Introduction
Workers working for the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) are now on strike. There seem to be three issues from the point of view of the union (Ontario Public Service Employees Union Local (OPSEU): job security (since Conserative Premier Doug Ford plans to privatize liquor sales by permitting such sales in local grocery stores), wages and more full-time jobs (70 percent of LCBO workers hold part-time or casual positions).
The striking workers, of course, should be supported, and calls for solidarity are appropriate. However, when such calls are linked to the usual union cliches of “fair wages” and “good jobs,” then socialists have an obligation to criticize such views.
Good Jobs and Fair Wages: Two Criteria for Determining Social Justice
A case in point is Tracy MacMaster’s post on Facebook. She posted the following:
Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU)
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12:01am, it’s official: LCBO workers are on strike across the province! 💪. Fighting for a better Ontario where public revenues stay in public hands. Welcome to Doug Ford’s dry summer.
She made the following comment:
Solidarity to the folks walking the line today at our local liquor stores. We all deserve fair wages and good jobs [my emphasis].
Tracy MacMaster, as far as I can tell, is a union steward, former president of Greater Toronto Area Council (GTAC), to which are affiliated 35 local unions of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU)), and former (unsure of this) vice president of her local of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU).
According to her Master’s thesis (2013), Chasing the Carrot: Organizing Part-Time Ontario College Workers, page 4:
I come to this research from a history of activism generally and as an activist in this
campaign specifically. I work as a full-time support staff employee at an Ontario college
and am a long-time member of the local union executive. As well, I have been involved
as a volunteer rank and file activist in OPSEU’s efforts to gain part-time college workers
a union since its current inception in 2005.
Good Jobs: A Phantom Concept
In her thesis, she refers to “good jobs” twice (I will deal with the issue of “fair wages” in a later section of this post).
- Page 47:
Unionized jobs as a whole tend to be ‘good’ jobs, with higher wages, more job security and better benefits; conversely, non-union jobs are more likely to be lower paid, more precarious and offer less overall security, even within the public sector (Anderson, Beaton and Laxer 2006; Statistics Canada 2012b).
2. Page 102:
If unions create “good jobs”, then we need to work towards conditions where everyone has access to the benefits of collective bargaining in its most inclusive forms.
Thus, good jobs for her are unionized jobs subject to collective bargaining and collective agreements. If these conditions are met, unionized workers really, according to her logic, have no right to complain since they work at good jobs. They should, accordingly, comply with management’s orders (unless it is unsafe to do so or unless it contravenes the collective agreement.
Let us look at part of a clause in the now expired collective agreement, page 8:
(c) The Union acknowledges that it is the exclusive function of management to:
• maintain order, discipline and efficiency;
• hire, dismiss, transfer, classify, assign, appoint, promote, demote, layoff, recall, suspend or otherwise discipline employees subject to the right to grieve as provided for in this Agreement;
• manage the operation and without restricting the generality of the foregoing, the right to plan, direct and control operations, direct its employees, determine complement, methods and the number, location and class of employees as required from time to time, the scheduling and assignment of work, cessation of operations and all other rights and responsibilities not specifically modified elsewhere in this agreement.The Employer agrees that these functions will be exercised in a manner consistent with the provisions of this Agreement.
In essence, management has the right to direct workers as it sees fit (in accordance with its specific business), subject to the limitations of the collective agreement. The collective agreement is a limiting document, restricting management’s right to direct “its” workforce in any way it wants–but it does not question the legitimacy of management having such power in the first place. MacMaster certainly shows no evidence of questioning such power.
Elizabeth Anderson, in her book Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk About It) questions such power by pointing out how the power of employers resembles the power of communist dictators (pages 37-39):
Communist Dictatorships in Our Midst
Imagine a government that assigns almost everyone a superior whom they must obey. Although superiors give most inferiors a routine to follow, there is no rule of law. Orders may be arbitrary and can change at any time, without prior notice or opportunity to appeal. Superiors are unaccountable to those they order around. They are neither elected nor removable by their inferiors. Inferiors have no right to complain in court about how they are being treated, except in a few narrowly defined cases. They also have no right to be consulted about the orders they are given.
There are multiple ranks in the society ruled by this government. The content of the orders people receive varies, depending on their rank. Higher- ranked individuals may be granted considerable freedom in deciding how to carry out their orders, and may issue some orders to some inferiors. The most highly ranked individual takes no orders but issues many. The lowest-ranked may have their bodily movements and speech minutely regulated for most of the day.
