Here is another clause from a collective agreement concerning management rights, this time from the private sector--and in a province in Canada where French is predominant officially. Undoubtedly for the social-democratic left, it expresses a situation where there is decent work--a cliché among the left, who refuse to investigate its meaning in a democratic fashion. It … Continue reading Management Rights, Part Eight: Private Sector Collective Agreement, Quebec
Category: Management Rights
Management Rights, Part Seven: Public Sector Collective Agreement, Quebec
It is fascinating how the social-democratic or reformist left, with their talk of "good contracts," "decent work," a "fair deal," and "economic justice" and so forth do not feel that they have the need to justify themselves. They assume what they must prove to workers--that a collective agreement expresses "good contracts," and so forth. Do … Continue reading Management Rights, Part Seven: Public Sector Collective Agreement, Quebec
Management Rights, Part Six: Public Sector Collective Agreement, British Columbia
I thought it appropriate to include a collective agreement of the place where I used to work. I worked as a bilingual library technician at the District Resource Centre of School District No 57, Prince George, British Columbia for about two and a half years. I was also the union steward at the board office … Continue reading Management Rights, Part Six: Public Sector Collective Agreement, British Columbia
Management Rights, Part Five: Public Sector Collective Agreement, Ontario
There are some among the left who idealize the public sector. They fail to address how the public sector magically treats workers in the public sector, who are employees, as human beings rather than as things. They have no solution to the problem of the employer-employee relation in general except--nationalization. Such nationalization hardly implies democratization … Continue reading Management Rights, Part Five: Public Sector Collective Agreement, Ontario
Confessions of a Union Representative Concerning the Real Power of Employers
In the context of the process of passing legislation related to the Westray mining disaster (ultimately diluted to satisfy the interests of employers), a union representative explicitly expressed the reality that workers face when they work for employers. The problem with this explicit admission of the power of employers is that it does not play … Continue reading Confessions of a Union Representative Concerning the Real Power of Employers
Management Rights, Part Four: Private Sector Collective Agreement, Ontario, or: How the Social-Democratic Left Ignore Them
Management Rights The social-democratic left typically is incapable of dealing with the issue of the power of management. There is little or no discussion over such issues despite the existence of the power of the class of employers at various levels of society: economic, political, social and cultural. This silence expresses both the power of … Continue reading Management Rights, Part Four: Private Sector Collective Agreement, Ontario, or: How the Social-Democratic Left Ignore Them
Comments from John Urkevich, AESES-UM Business Agent, to my Critique of the Grievance and Arbitration Procedure: Letter to the Editor, Inside The Association of Employees Supporting Educational Services (AESES), Vol. 17, No. 4, May 1994
As I wrote in my last post (Critique of the Grievance and Arbitration Procedure: Letter to the Editor, Inside The Association of Employees Supporting Educational Services (AESES), Vol. 17, No. 4, May 1994), I would provide the business agent's reply to my letter to the editor in the same volume of the union newsletter. Here … Continue reading Comments from John Urkevich, AESES-UM Business Agent, to my Critique of the Grievance and Arbitration Procedure: Letter to the Editor, Inside The Association of Employees Supporting Educational Services (AESES), Vol. 17, No. 4, May 1994
Critique of the Grievance and Arbitration Procedure: Letter to the Editor, Inside The Association of Employees Supporting Educational Services (AESES), Vol. 17, No. 4, May 1994
In a previous post, I provided the current management rights clause between AESES and the University of Manitoba (Management (Employer) Rights, Part Three: Public Sector Collective Agreement, Manitoba). This is a continuation, of sorts. The title indicates what the content of this post will be about. In 1994, I worked on a project at Dafoe … Continue reading Critique of the Grievance and Arbitration Procedure: Letter to the Editor, Inside The Association of Employees Supporting Educational Services (AESES), Vol. 17, No. 4, May 1994
Management (Employer) Rights, Part Three: Public Sector Collective Agreement, Manitoba
I worked on a library project at the Dafoe Library at the University of Manitoba (Canada) around 1993. The union to which I belonged was AESES (The Association of Employees Supporting Educational Services). I wrote to the editor of the union newsletter, criticizing the limitations of unions. The business agent of the union responded by … Continue reading Management (Employer) Rights, Part Three: Public Sector Collective Agreement, Manitoba
Management Rights, Part Two: Public Sector Collective Agreement, Ontario
Workers in the public sector are used just as much as means for purposes over which they have little or no control (see The Money Circuit of Capital). The left often denies this implicitly by idealizing the public sector over the private sector. Workers in the public sector, however, are employees, and as employees they … Continue reading Management Rights, Part Two: Public Sector Collective Agreement, Ontario
