Introduction
Since in this blog I have often referred to particular union reps referring to collective agreements as fair in some way, I thought it would be useful to provide further examples of this rhetoric to substantiate the view that unions function as ideologues for the continued existence of employers–even if the unions are independent of the power of particular employers and hence represent independently the workers in relation to the particular employer of the workers.
Interlude
But before I do that, I will copy part of a recent post on Facebook by Sid Ryan, a former president of the Ontario Federation of Labour, former president of the Ontario Federation of Labour as further proof of the ideological nature of many union bureaucrats (I will be posting a series of posts on Ryan’s post and the discussion that arose on Facebook in the future):
April 4, 2026Pragmatic Socialism Versus Revolutionary Purity
I appreciate the depth of conviction on both sides of this longstanding debate about advancing working-class interests in Canada. Judy Rebick has been an influential figure in feminist and socialist politics for over 50 years. Her decision to engage with the Canadian Women’s Chamber of Commerce, reflects a pragmatic spirit aimed at building broader coalitions and supporting independent women entrepreneurs—many living below the poverty line and earning paltry incomes of around $30,000 annually.That said, critiques like that of Ben Marenlensky posted on his Facebook page raise an important question worth exploring – does sustained engagement within the capitalist system risk gradually diluting more transformative goals? History offers useful perspective here.The CCF/NDP’s pragmatic Socialism approach has delivered concrete, lasting gains for working -class Canadians. These include pioneering universal healthcare (starting in Saskatchewan and going national), forcing the introduction of the Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security, securing anti-scab legislation and entrenching collective bargaining rights into law, demanding workplace health and safety laws (including the right to refuse unsafe work), and recent expansions such as the Canadian Dental Care Plan, $10/day childcare and steps toward pharmacare. These reforms have tangibly improved the health and standard of living of millions of Canadian workers and their families.By contrast, more radical strategies—rooted in Trotskyist, communist, or other revolutionary traditions—have emphasized militant strikes, grassroots organizing, and ideological critique – tactics also employed by the “reform/pragmatists”.While they have played a serious role in industrial unionism during the 1930s, anti-fascist efforts, and pushing labour rights, over the past 60 years they have largely remained small, fragmented, and unable to translate influence into sustained national policy changes on the scale achieved by social democrats.This invites honest inquiry rather than dismissal. Will pragmatic democratic socialism erode long-term revolutionary aims, as some warn? Or do purist approaches limit broader public support and practical outcomes? Evidence suggests both have proven value—reform delivers measurable progress and broader based alliances, while radical voices highlight deeper systemic flaws—but neither has fully resolved persistent inequalities. However, I would argue that pragmatic and democratic socialism has delivered more for working-class Canadians over the past 60 years than has the purist revolutionary approach espoused by Ben and his cohorts.
In response to Ben Marenlensky, Ryan makes the following claim:
You have not answered the question Ben…what has your revolutionary politics achieved in the last 10, 20, 30 or 40 years ? This “hell hole” of a country that we live in has consistently been in the top 5 most liveable countries in the world …thanks to social democracy.
So you agree your brand of revolutionary politics has not achieved anything for working class Canadians in the past 60 years. Most of the gains were made in the 2nd half of the last century. Universal healthcare , CPP and OAS were implemented in the 1960’s. Labour laws, childcare, dental and pharmacare came much later. It begs the question what’s the point of teaming up with your organisations when you admit they have nothing to show for years of activism ?
Of course, this is ideology. Ryan’s source for concluding that Canada is one of the top five livable countries in the world due to social democracy uses a low standard for determining what is “livable.” Firstly, workers in a capitalist society who work for an employer, whether in the private or public sector, are, in general, means to be used for other people and are oppressed (see The Money Circuit of Capital ) and, in the private sector, exploited as well (see for example The Rate of Exploitation of Workers at Air Canada, One of the Largest Private Employers in Canada). Ryan, of course, expresses the ideological rhetoric of social-reformist nationalists.
