else than their own labour (see Economics for Social Democrats–but not for the Working Class, Part Three: Critique of Jim Stanford’s Theory of Money, Part Three, or How Commodities and Money Dominate Our Lives).

Quantitative Data

Production & manufacturing 576 reviews
195 #5, 182 #4, 104 #3, 39 #2, 56 #1

Installation & Maintenance 120 reviews
25 #5, 47 #4, 23 #3, 8 #2, 17 #1

Construction 87 reviews
23 #5, 20 #4, 31 #3, 5 #2, 8 #1

Loading and Stocking 68 reviews
29 #5, 19 #4, 8 #3, 6 #2, 6 #1

Management 51 reviews
15 #5, 26 #4, 6 #3, 4 #1

Administrative Assistance 40 reviews
14 #5, 12 #4, 8 #3, 2 #2, 4 #1

Industrial Engineering 35 reviews
12 #5, 13 #4, 8 #3, 1 #2, 1 #1

Accounting 22 reviews
8 #5, 7 #4, 2 #3, 3 #2, 2 #1

Human Resources 18 reviews
12 #5, 4 #4, 2 #1

Information Design & Documentation 17 reviews
7 #5, 6 #4, 2 #3, 1 #2, 1 #1

Software Development 14 reviews
4 #5, 6 #4, 3 #3, 1 #1

Project Management 12 reviews
6 #5, 2 #4, 1 #3, 2 #2, 1 #1

Retail 11 reviews
5 #5, 4 #4, 1 #3, 1 #2

Medical Technician 9 reviews
1 #5, 3 #4, 2 #3, 1 #2, 2 #1

Mechanical engineering 8 reviews
2 #5, 2 #4, 4 #3

Electrical engineering 7 reviews
4 #5, 3 #4

IT operations & help desk 5 reviews
3 #5, 1 #4, 1 #3 ]

Customer service 5 reviews
2 #5, 2 #4, 1 #1

Sales 4 reviews
2 #5, 1 #4, 1 #1

Community & social service 4 reviews
1 #5, 3 #4

Security & public safety 4 reviews
3 #5, 1#4

Banking & finance 4 reviews
1 #5, 2 #4, 1 #1

Arts & entertainment 3 reviews
3 #3

Driving 3 reviews
1 #5, 2 #3

Marketing 2 reviews
1 #5, 1 #4

Civil engineering 2 reviews
1 #3, 1 #2

Legal (law clerk) 1 review #5

Social science (Environmental health officer) 1 review #5

Logistic support (Supply chain manager) 1 review #5

Food preparation & service (Host/Hostess) 1 review #5

Mathematics (Analyst) 1 review 1 #1

Personal care & home health (Support worker) 1 review #3

Others 88 reviews
21 #5, 21 #4, 21 #3, 10 #2, 15 #1

Divided as follows:

(Team member 16 reviews
3 #5, 5 #4, 6 #3, 1 #2, 1 #1)

(Engineer 6 reviews
2 #4, 2 #3, 2 #2)

(Associate 4 reviews
1 #5, 3 #1)

(Production 4 reviews
2 #5, 1 #2, 1 #1)

(Summer student 3 reviews
2 #4, 1 #1)

(Cell leader 3 reviews
2 #3, 1 #1)

(Volunteer 3 reviews
3 #5)

(Materials 2 reviews
2 #3)

(TPT 2 reviews
1 #5, 1 #2)

(Lean Six Sigma specialist 2 reviews
1 #5, 1 #1)

(Headliner 2 reviews
1 #5, 1 #2)

(Specialist 1 review #2)

(temp to contrct to full time) 1 review #1)

(Department 1 review #1)

(Load floor 1 review #4)

(Temporary under agency 1 review #5)

(Quality co-op student 1 review #4)

(Hydroform 1 review #1 )

(Press operator 1 review #2 )

(Tugger 1 review #4 )

(Manutennionaire H/F 1 review #5)

(Sksjriic1 review #4)

(Deco automotive 1 review #4)

(Automation specialist 1 review #5 )

(Contractor 1 review #3 )

(E coat 1 review #1)

(Temp–HCR personnel 1 review #3)

(Junior engineer 1 review #3 )

(Time keeper 1 review #3)

(Corporate 1 review #4)

(Integram Windsor seating 1 review #1)

(Factory employee 1 review #4)

(Crew member 1 review #1)

(Prefer not to disclose #4)

(Frames 1 review #5)

(IT 1 review #3)

(Assistant leader 1 review #4)

(Shop floor employee 1 review #3)

(Ergonomist 1 review #2)

(Skilled trade 1 review #2)

(Helper 1 review #4)

(HCR temporary employee #3)

(Engineering intern 1 review #3)

(Die prep 1 review #5)

(Coop 1 review #4)

(Steel worker 1 review #5)

(Brampton Ontario 1 review #5)

(Sequencer 1 review #3)

(Apprentice 1 review #5)

(Senior engineer 1 review #5)

(TTM 1 review #1)

(Coordinator 1 review #4)