This government does not recognize a personal or private sphere of autonomy free from sanction. It may prescribe a dress code and forbid certain hairstyles. Everyone lives under surveillance, to ensure that they are complying with orders. Superiors may snoop into inferiors’ e- mail and record their phone conversations.
Suspicionless searches of their bodies and personal effects may be routine. They can be ordered to submit to medical testing. The government may dictate the language spoken and forbid communication in any other language. It may forbid certain topics of discussion. People can be sanctioned for their consensual sexual activity or for their choice of spouse or life partner. They can be sanctioned for their political activity and required to engage in political activity they do not agree with.
The economic system of the society run by this government is communist. The government owns all the nonlabor means of production in the society it governs. It organizes production by means of central planning. The form of the government is a dictatorship. In some cases, the dictator is appointed by an oligarchy. In other cases, the dictator is self- appointed.
Although the control that this government exercises over its members is pervasive, its sanctioning powers are limited. It cannot execute or imprison anyone for violating orders. It can demote people to lower ranks. The most common sanction is exile. Individuals are also free to emigrate, although if they do, there is usually no going back. Exile or emigration can have severe collateral consequences. The vast majority have no realistic option but to try to immigrate to another communist dictatorship, although there are many to choose from. A few manage to escape into anarchic hinterlands, or set up their own dictatorships.
This government mostly secures compliance with carrots. Because it controls all the income in the society, it pays more to people who follow orders particularly well and promotes them to higher rank. Because it controls communication, it also has a propaganda apparatus that often persuades many to support the regime. This need not amount to brainwashing. In many cases, people willingly support the regime and comply with its orders because they identify with and profit from it. Others support the regime because, although they are subordinate to some superior, they get to exercise dominion over inferiors. It should not be surprising that support for the regime for these reasons tends to increase, the more highly ranked a person is.
Would people subject to such a government be free? I expect that most people in the United States would think not. Yet most work under just such a government: it is the modern workplace, as it exists for most establishments in the United States. The dictator is the chief executive officer (CEO), superiors are managers, subordinates are workers. The oligarchy that appoints the CEO exists for publicly owned corporations: it is the board of directors. The punishment of exile is being fired. The economic system of the modern workplace is communist, because the government— that is, the establishment— owns all the assets,1 and the top of the establishment hierarchy designs the production plan, which subordinates execute. There are no internal markets in the modern workplace. Indeed, the boundary of the firm is defined as the point at which markets end and authoritarian centralized planning and direction begin.
Most workers in the United States are governed by communist dictatorships in their work lives.
Most workers in Canada, too, “are governed by communist dicatorships in their work lives”–the clause quoted above in the collective agreement expresses such dicatorships (with limitations on that dicatorship expressed as well within the collective agreement). Of course, limitations on such a dictatorship are better than no limitations–but they are just that, limitations; they do not change the fundamental nature of the dictatorship at work.
How is working for LCBO a “good job?” I doubt that MacMaster can justify such a view.
Fair Wages: The Impossible Dream
In her Master’s thesis, there is no direct reference to “fair wages” (although there are references to the justice of equal wages for equal work). Probably the closest idea to her concept of “fair wages” is a negative reference in her thesis when quoting a member of OPSEU (page 73):
That revolving door is a feature of the type of part-time, contract, precarious work it is, so that people’s tenacity towards the delivery of that public service is not there as much because there’s no vested interest, because they can’t make a decent livelihood [my emphasis] in that kind of work. (C, part-time activist).
I assume that MacMaster, since she has not bothered to indicate what she means by a “fair wage,” would agree that a “fair wage” is that which permits “a decent livelihood”–which includes being able to pay basic things like food, clothing, shelter, transportation, entertainment, children’s expenses (if there are children) and so forth, without going into excessive debt.
Of course, a higher (living) wage is important–I have been in situations where I have looked for pennies (when they existed) to be able to afford to buy a coffee and a muffin at McDonalds. Receiving a higher wage does make a difference in the quality of life–outside work.
However, If working for an employer generally involves a dictatorship, then the issue of “fair wages” takes on a different light. How can any wage be fair if the situation involves a dictatorship? MacMaster simply does not answer the question.
