When workers are only a tool for business

Winnipeg Free Press

23-05-2025

Opinion
For those of us concerned about the Canada Post labour dispute, May 15 was an important day. It was the day we received the recommendations of the industrial inquiry headed by commissioner William Kaplan.
The inquiry was intended to provide an impartial analysis that might smooth over seemingly irreconcilable differences between the postal union and corporation.
Even though I have written in these pages about labour disputes before, I have been reluctant to address this one in particular. That is because I am an active member of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. I am a touch uneasy about using this platform to argue a stance which might benefit me directly, and on matters in which I have an obvious bias. I am also not an official spokesperson of the union, and do not want to be perceived as speaking for them.
So even though the Kaplan Inquiry deserves a thorough dissection and critical analysis, I am not going to provide that here. I do not feel it is my place to address specific grievances between my union and employer.
However, there is one particular statement in the commissioner's report that caught my eye which I think it would be appropriate to discuss. Because it is not something unique to this inquiry or labour dispute.
It is a philosophical underpinning of our entire society which I think needs to be pushed into the spotlight.
'…Canada Post does not exist to provide CUPW members with employment. It exists for one reason: to deliver letter mail and parcels to the people of Canada.'
This is one of the declarations made in the Kaplan Inquiry, and it astonishes me that the commissioner would so bluntly say the quiet part out loud like this.
After all, it is one of the great myths of capitalism that the employer/employee relationship is a matter of two free and equal parties entering into a mutually beneficial partnership. The two parties strike a cost/benefit analysis between them and if either party doesn't approve of the conditions of the partnership, they are free to end it and move on with their lives.
It's the kind of Econ 101 drivel that capitalist apologists love to trot out, but doesn't hold up to the slightest scrutiny when one considers social realities or power dynamics relative to the employer/employee relationship. Especially when the employer happens to be a large corporation and the employee is living paycheque to paycheque with a scant social safety net to rely upon.
As with most Econ 101 truisms that many libertarians wallow in, it is the kind of oversimplification one needs to unlearn to proceed to more advanced economic analysis.
The truth of that matter is that the corporate and political spheres have long understood the truth which Kaplan lays out. That labour is not viewed as an equal party in the relationship with their employer at all. That the primary function of the business is the service it provides, and the workers are merely an expense.
An externality to be reluctantly dealt with.
But when meaningful employment for labourers is reduced to a secondary concern, what we are left with is a form of neofeudalism, where the serfs toil only at the pleasure and need of their lords.
History has shown us what happens when we reduce the labouring class to their function of service. When we fail to treat them as equal partners. When we refuse to acknowledge the social utility of providing meaningful and appropriately compensated employment.
It is not a tenable philosophy to operate a society under, and it has an ugly end.
The employee/employer relationship is supposed to be an equilibrium of cost and benefit.
Not only to the parties involved, but to society itself.
Because there is no service industry without a robustly employed consumer base to purchase such things. The assertion that the function of service itself supersedes the value of providing employment speaks of a deep bias towards the corporate class.
It precludes the possibility of viewing labour as an equal party in disputes between employees and employers.
This is an attitude which needs to be discarded if we expect the labouring class to feel like a duly considered part of this society.
And how can we expect to reconcile such disputes in an environment which elevates one party above the other?
Alex Passey is a Winnipeg author.