Idealization of the Social-Democratic or Social-Reformist Slogan “A Fair Contract or Fair Collective Agreement”
Turning now to the specific topic in this post, I have already provided several examples in this series on union reps’ view of the fairness of collective agreements and collective bargaining, implied or expressed explicitly, specifically the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) (the largest union in Canada) and Unifor (the largest union of workers who work for employers in the private sector) (see Fair Contracts (or Fair Collective Agreements): The Ideological Rhetoric of Canadian Unions, Part One and Fair Contracts or Collective Agreements: The Ideological Rhetoric of Canadian Unions, Part Three: Unifor (Largest Private Union in Canada)).
What is a fair contract or collective agreement? Since workers who work for an employer are necessarily means or instruments for purposes defined by employers (a minority), and those workers do not determine those purposes, how can any wage be fair (see the link above to the money circuit of capital)? Perhaps some “leftist” can explain it. More likely, though, the so-called left will remain silent about the issue.
Usually, in collective agreements there is a management rights clause (and even when there is not, such rights are impicit and recognized by arbitrators). Such rights usually include such management rights as hiring, firing, disciplining and directing the work ofworker s–subject to the limits of the collective agreement and relevant legislation. Such rights hardly are “fair” since they permit management to control workers’ lives in various ways and, ultimately, to treat them as means for purposes undefined by the workers themselves (see for example Employers as Dictators, Part One). How can any collective agreement in any way compensate for the loss of freedom of Ontario workers (and workers who work for employers in general)?
My argument from another post also applies to the issue of a “fair contract” or “fair collective agreement”:
As shown in the last post, unions persistently claim that, through collective bargaining and a collective agreement, there can arise somehow (by magic?) “a fair and equitable collective agreement.” There can be no such thing as long as there exists a market for workers, where human beings are treated as things and as means for purposes over which they have little control. To claim otherwise is to bullshit workers–and workers deserve much better than this.
The Rhetoric of the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL): Fair Contracts or Fair Collective Agreements
I now proceed to provide evidence for the ideological role of the OFL. However, this critique of union rhetoric should not be interpreted as opposition to worker solidarity. Workers should engage in solidarity with each other whenever possible–but without the union rhetoric of “fair contracts,” “fair deals” and similar cliches that paste over the real oppression and exploitation characteristic of managerial rights.
Note the last two pieces of evidence–the virtuous social reformist Sid Ryan.
- No date (https://ofl.ca/labourlawreform/):
Reforming Labour Laws: There’s a Lot on the line
7. Anti-Scab Rules
By far, the majority of collective agreements are negotiated without labour disruptions. However, the actions of some employers result in strikes by unionized workers in order to achieve a fair contract. The use of replacement workers, or “scabs,” undermines the collective bargaining process and unfairly weakens unions’ ability to bring about a negotiated resolution. …
At Crown Holdings, which is Canada’s leading manufacturer of aluminum cans, the workers have been on strike for more than 21 months because the profitable company demanded that wages be cut by 42 percent for all new hires. Instead of bargaining a fair deal with its long-time employees, Crown began busing in scabs and made increasingly worse offers to the union. Now Crown is insisting that even if an agreement is found, it intends to keep all the replacement workers and allow only about 25 percent of the strikers to return to work. Everyone else would be fired without cause or left in limbo.
- No date (No url since it is a pdf file, and I use Chrome extension to open pdf files on the Net):
CHANT SHEET
What do we want?
A fair contract!
When do we want it?
Now! - From March 5, 2025 (https://ofl.ca/dispute/cupe-local-1656-at-region-of-waterloo/):
On Strike since March 3, 2025Show your solidarity on social media
CUPE Local 1656 members are on strike at the Region of Waterloo as a result of Region of Waterloo Council turning its back on workers and breaking promises they made during negotiations….
