Should Not the Radical Left Take into Account the Attitude of Workers Towards Their Own Jobs? Part Seven, The Case of Husky Energy Workers

Series: Worker Attitudes Toward Their Own Jobs
Case: Husky Energy Workers
Part Seven

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 Husky Energy Workers

In a previous post, I calculated the rate of exploitation of Husky Energy workers for 2019 (see https://wp.me/p9IiIC-3PF). I will copy part of the conclusion from that post: 

So, with the adjustments in place:, s= $2,513, and  v=1,094. The rate of exploitation or the rate of surplus value=s/v=2,513/1094=230 percent. 

This means that, in terms of money, $1 of wage or salary of a regular Husky Energy worker  results in $2.30 Cn surplus value or profit for free. Alternatively, that means that for every hour worked that produces her/his wage, a worker at Husky Energy works around an additional 2 hours 18 minutes (138 minutes) for free for Husky Energy. Or, for every hour worked, a worker at Husky Energy works 18 minutes that produces her/his wage and 42 mintues for free for Husky Energy. 

In a 3-hour (180 minutes) work day, the worker produces her/his wage in 55 minutes and works 2 hours 5 minutes (125 minutes) for free for Husky Energy.

In an 8-hour (480 minutes) work day, the worker produces her/his wage in 2 hours 25 minutes (145 minutes) and works 5 hours 35 minutes (335 minutes) for free for Husky Energy.

In a 10-hour (600 minutes) work day, the worker produces her/his wage in 3 hours 2 minutes (182 minutes) and works 6 hours 58 minutes (418 minutes) for free for Husky Energy.

In a 12-hour (720 minutes) work day, the worker produces her/his wage in 3 hours 38 minutes (218 minutes) and works 8 hours 22 minutes (502 minutes) for free for Husky Energy.

In an 14-hour (840 minutes) work day, the worker produces her/his wage in 4 hours 15 minutes (255 minutes) and works 9 hours 45 minutes (585 minutes) for free for Husky Energy.

Of course, during the time that the worker works to receive an equivalent of her/his own wage, s/he is subject to the power of management and hence is unfree (see, for instance, Management Rights, Part Four: Private Sector Collective Agreement, Ontario and   Employers as Dictators, Part One).

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

You would think that, given these circumstances, Husky Energy 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 Husky Energy Workers Towards Husky Energy 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 558 reviews for Canada at the time that I started this post.

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

Husky Energy Workers’ Attitudes Towards Husky Energy 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

#5 195 

#4 223 

#3 92 

#2 26 

#1 22 

I will consider #5 and #4 ratings to be positive evaluations of their work experiences with General Motors. 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 Husky Energy

195+223+46=464
464/558×100=83%

Negative attitude towards working for Husky Energy

46+26+22=94
94/558×100=17%

 

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. Fun environment
   Cashier (Former Employee) – Lake Louise, AB – 12 October 2023
   Previously worked with this company and the Owner was really nice. Work gets toxic at time particularly summer. Time went by so fast though. Overall its a good place to start.
2. Good teams
   Technical Authority 1 , Process Control (Former Employee) – Calgary, AB – 30 October 2022
   I enjoyed working at HuskyEnergy.Good people nice work with. Seniors willing to mentor youngsters. Good young grade training program. Working cultures vary between business value streams
   Pros
   Benefits

#4 

1. Fun entry job
   Gas Attendant/Cashier (Former Employee) – Winnipeg, MB – 20 February 2024
   A good job for first time workers to gain work experience, customer service and working in a small team. Not much room for going up which is why it’s more just a entry/get work experience type job
2. Good place to work
   Process Engineer (Former Employee) – Calgary, AB – 26 January 2024
   Good place to work. I had a good experience here and learned a lot about the industry and specifically downstream pipeline integrity management and service

#3 

1. Great company with loads of safety issues.
   Geologist (Former Employee) – Calgary, AB – 10 August 2021
   Great company to work for. Met great people and nice working environment. The company had several safety issues and some not so good decisions that caused it to fizzle out. Decisions about asset disposition should have been better reviewed. Perhaps disposing a few of them when barrel price was up should have been better. Operations could have been better managed.
   Pros
   Lots of experienced people, opportunity to grow, technical career ladder, fair compensation, long term employee incentives, health and dental care coverage.
   Cons
   Multiple reporting layer, there seems to bee some elements of favoritism, not as transparent as one may think, lots of stuffs go on underground.
2. fast paced environmenty
   Manager (Former Employee) – Brampton, ON – 5 May 2020
   worked in a fast paced environment, build good confidence with customer service, learnt about different people and their culture, team work, well organized stores

#2 

1. Poor management
   Pounder Operator (Former Employee) – Kamloops, BC – 16 July 2022
   Poor management, site is a mess with two companies trying to operate on one site. Labourers are a useless and management isn’t much better. Full time employees get yearly bonuses of the hard work of the labourers
   Pros
   In Kamloops
   Cons
   Long hours, no reward for what you do. Full time employees cash in on your hard work.
2. Husky it was so bad
   Operator 2 (Former Employee) – Lloydminster, SK – 24 May 2022
   Boys Club. If your not from Sask. your not Welcome, unable to advance and Targeted ! The Management suppresses any attempt to advance. No encouragement. No Future.

#1 

1. Don’t work there
   Operator (Current Employee) – Lloydminster, SK – 13 July 2023
   Changed to Cenovus couple years ago and it’s no better. I’ve been a contractor for 6 years now and unless you have a steam ticket you will not get hired on as an employee. New guys getting hired are almost on same pay scale what I am now. Cannot get a decent raise.
   Pros
   None
   Cons
   Spineless supervisors
2. Unfair
   Customer Service Representative (Current Employee) – Manitoba – 2 July 2022
   I have been working for husky for more than 4 months full time. From last week, I am only offered 24 hours a week without any notice. So disrespectful and unprofessional management.
   Cons
   Every unprofessional, rude management

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.

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