Should Not the Radical Left Take into Account the Attitude of Workers Towards Their Own Jobs? Part Five, The Case of Rogers Communications 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 Rogers Communications Workers

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

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 to obtain them.

Income before income tax expense s=$3.773 billion or $3773.5 million and
Employee salaries, benefits, and stock-based compensation v=$1.8045 billion or $1804.5 million

The rate of exploitation or the rate of surplus value=s/v=3773.5/1804.5=209%.

That means that for every hour worked that produces her/his wage, a worker at Rogers Communications works around an additional 125 minutes or 2 hours 5 minutes for free for Rogers Communications. Alternatively, in terms of money, $1 of wage or salary of a regular Rogers Communications worker produces $2.09 surplus value or profit for free.

1. In a 4.5-hour work day (270 minutes), the worker produces her/his wage in about 87 minutes (1 hour 27 minutes) and works 183 minutes (3 hours 3 minutes) for free for Rogers Communication.
2. In a 7.5-hour work day (450 minutes), the worker produces her/his wage in about 146 minutes (2 hours 26 minutes) and works 304 minutes (5 hours 4 minutes) for free for Rogers Communications.
3. In an 8-hour work day (480 minutes). the worker produces her/his wage in about 155 minutes (2 hours 35 minutes) and works 325 minutes (5 hours 25 minutes) for free for Rogers Communications.
4. In an 10-hour work day (600 minutes). the worker produces her/his wage in about 194 minutes (3 hours 14 minutes) and works 406 minutes (6 hours 46 minutes) for free for Rogers Communications.

Of course, during the time that the worker produces her/his own wage, s/he is subject to the power of management and hence is also unfree during that time (see The Rate of Exploitation of Magna International Inc., One of the Largest Private Employers in Toronto, Part Two, Or: Intensified Oppression and Exploitation and   Employers as Dictators, Part One).

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

You would think that, given these circumstances, Rogers Communications 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 Rogers Communications Workers Towards Rogers Communications 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 3,212 reviews for Canada at the time that I started this post. I will, however, restrict myself to the 1,056 reviews for Toronto workers.

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

Rogers Communications Workers’ Attitudes Towards Rogers Communications and Their Working Conditions

In similar posts, I provided a more detailed quantitative breakdown of the reviews (see for example Should Not the Radical Left Take into Account the Attitude of Workers Towards Their Own Jobs? Part One, The Case of Magna International Workers), but such detail requires much more time. Unless there is a political reason for engaging in such detailed work, I will only provide the total quantitative data.

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

#5 297

#4 405

#3 225

#2  75

#1 54

Total=1056 [297+405+225+75+54]

I will consider #5 and #4 ratings to be positive evaluations of their work experiences with Rogers Communications. 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 Rogers Communications

297 #5+ 405 #4 +112 #3=814
814/1056×100=77%

Negative attitude towards working for Rogers Communications
113 #3+ 75 #2 + 54 #1=242
242/1056×100=23%

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

#5

1. Productive and fun workplace
   Customer Solutions Specialist (Current Employee) – Toronto, ON – 27 May 2023
   The managers as years go by gets better and better. Gone were the days that managers are power-tripping. That’s why you will get motivated to do better at your job everyday. There’s an opportunity to go up as well. Pay is good. Benefits are excellent.
   Pros
   Pay, medical and dental benefits, opportunities to grow
   Cons
   It’s up to you how you see things there
2. Awesome
   Scrum Master (Current Employee) – Toronto, ON – 16 December 2022
   Working with Rogers Communications is one of my most favourable working culture experiences so far.
   I have not only successfully assisted mature teams in fast and quality deliveries that have met customers satisfaction and added business values to the organization but I have gained more experiences and networking expertise with my stay in Rogers.
   Pros
   Perfect team collaboration
   Cons
   None yet

#4

1. Great place. They respect you here
   Collection Agent (Full-Time) (Current Employee) – Toronto, ON – 19 November 2021
   Typically you are on calls all day. inbound or outbound. Customer can be a a problem. They always have up to date training. Management is great, friendly and supportive. I enjoyed my time there
   Pros
   your discount
   Cons
   Hard tp move up due to seniority
2. culture
   Customer Service (Former Employee) – Toronto, ON – 27 February 2019
   important to know everyday there’s a standard and bar to reach and each day i work hard day to day making sure it reaches or gets there focused on dedication and committment
   Pros
   long hours
   Cons
   productive

#3

1. Decent pay and great benefits but Hard job
   Credit Operations Agent (Former Employee) – Toronto, ON – 2 May 2022
   The job can be hard on your conscious especially during trying financial times like these. Overall great management who were really understanding to employee personal situations, positive wokrplace culture, and great pay and beneifts.Only gripe is that there are a lot of group incentive rewards that some managers push too hard for the team to win. Coworkers also tend to complain quite a bit about the job while being quite careless.
2. It was just ok
   Collection consultant (Current Employee) – Toronto, ON – 5 July 2023
   It was just ok ! Rogers is very hard with there coaching ! That always have to be hanging over your heads!! And there is no work life balance!! Long hours with back to back call
   Pros
   Work from home
   Cons
   Back to back calls

#2

1. Its ok
   Customer Care Representative (Former Employee) – Toronto – 18 June 2024
   If you are looking for a job to get some experience in customer care, this may be for you. It can get very stressful at times. Not many chances of promotion or growth either.
2. Stressful
   Analyst (Former Employee) – Toronto, ON – 17 March 2024
   Stressful work environment, lots of pressure to meet deadlines and take on significant workload. Roles are undefined since merger, lots of staff turnover.

#1

1. No proper training
   Senior Financial Analyst (Current Employee) – Toronto, ON – 27 May 2024
   High turnover/rotation at the manager level. No proper training. Ironically the new manager, without understanding the models, expects SFA to train the manager.
2.  Toxic work culture
   CSS (Former Employee) – Toronto – 12 March 2024
   Employee exploitation. The only positive thing is the employee discount. But there are other options. No growth. New leadership sucks. Burdened with calls and targets.

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.

Evidently, a substantial majority of Rogers Communications 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 Rogers Communications in Toronto (and in Canada), the attitude is predominantly positive. One of the tasks of socialists is to shift that situation to one where the attitude towards Rogers Communications  is predominantly negative.

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.

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 Rogers workers express a positive attitude if they knew that they were being exploited and oppressed (see The Rate of Exploitation of the Workers of Rogers Communications Inc., One of the Largest Private Employers in Toronto )? 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 Rogers workers do not clearly know that they are exploited; why otherwise would they rate working for Rogers 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).

To conclude: Workers’ views or attitudes towards the particular employer for which they work, in general, are positive. Such a situation points to a lack of clear awareness of their own exploited and oppressed situation. It is the task of socialists, in part, to shift their perspective towards a negative assessment not only of their particular employer but also of the class of employers.