All CUPE members, community members, and labour unions are needed to show their solidarity for our CUPE Members in the Region of Waterloo, and to pressure Council into negotiating a fair deal in good faith.
- From September 27, 2023 (https://ofl.ca/event/ifpte-160-rally-for-a-fair-deal/): (this is on the OFL website)
IFPTE 160: Rally for a fair deal
Professional workers at the Electrical Safety Authority (ESA) are on strike for a fair deal. They have been falling further and further behind relative to the rising cost of living and their own colleagues.
They are looking for the respect of a fair and equitable deal that matches what other workers at the company have already received.
Tell the bosses to get back to the bargaining table
The workers have been, and will remain, fully prepared to bargain at the table.
Help them by contacting the ESA’s CEO and Chair of the Board, and tell them to bargain a fair and equitable deal for their professional employees:
Josie Erzetic
President and Chief Executive Officer
Josie.Erzetic@electricalsafety.on.caChristopher Hopper
ESA Board Chair
chopper@ceservices.ca - From May 17, 2023 (https://ofl.ca/workers-have-had-enough/):
Workers have had enough
Have you noticed? The phrase ‘enough is enough!’ is being used by workers across the province. From wages that can’t keep up, to the dismantling of our health care and education systems, workers have had enough.
That’s why, on June 3, we’re taking it to the streets. Will you join us?
Here’s where workers need your support this week:
NEW Labour Actions
Canadian Blood Services Workers say, ‘enough is enough!’
Canadian Blood Services workers are fighting for fair contracts, improved grievance procedures, stable posting and filling of permanent full-time jobs, and an end to the privatization of plasma collection. Join the rally for more secure, more just blood services for everyone!
WHEN: Wednesday, May 24 @ 11AM – 1PM
WHERE: CBS, 100 Parkshore Dr. Brampton
CUPE 4681 Members Deserve a Fair Deal!
- From June 29, 2022 ( https://ofl.ca/event/fair-contract-now/ ):
Fairmont Royal York
June 29, 2022 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Add to Calendar
100 Front Street W, Toronto, ONM5J 1E3
Picket for Fair Contracts City-Wide!
As cost of living continues to climb, join UNITE HERE! Local 75, to refuse to allow the hospitality industry to leave workers behind. Workers can’t afford to wait – as the industry recovers from the pandemic, working families must recover as well.
- From December 22, 2017 ( https://ofl.ca/dispute/usw-2020/):
Solidarity Action: Call or email Executive Director Carole Lamoureux at 705-524-9629 ext 203 or Clamoureux@counsellingccs.com to ask management to return to the table with an honest commitment to reaching a fair agreement. …
The staff members are asking clients and agency partners to contact management and ask the employer to respect the staff and return to the table with an honest commitment to reach a fair agreement.
- From July 5, 2016 (https://ofl.ca/letter-prime-minister-trudeau-stop-imminent-unjustified-canada-post-lock-negotiate-fair-deal-union/):
Letter to the Prime Minister: STOP the imminent and unjustified Canada Post lock out and negotiate a fair deal with the union
The OFL is calling on Prime Minister Trudeau and his Liberal government to take a different path by insisting Canada Post to get back the bargaining table with CUPW to reach a fair contract.
Click here to download a PDF of the letter. Please use this letter as a template to send your own message to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Tuesday, July 5, 2016
The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6Subject: STOP the imminent and unjustified Canada Post lock out and negotiate a fair deal with the union
Dear Prime Minister:
On behalf of the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL), a proud customer of Canada Post Corporation and keen supporter of the Canadian Union of Poster Workers (CUPW), I urge you to take immediate action to prevent the imminent lock out and service disruption at Canada Post, this summer….
The time to take action is now! Canada Post locked postal workers out in 2011 until the Conservatives forced them back to work with legislation that has since been ruled unconstitutional. I urge you to take a different path by encouraging Canada Post to get back to the bargaining table with CUPW to reach a fair contract. …
I await your government’s swift action on this matter of national importance.
