Tracy MacMaster is a member of the Ontario Public Service Employee Union (OPSEU). They are out on strike. I have outlined some of the reasons for the strike in another post.
Recently, MacMaster posted the following on her Facebook page:
What do we want t? A fair contract! If we don’t get it, SHUT IT DOWN!
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.
Are we to take seriously her claim that she believes that “collective bargaining is limited and imperfect?” If she really believed that, would any contract be fair for her? It might be fairer–relative to another contract, but never fair.
If a contract is fair, then “collective bargaining is not limited and imperfect.” So what does MacMaster really believe? My hypothesis is that she really does not believe that “collective bargaining is limited and imperfect.” Her real belief is that collective bargaining delivers a fair contract.
There is evidence for such an hypothesis. Thus, she posted on Facebook some time ago:
Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU)
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12:01am, it’s official: LCBO workers are on strike across the province! 💪. Fighting for a better Ontario where public revenues stay in public hands. Welcome to Doug Ford’s dry summer.
and made the following comment:
Solidarity to the folks walking the line today at our local liquor stores. We all deserve fair wages and good jobs [my emphasis].
Another piece of evidence. Several years ago, brewery workers here in Toronto went out on strike. At the time, McMaster sent an email to a listserve of the Toronto Labour Committee in February 2017 (of which I was a member at the time):
In case you haven’t heard, our neighbours the Molson’s workers from Local 325 CUBGE are on the picket line. Representing airport & airline workers I spoke at their Solidarity BBQ last week at the International Drive/Carlingview entrance. They are in a tough battle with a huge corporate (and American) giant in Coors and could really use our support. Please boycott Molsons products for the duration of the strike, and feel free to drop by the picket line -honking support is also welcome!
The workers just want a fair deal- good jobs, pension security and fair benefits but the employer won’t even bargain. I hope you all will join me in showing solidarity with the brewery workers from Local 325! [my emphasis]
A person who believes in such cliches hardly believes that “collective bargaining is limited and imperfect.” She may believe that it requires certain adjustments here and there to achieve perfection, but in general her attitude is one of dogmatic faith in the fairness of the collective-bargaining process.
This dogma of a “fair contract,” “fair wages,” “good jobs,” and similar union cliches plays into the hands of rabid conservatives like Trump. Workers who experience their lives, even under union conditions, as unfair can then be ignored or ridiculed. After all, if the contract (collective agreement) is fair, why then complain about it? Why then organize against its limitations? Why then try to point out its limitations?
Perhaps MacMaster believes the following is fair (from Full-time Support Staff Collective Agreement Between College Employer Council (CEC) and Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU/SEFPO) (For Full-time Support Staff Employees, Effective from: September 1. 2022 to August 31, 2025, page 3):
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 suspendor 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.
How is this fair? How is it democratic? Why does the employer have such power to direct and control workers’ lives at work? MacMaster and similar union activists never ask such questions, let alone answer them.
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.
How can collective bargaining in such a situation produce a “fair contract?” I doubt that MacMaster can justify such a view. If working for an employer generally involves a dictatorship, then the issue of a “fair contract” takes on a different light. How can any contract be fair if the situation involves a dictatorship? MacMaster simply does not answer the question.
Indeed, MacMaster, although she is probably unaware of it, by using such language as “fair contract,” implicitly justifies the continued oppression and exploitation of workers.
MacMaster, by claiming that there is such a thing as a “fair contract,” implies that working for an employer is somehow fair. In effect, she becomes an ideologist for employers–even if she is unaware of this and has no intention of being so.
Conclusion
MacMaster, like so many union reps and activists, do not face the issue of the limitations of collective bargaining in producing anything near a fair situation.
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 for a “fair contract” in such a context does not permit us to address the dicatorship that reigns in people’s working lives; rather, it papers over such a situation.
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 “fair contract.”
The Abolitionary 