Introduction
This is a post on the strike by support staff in Ontario colleges.
Tracy MacMaster, a former union rep (and perhaps still a union steward) posted the following on her Facebook page:
Day 1 on the picket line at Don Mills today. We had great tunes, delicious samosas and the chance to sing happy birthday to picket captain Jerrin! It’s great to see everyone taking care of one another. Here’s hoping we get a good deal soon.
Of course, MacMaster nowhere specifies what she means by “a good deal.” She magically knows what a good deal is independently of explaining how any collective agreement can be a “good deal” in the context of having to work for an employer, whether working for a private-sector employer or a public-sector employer.
I asked artificial intelligence (ChatGPT) about the strike and the issues:
As of September 11, 2025, over 10,000 full-time support staff across Ontario’s 24 public colleges, represented by OPSEU/SEFPO, are on strike. This action follows the expiration of their collective agreement on September 30, 2024, and unsuccessful negotiations with the College Employer Council (CEC).
🔍 Key Issues Behind the Strike
1. Job Security and Employment Stability
The union is advocating for stronger protections against layoffs and job cuts, particularly in light of declining student enrolments and financial pressures on colleges. They are seeking guarantees to prevent campus closures and staff reductions, which the CEC has deemed financially unfeasible. collegeemployercouncil.ca
2. Wages and Benefits
The CEC has proposed a $145 million package to enhance wages and benefits, including improvements to vision and hearing coverage and the introduction of paid leave for domestic and sexual violence. However, the union argues that these offers do not adequately address the financial challenges faced by staff. collegeemployercouncil.ca
3. Impact of Declining International Student Enrolment
Colleges have experienced a significant drop in enrolments, particularly from international students, leading to financial strain. This decline has resulted in widespread layoffs across faculty, administrative, and support staff positions
The workers certainly have legitimate issues which need to be addressed. However, even if such issues are addressed, the issue of how any collective agreement can result in a “good deal” is a mystery.
No Explanation of How a Collective Agreement Can Be a Good Deal When Management Has the Rights It Has
Thus, in the collective agreement between College Employer Council (CEC) and the Ontario Public Services Employee Union (OPSEU), dated September 1, 2022 to August 31, 2025, on page 3, we read:
3. MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS
3.1 Union Acknowledgements
The Union acknowledges that it is the exclusive function of the Colleges to:– maintain order, discipline and efficiency;
– hire, discharge, transfer, classify, assign, appoint, promote, demote, layoff, recall and suspend or otherwise discipline employees subject to the right to lodge a grievance as provided for in this Agreement;
– generally to manage the College and without restricting the generality of the foregoing, the right to plan, direct and control operations, facilities, programs, courses, systems and procedures, direct its personnel, determine complement, organization, methods and the number, location and positions required from time to time, the number and location of campuses and facilities, services to be performed, the scheduling of assignments and work, the extension, limitation, curtailment or cessation of operations and all other rights and responsibilities not specifically modified elsewhere in this Agreement.
The Colleges agree that these functions will be exercised in a manner consistent with the provisions of this Agreement.
I guess workers are not to discuss why management has this power in the first place; after all, there will arise a “good deal” as long as the immediate issues that concern the workers are addressed. This is the real attitude of MacMaster–like so many other unionists, including union activists.
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.
MacMaster’s Union Rhetoric and Fake Claim that She Believes That Collective Bargaining and Collective Agreements Have Limits
Let us listen to McMaster in an email:
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.
Of course, unionized working conditions, generally, are better than non-unionized working conditions. However, I sincerely doubt the sincerity of MacMaster’s claim that she recognizes that “Collective bargaining is limited and imperfect.” If she really believed that, she would not persist–after seven years–of repeating the same union cliches of a “good deal.”
It is interesting how little criticism of her position with respect to a “good deal” (like other cliches used by her, such as “fair wages” and “good jobs” in another context) comes from the radical left here in Toronto.
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 (and the radical left seems to agree with them, given their silence). Their “activism” somehow shields them from criticism.
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.
However, here in Toronto (and undoubtedly elsewhere), radicals often fail to criticize the dogma of trade unionists or challenge such dogmas because such trade unionists are “activists.” Such an attitude certainly contributes to the lack of advance towards a society without a class of employers.
Conclusion
Of course, we should express our solidarity with the striking college support 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 a collective agreement a “good deal” 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 collective agreement as “good” 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 “a good deal.”
The Abolitionary 