Sincerely,
Chris Buckley
President, Ontario Federation of Labour
- From March 15, 2013 (https://ofl.ca/follow-up-letter-sid-ryan-porter-airlines-president-robert-deluce/):
Follow-Up Letter from Sid Ryan to Porter Airlines President Robert Deluce
Dear Robert Deluce,
Thank you for your recent response to our letter in support of striking COPE 343 members. Your attempt to discredit the strikers and their union, however, will not contribute to solving the ongoing labour dispute at Porter Airlines. You need to know that the Ontario Federation of Labour will continue to steadfastly support the strikers until a fair deal is reached….
We will stand by the low‐paid Porter workers who are out on strike until Porter Airlines goes back to the bargaining table and negotiates a fair deal….
We will continue to make appeals to unions to “adopt a striker” and make financial contributions to ensure that the workers have the capacity to stay on strike for as long as it takes to get a fair contract.
The labour movement stands firmly in support of these striking workers and the OFL will continue to mobilize our membership until Porter Airlines meets its obligations to treat its workers with dignity and respect.
Sincerely,
SID RYAN
President - From May 9, 2012 (https://ofl.ca/brampton-rally-fair-deal-cupe-966-thur-10-1130-am/):
Brampton Rally for Fair Deal for CUPE 966 (Thur, May 10 @ 11:30 am)
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
Help spread the word and support CUPE 966 (Ontario Works staff) to get a fair contract from the Region of Peel.
The members of CUPE 966 Human Services Unit are on strike against an employer that is going after their wages and sick leave. This is a local made up predominantly of women and workers of colour, who provide essential community services for the most vulnerable and marginalized in our society. They work in family and youth homeless shelters, provide employment assistance and training, process social assistant cheques, operate child care centres, help victims of violence, place people in subsidized housing, provide immigrant settlement services, and much, much more. …
WHAT: RALLY FOR A FAIR DEAL
WHEN: Thurs, May 10 at 11:30 am
WHERE: 10 Peel Centre Drive, Brampton (http://bit.ly/966Rally)After non-union workers and management in their workplaces have recently received a 2 percent pay raise and a performance bonus that could boost compensation to 9.5 percent, the employer is trying to force concessions on these important workers. Help expose this hypocrisy and demand a fair deal for CUPE 966.
I hope to see at the rally tomorrow.
In solidarity,
SID RYAN
President,
Ontario Federation of Labour
Political Implications
Unions evidently use the rhetoric of fair contracts, fair agreements and the like to justify their limited approach to the issues facing workers. This attempt to justify their own implicit acceptance of the power of the class of employers needs to be constantly criticized by being brought out into the open and discussed.
However, the social-democrat or social-reformist left often see no point in such open and direct criticism–despite claims to the contrary.
I will conclude this post with a conversation between Sam Gindin (a self-claimed “leader” of radical workers here in Toronto despite his probable own explicit denial of such a title) and me:
Re: A Good or Decent Job and a Fair Deal
Sam Gindin
Sat 2017-02-18 8:05 AM
Something is missing here. No-one on this list is denying that language doesn’t reflect material realities (the language we use reflects the balance of forces) or that it is irrelevant in the struggle for material effects (the language of middle class vs working class matters). And no one is questioning whether unions are generally sectional as opposed to class organizations or whether having a job or ‘decent’ pay is enough. The question is the autonomy you give to language.The problem isn’t that workers refer to ‘fair pay’ but the reality of their limited options. Language is NOT the key doc changing this though it clearly plays a role. That role is however only important when it is linked to actual struggles – to material cents not just discourse. The reason we have such difficulties in doing education has to do with the limits of words alone even if words are indeed essential to struggles. Words help workers grasp the implications of struggles, defeats, and the partial victories we have under capitalism (no other victories as you say, are possible under capitalism).
