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
Tag: Workplace
Unions and Safety on Jobs Controlled by Employers
The following tries to explain why unions do not adequately address the safety concerns of rank-and-file workers who work for an employer. Of course, safety conditions in non-unionized settings may be even worse, but we should not idealize unionized settings either. They are better than non-unionized settings, generally, but they remain inadequate since workers' safety … Continue reading Unions and Safety on Jobs Controlled by Employers
Getting Away with Murder and Bodily Assault: Employers and the Law
Steven Bittle, in his doctoral dissertation, Still Dying for a Living: Shaping Corporate Criminal Liability After the Westray Mine Disaster (Kingston, Ontario: Queen's University argues the following (from page ii): Overall, the dissertation suggests that the assumptions that animated Canada’s corporate criminal liability legislation and the meanings inscribed in its provisions throw serious doubt on … Continue reading Getting Away with Murder and Bodily Assault: Employers and the Law
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
The Issue of Health and Safety in the Workplace Dominated by a Class of Employers
I submitted an article for the popular education journal Our Schools/Our Selves concerning the issue of safety (and the lack of critical thinking skills that is embodied in two Ontario curricula on Equity and Social Justice). In that article, I quote: More than 1000 employees die every year in Canada on the job, and about … Continue reading The Issue of Health and Safety in the Workplace Dominated by a Class of Employers
The Abolitionary 