Should Not the Radical Left Take into Account the Attitude of Workers Towards Their Own Jobs? Part Three, The Case of the Toronto District School Board

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 for such “materialists.”

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 Toronto District School Board Workers

It is impossible to calculate the rate of exploitation of Toronto District School Board (TDSB) workers since what they produce is not produced for a private employer who has the commodities produced sold on a market. However, as I have argued elsewhere, this situation does not mean that they are not exploited and oppressed (see the public-sector section of The Money Circuit of Capital). They do not, however, produce surplus value in any direct fashion, so a quantitative characterization of their exploitation is impossible. However, if they may well perform surplus labour and thereby indirectly permit an expansion of the production of surplus value (profit) by reducing the costs of production of workers, as Charles Umney (2018), in his book Class Matters: Inequality and Exploitation in 21st Century Britain, argues (pages 108-109):

So, for people on the left, it is politically useful to sentimentalise ‘our’ NHS [National Health System, the public health system in the United Kingdom] (recall the tribute to it in the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony), but this sentimentality can also be a problem – as, arguably, is the left-wing fixation on what percentage of the NHS is being outsourced to the private sector. Quasi-privatisation has been a priority of successive governments, but it only benefits small segments of capital. The bigger issue, and the more important thing from capital’s perspective, is the need to apply intense budget pressure so as to lower the costs of the system as a whole.
…
The main effect of the policy obsession with ‘competition’ and the market was not so much crony capitalism – i.e. a nefarious scheme to hand NHS services to mates in the private sector – but just plain capitalism: growing pressure on NHS workers themselves to produce more and more indirect surplus value to capital as a whole. This meant extracting
more work for less, and it is this obsession that defines working life in the NHS today as much as in Sports Direct or Amazon. NHS staff are harder to bully than those warehouse workers in some respects (since they are typically higher-skilled and more likely to be unionised). But in other ways they are easier to push around, since they tend to be very
squeamish about making too much of a fuss in the workplace because of their sense of duty.

The same applies to the education sector.

Even if TDSB workers were not exploited, they would still be subject to the oppression of management since they are subject to the dictates of the employer–even when they are unionized; the employer-employee relation is not a democracy but a dictatorship (see for example Employers as Dictators, Part One).

You would think that, given these circumstances, TDSB 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 Toronto District School Board Workers Towards the Toronto District School Board 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 400 reviews at the time 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.

Toronto District School Board Workers’ Attitudes Towards the Toronto District School Board 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

#5 200
#4 115
#3 57
#2 16
#1 12

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.

Positive attitude towards working for the Toronto District School Board

200 #5+115 #4 +28 #3=343
343/400×100=86%

Negative attitude towards working for the Toronto District School Board
29 #3+16 #2, 12 #1=57
57/400×100=14%.

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

Productive and Fun Place to Work in
JUNIOR HTML / .NET PROGRAMMER (Former Employee) – North York, ON – 20 June 2022
Amazing experience, was a place where I could constantly learn and manage dealing with clients and was a great workplace culture. The most enjoyable part of the job was the team for sure.
A productive and great place to work, with the ability to advance your career goals.
Child and Youth Worker (CYW) (Current Employee) – Toronto, ON – 29 March 2024
What is the best part of working at the company?
Fair compensation upward career mobility and benefits

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The application process can be stressful, as well the process ro become a permanent employees( teacher or professional support services)

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Excellent, very supportive and friendly

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Scheduled, very organized, and friendly.

Great people
Lunchroom Supervisor (Current Employee) – Toronto, ON – 19 May 2024
The environment depends on the principal and they change pretty often. So far I’ve had good luck and my co-workers are great. The kids are the best part of the job.
Great place to work
Permanent Teacher (Current Employee) – Toronto, ON – 25 August 2023
Overall this is a great board to work for. It’s the largest board in the GTA and arguably the most diverse.

Pros:
– Working with students
– Engaging with parents
– Creating meaningful lessons

Cons:
– Depends on the school)
Pros
Student engagement
Cons
Sometimes lack of admin/staff support

Lots of jobs for substitute teachers
Teacher (Current Employee) – Toronto, ON – 15 March 2024
Lots of jobs for substitute teachers. However often times preps get taken away and office staff take advantage of OTs [Occasional teachers] and take their preps to handle prep paybacks. Pay is good, theres a salary grid. They sadly do not accept prior private school experience if it is not a ministry inspected school.
Plenty of opportunity to supply, hard to obtain contract
Teacher (Current Employee) – Toronto, ON – 11 September 2023
Large school board allows for plenty of work. However, expect for much of that to be OT’ing and LTO’s. Quite tough to secure a contract and as an OT you feel somewhat disposable. Schools can be old and feel in need of repair.

They enjoy paganism very much
Long Term Occasional Teacher (Current Employee) – Virtual – 25 August 2023
I worked for the board the year before the pandemic and the first two were pretty interesting as I was tried out for different positions including virtual work with a consistent schedule. I was definitely paid for the time better than the board I worked for previously which was private. I unfortunately have had to report antisemitism which led to be getting very sick for about a couple of months. I concluded that there are a lot of haters working here who are applauded in many ways for paganism. And you can see this with the videos and materials they bring to their lessons.