So when workers end a strike with the gains they hoped for going in, we can tell them they are still exploited. But if that is all we do, what then? We can – as I know you’d do – not put it so bluntly (because the context and not just the words matter). that emphasize that they showed that solidarity matters but we’re still short of the fuller life we deserve and should aspire to and that this is only possible through a larger struggle, but then we need to be able to point to HOW to do this. Otherwise we are only moralizing. That is to say, it is the ideas behind the words and the recognition of the need for larger structures to fight through that primarily matter. Words help with this and so are important but exaggerating their role can be as dangerous as ignoring it.
What I’m trying to say is that people do, I think, agree with the point you started with – we need to remind ourselves of the limits of, for example, achieving ‘fair wages’. But the stark way you criticize using that word, as opposed to asking how do we accept the reality out there and move people to larger class understandings – of which language is an important part – seems to have thrown the discussion off kilter.
On Sat, Feb 18, 2017 at 7:00 AM, Frederick Harris <arbeit67@hotmail.com> wrote:
I was waiting to see whether there was any dispute concerning either the primary function of language or its material nature. Since there has been no response to that issue, I will assume that the view that the primary function of language is to coordinate social activity has been accepted.
What are some of the political implications of such a view of language? Firstly, the view that “But material conditions matter more” has no obvious basis. If language coordinates our activity, surely workers need language “to reproduce themselves.”
The question is whether coordination is to be on a narrower or wider basis.
Let us now take a look at the view that a contract (a collective agreement) is fair or just and that what workers are striving for is a decent or good job.
If we do not oppose the view that any collective agreement is fair to workers and that the jobs that they have or striving to have are decent jobs, then are we saying that a particular struggle against a particular employer can, in some meaningful sense, result in a contract that workers are to abide by out of some sense of fairness? Does not such a view fragment workers by implicitly arguing that they can, by coordinating their action at the local or micro level, achieve a fair contract and a good job?
If, on the other hand, we argue against the view that the workers who are fighting against a particular employer cannot achieve any fair contract or a decent job, but rather that they can only achieve this in opposition to a class of employers and in coordination with other workers in many other domains (in other industries that produce the means of consumption of workers, in industries that produce the machines and the raw material that go into the factory, in schools where teachers teach our children and so forth), then there opens up the horizon for a broader approach for coordinating activity rather than the narrow view of considering it possible to achieve not a fair contract and a decent job in relation to a particular employer.
In other words, it is a difference between a one-sided, micro point of view and a class point of view.
As far as gaining things within capitalism, of course it is necessary to fight against your immediate employer, in solidarity with your immediate fellow workers, in order to achieve anything. I already argued this in relation to the issue of health in another post.
Is our standard for coordinating our activity to be limited to our immediate relation to an employer? Or is to expand to include our relation to the conditions for the ‘workers to reproduce themselves’?
“They turn more radical when it becomes clear that the system can’t meet their needs and other forms of action become necessary -“
How does it become clear to workers when their relations to each other as workers occurs through the market system? Where the products of their own labour are used against them to oppress and exploit them? Are we supposed to wait until “the system can’t meet their needs”? In what sense?
I for one have needed to live a decent life–not to have a decent job working for an employer or for others to be working for employers. I for one have needed to live a dignified life–not a life where I am used for the benefit of employers. Do not other workers have the same need? Is that need being met now? If not, should we not bring up the issue at every occasion? Can any collective agreement with an employer realize that need?
Where is a vision that provides guidance towards a common goal? A “fair contract”? A “decent” job? Is this a class vision that permits the coordination of workers’ activities across industries and work sites? Or a limited vision that reproduces the segmentation and fragmentation of the working class?
Fred
The bottom line is that many who consider themselves radical socialists here in Toronto (and undoubtedly elsewhere) indulge working-class organizations, such as unions. They are, ultimately, afraid to alienate social-democratic or reformist organizations. Consequently, they themselves, objectively, function as social democrats or social reformers and fail to engage workers in the necessary delegitimisation process of the class power of employers.
The Abolitionary 