Introduction
David Camfield, a self-proclaimed socialist who uses the rhetoric of Marxian theory, published an article analyzing the strike of Air Canada flight attendants in August 2025 (see https://tempestmag.org/2025/08/more-pay-but-less-union-democracy/?fbclid=IwY2xjawMh6_lleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHvYWjC7j6XQYPpvDZtwOyf-TdSHBi749pLzDUhX8B9y-EA6W5Yq8g7oFulQv_aem_wQoDsDNTG1nJk7nzGQiKCQ).
I will not focus on the details of the strike since Camfield provides such details in the link.
However, I will focus on some limitations of his article. But let us look at something positive in his article.
The tentative agreement that flight attendants will be voting on only gives them a choice between ratifying the deal and rejecting it, in which case wages will be settled by arbitration, but everything else that was negotiated will end up in the collective agreement anyway. That’s not at all how the collective bargaining process works in the Canadian state. Unionized workers have the right to vote to accept or reject a tentative agreement in its entirety, unless binding arbitration is being used to determine outcomes. But in this case, very unusually, and because the CIRB had declared the strike was over in legal terms, workers have been presented with a ratification vote that doesn’t allow them to actually reject the deal. CUPE officials have agreed to a settlement that denies workers that right and prevents them from going on strike again to fight for a better deal in this round. They didn’t win a negotiated tentative agreement that workers could accept or truly reject, which would have treated the back-to-work order as a dead letter, let alone force a withdrawal of the order.
Camfield is right to note and to criticize the lack of usual negotiation procedures. In effect, what was negotiated, except for wages, was not to be ratified by the membership–a clear lack of democracy. Furthermore, the flight attendants could ratify or reject the wage package, but they could not engage in a strike to enforce their will but had to submit to the decision of an arbitrator if they rejected it. So, there was in effect a twofold lack of democracy.
Camfield also has a point when he writes:
It’s worth pointing out that negotiating a deal that workers don’t have the right to actually reject had advantages both for the company and for CUPE officials. The company got a guarantee that the strike wouldn’t resume, and union officials got insulation against rank and file pressure to fight for a better deal and lead more strike action.
Also, the outcome of a deal that workers can’t genuinely reject is bad for union-building. It’s not democratic. It took the decision about whether the deal was good enough out of workers’ hands. This isn’t going to encourage the most militant workers who were really inspired by striking to get more involved in the union.
CUPE negotiators likely sought appearing to conform to the negotiating process while undermining the power of workers to reject or accept the tentative agreement. The consequences may indeed have a dampening effect of participation of militants in the union:
It’s worth pointing out that negotiating a deal that workers don’t have the right to actually reject had advantages both for the company and for CUPE officials. The company got a guarantee that the strike wouldn’t resume, and union officials got insulation against rank and file pressure to fight for a better deal and lead more strike action.
Also, the outcome of a deal that workers can’t genuinely reject is bad for union-building. It’s not democratic. It took the decision about whether the deal was good enough out of workers’ hands. This isn’t going to encourage the most militant workers who were really inspired by striking to get more involved in the union.
But then again, does CUPE executive really want militant members to be engaged in union affairs? How would dissuading militants from engaging in the union be so bad from the union bureaucracy’s position?
What is interesting is how this self-styled reconstructed historical materialist (this is what he apparently call himself) writes about the wage package:
As for what’s in the four-year tentative agreement, there are wage increases. For people with under five years of seniority, it’s 12 percent in the first year, and for the rest, it’s 8 percent. After that, it’s 3 percent, 2.5 percent, and 2.75 percent. And there is partial ground pay, for an hour or just over one hour per leg of a flight, depending on the width of the plane body, with percentages rising from 50 percent of the hourly pay rate this year to 70 percent in 2028. Those are gains, absolutely, but that doesn’t mean that unpaid work is over or that this is a transformational change. [my emphasis]
True. But does not historical materialism (this is what is usually considered Karl Marx and Frederick Engels’ theory after they wrote (but did not publish) a work titled The Germany Ideology), especially as developed by Marx in Capital, refer to the idea of the exploitation of workers and therefore “unpaid work?” Is not unpaid work an essential feature, not just of the visible exploitation of Air Canada flight attendants, who are not paid until the plane moves, but of at least all private-sector workers (I leave the issue of whether public sector workers are exploited aside. Such an issue requires an in-depth analysis lacking in radical leftist circles).
Camfield occasionally uses the word “exploitation” in his works, but it is often merely a rhetorical word with little analytical meaning. For example, in a work published in 2017 (We Can Do Better: Ideas for Changing Society), we read:
The relationship between employers and people who sell their ability to work is one of class exploitation. Workers’ labour produces commodities worth far more than the value of what they are paid (in money and any supplemental benefits). The difference between the value of what workers produce and what they receive is surplus-value appropriated by capitalists.
Does that not mean that such exploited workers work for free–that the value that they receive is less than the value that they produce and that, therefore, they perform “unpaid work?”
If Camfield took seriously the nature of exploitation of workers in general and capitalist exploitation in particular, would he not have linked the visible unpaid work of Air Canada flight attendants and the invisible exploitation that occurs on a daily basis throughout corporate Canada, the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Great Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Russia and so forth?
Why the silence over such an issue?
Now that the results of the rejection of the wage offer by Air Canada have been published ( https://apnews.com/article/air-canada-flight-attendants-walkout-39bbc92aabc9b9b6e0c3d614f312c828), (99% voted against the offer), the issue will first be assigned to a mediator, who will try to have both sides come to an agreement, and failing that, it will then be subject to arbitration (where an arbitrator will decide the wage level). Of course, the radical left will criticize the anti-democratic nature of this process–which they should. They, however, like Camfield, will likely remain silent both about the inadequacies of the collective-bargaining process and collective agreements (such as the fact that collective agreements only limit managerial and hence employer power and do not question it) and the invisble exploitation of workers hat occurs daily when workers work for an employer in the private sector.
Instead of using the visible exploitation of Air Canada flight attendants as a means to connect this visible form of exploitation to its much more prevalent invisible form, the radical left, like Camfield, simply ignore the issue of the invisible exploitaiton of workers. Why is that?
Conclusion
Until such time as the radical left takes seriously the nature of exploitation and includes it in their criticisms, other radical leftists should point out such radical posturing that omits a vital element of criticism–all private-sector workers, in general, perform unpaid work that produces the profit of employers.
The Abolitionary 