After I figured out how many things fall through the cracks, I got much more particular about saying yes to roles where I would become some kind of “saver of money so they don’t have to hire a perm Teacher”. I do not have one final opinion of this board as they do move people around and try to make sure people are OK with their mental wellness and not get too bombarded with directions or trainings. My only very important tip is to always ask for what you need in writing because Principals have a very hard time following through on what they offer you and can attempt to make themselves look more ready to support you than they truly are. Understand what your contract says is rule number two.
Pros
Interesting diversity of cultures and options to take different roles
Cons
In need of Vice Principals who have good experiences with behavioural problem kids.
Very political environment
Manager (Former Employee) – Toronto, ON – 27 September 2022
Lots of politics as trustees get involved in day-today operations and can undermine staff if they don’t like you. Some openly threatened me if I did not do their bidding. There can be lots of after hours calls and you are expected to respond to emails after hours. The pay and benefits are very good though.

Unethical place to work
Carpenter (Former Employee) – Toronto, ON – 12 May 2023
If you like wasting taxpayers dollars on people who work in offices instead of using on actual education. Then you’ll fit right in. Very toxic and polictal environment.
Find another job
Caretaker for 4 years (Former Employee) – Toronto, ON – 9 March 2023
The Toronto district school board, gives you very little time to do your work. And if you’re looking for full time position. Definitely don’t apply. For instance, you have 4hrs. To clean all rooms and bathrooms perfectly. But you don’t get the time. That give you 3min. Per class room and 5 min. To get the bathrooms
Pros
No pros
Cons
That only give you a very small amount of time to do everything.

Political Relevance

Such analysis forms only a preliminary tool for socialists interested in relating to workers working for this particular employer. It is crude quantitative and should be supplemented by a qualitative analysis of comments–a much more labour-intensive task.

Unlike Jane McAlevey’s approach, which focuses on organic leaders–leaders who form a key focus since winning their allegiance leads to other workers (or community members) being convinced to join a union or community campaign (see my review in the Links section)–the issue here is to see which workers are the most disgruntled and the least disgruntled in relation to a particular employer.

It may be thought that the more disgruntled workers would then be the focus of socialists’ efforts. That may well be, but the issue is of course more complicated than that. For example, for socialists the issue is not just being disgruntled against a particular employer but generalizing this to all employers. It would be necessary for socialists to use their judgement in determining how susceptible disgruntled workers are to such generalization. In some cases, less disgruntled workers may well be more susceptible to generalizing than more disgruntled workers. Initially, though, it does give socialists a preliminary method of approaching workers, at least in a general way. Of course, no specific workers can be identified through such an approach. That would be the responsibility of socialists engaging with specific workers or community members.

Quantitative Data for the Above Conclusions

Education and instruction 151 reviews
69 #5, 44 #4, 29 #3, 5 #2, 4 #1

Community & social service 65 reviews [216]
35 #5, 18 #4, 8 #3, 3 #2, 1 #1

Administrative Assistance 34 reviews [250]
16 #5, 11 #4, 6 #3, 1 #1

Cleaning & Sanitation 33 reviews [283]
20 #5, 9 #4, 2 #2, 2 #1

Installation & Maintenance 15 reviews [298]
7 #5, 5 #4, 2 #3, 1 #2

Management 15 reviews [313]
6 #5, 6 #4, 2 #3, 1 #2

Construction 7 reviews [320]
1 #5, 3 #4, 1 #3, 2 #1

Software Development 7 reviews [327]
5 #5, 2 #3

Security & public safety 5 reviews [332]
3 #5, 2 #4

Human Resources 4 reviews [336]
3 #5, 1 #3

Legal 3 reviews [339]
2 #5, 1 #4

IT Operations & helpdesk 3 reviews [342]
1 #5, 2 #4

Sports 3 reviews [345]
2 #5, 1 #4

Project management 2 reviews [347]
2 #5

Media & communications 2 reviews [349]
1 #5, 1 #2

Food preparation & service 2 reviews [351]
2 #5

Information design & documentation 2 reviews [353] +14+33=47=400
1 #5, 1 #4

Accounting (Accounting assistant) #5

Sales (Business developer) #3

Nursing (Registered nurse) #4

Retail (Dealer) #5

Production & manufacturing (Packager) #5

Arts & entertainment (Designer) #3

Therapy (Speech therapist) #5

Veterinary (Animal intake assistant) #4

Driving (Courier driver) #5

Scientific research & development (Research analyst) #2

Childcare (Childcare provider) #4

Medical technician (Nutrition assistant) #5

Architecture (Transport planner) #4

Mathematics (Senior analyst) #1

Others 33 reviews [correct!]
Volunteer 6 reviews
5 #5, 1 #4
Assistant 4 reviews
2 #5, 2 #4

Intern 2 reviews
2 #5

Permanent ECE #5

Specialist #5

Summer student (task force) #3

Assistant leader #4

IT #5

Supply/Sna #2

Emergency position person #4

Placement student #5

CO-OP student #5

Casual support #3

Coop [sic] student #5

Parent worker #4

Co-op student #3

Student field placement #5

Apprentice #4

Student co-op #5

Placement student #1

SBSM #5

Staff member #5

Elementary/Jr intermediate core #3

Army IT professional #4

Conclusions

In general, workers at the Toronto District School Board do not find working for this particular employer to be overly alienating. The task of socialists is to change this situation so that more and more workers not only become more alienated from this particular employer but from all employers and seek a solution in challenging the class power of employers. In other words, their task is to develop the class consciousness of workers.