Indeed, MacMaster, although she is probably unaware of it, by using such language as “fair wages,” implicitly justifies the continued oppression and exploitation of workers. From Kanishka Chowdhury (2019), Human Rights Discourse in the Post-9/11 Age, page 86:
Likewise, the struggle for “fair wages” is clearly a matter of justice or rights, particularly at a time when workers’ wages have been frozen for decades, but to see the fight for fair wages purely in those terms, one would have to separate morality (fairness) from capitalist political economy (wages). Capital thrives on such atomization of social relations, so it is vital for workers to grasp the trickery of bourgeois society that naturalizes the rules of capitalism—to see past some universal, dehistoricized notion of justice, as well as recognize the bourgeoisie’s enforced separation between the political and the economic. Moreover, if we accept the often-thin line between moral and legal justice in bourgeois society, and if the basic framework of bourgeois society is conceded as potentially a morally just one, then in essence the battle has been lost. As Marx argued in the Critique, it is within the framework of the right to bourgeois private property that the series of accompanying rights are constructed.
MacMaster, by claiming that there is such a thing as “fair wages,” implies that working for an employer is somehow fair. In effect, she becomes an ideologist for employers–even if she is unaware of this and has no intention of being so.
Questioning of the Limitations of Collective Bargaining and Collective Agreements: Is Such Questioning Sincere?
Several years ago, brewery workers here in Toronto went out on strike. At the time, Tracy McMaster sent an email to a listserve of the Toronto Labour Committee in February 2017 (of which I was a member at the time):
In case you haven’t heard, our neighbours the Molson’s workers from Local 325 CUBGE are on the picket line. Representing airport & airline workers I spoke at their Solidarity BBQ last week at the International Drive/Carlingview entrance. They are in a tough battle with a huge corporate (and American) giant in Coors and could really use our support. Please boycott Molsons products for the duration of the strike, and feel free to drop by the picket line -honking support is also welcome!
The workers just want a fair deal- good jobs, pension security and fair benefits but the employer won’t even bargain. I hope you all will join me in showing solidarity with the brewery workers from Local 325! [my emphasis]
MacMaster, for more than seven years now, has persisted in claiming that collective bargaining and collective agreements somehow result in “a fair deal,” “good jobs,” and “fair benefits.”
Of course, we should stand in solidarity with striking workers–but claiming that workers can somehow achieve “a fair deal,” “good jobs,” and so forth in the context of the power of both a particular employer (as expressed in above quote, in many management rights clauses in collective agreements and in the decisions of arbitrators) and the power of the class of employers is unjusfied. Quite to the contrary. Such a view needs to be criticized.
MacMaster did reply to one of my criticisms concerning the limitations of collective bargaining and collective agreements seven years ago:
Hi Fred,
I don’t normally repsond to your emails, but I feel compelled. 20,000 workers, who for 50 years had almost no protections in the workplace, since they were excluded from many of the most basic protections of the Employment Standards Act, will now have a voice in the workplace. The potential to improve their material circumstances, as well as their health – precarious workers are at greater risk for negative health outcomes, due to uncertainty, and of course poverty – gives me hope.
Having worked alongside numerous activists on this project for the past 13 years, I can only express delight that they finally have come this far. Collective bargaining is limited and imperfect, but a fuck-ton better than none.
Activism and the Social-Democratic or Social-reformist Left
The social-reformist or social-democratic activist left implicitly believe that since they are activists, they are impervious to criticism. Their “activism” somehow shields them from criticism. They themselves, as noted above, though, limit the working-class movement by using such cliches as “good jobs” and “fair wages.”
Such an attitude reminds me of pro-Soviet Union leftists–since the Soviet Union existed, and was supposedly socialist, Marxists should not engage in criticism of the Soviet Union.
Radical leftists should cal into question such an attitude–and corresponding cliches–at every opportunity.
Conclusion
Of course, we should express our solidarity with the striking liquor workers. However, given that working for an employer involves working for a dictator, and given that collective bargaining and a collective agreement at best limit such a dicatorship but do not call into question such a dictatorship, they are limited. Such limitation needs to be met head on rather than avoided. Calling unionized jobs “good jobs” in such a situation does not permit us to address the dicatorship that reigns in people’s working lives; rather, it papers over such a situation. Furthermore, to call any wage as “fair” in the context of working for dictators rings hollow.
What we need is radical criticism of the nature of the society in which we live, work and suffer–and not such union cliches as “good jobs” and “fair wages.”
The Abolitionary 