The Conservative Party’s bid to require large companies to include employee representatives at the board table to “support the long-term success of their employer” would likely do nothing for workers. But, for bosses, it may make wage cuts and layoffs smoother.
‘A seat at the table’ but only to serve ‘the long-term success of their employer’
Federal Conservative leader Erin O’Toole’s is trying to rebrand the Conservative Party as a “moderate” organization that, supposedly, even cares about workers—to the consternation of his party’s backers and members. To that end, the Conservative Party’s 2021 platform promises to require large federally regulated employers, with more than 1,000 employees or $100 million in annual revenue, to include “at least one” employee representative at the board level.
“Too many decisions at major corporations are being made without the people who helped build the company—the workers—at the table,” O’Toole said. While the word “union” appears nowhere in the proposal, O’Toole claimed he and the Conservative Party: “have the same goal as many union organizations. Jobs for their members and strong economic futures for their families.”
This recently led one liberal journalist at Maclean’s to ask if O’Toole is a “socialist crusader.”
The Conservative platform further clarifies the aim of this policy would be to: “Give workers a real voice within these companies to support the long-term success of their employer.” The platform states its aim to get employee representatives to cooperate “as equals” with management, to help recover from the present crisis—“getting Canadians back to work.”
A recent survey of employers by the Bank of Canada found Canada’s economy is marked by a persistent “excess supply of labour.” Companies across sectors expressed to the central bank that they’re doubtful they will recover to pre-pandemic sales and hiring levels within the next 12 months even if the pandemic ends.
While many workers would like to return to work, lower sales means lower profits and lower profits mean slower hiring. How exactly worker representation on corporate boards would reverse this is not spelled out in the proposal.
An O’Toole of management
The idea of placing employee representatives on boards, as Maclean’s notes, isn’t new. In France and Germany, “workers’ participation” or “co-determination” has been introduced in several large companies. In some cases, it persists. But it has hardly tipped the balance of power and control in workers’ favour. Employee representatives are instead recruited to serve the “interests” of the company—as it competes against other companies. Many of these arrangements, furthermore, require workers to surrender their right to strike. Mandated to avoid “confrontation,” the employee representatives often end up reinforcing the dictates of management.
One 2020 study of “co-governed” or “codetermined” German companies, cited by the same Maclean’s article, found a general trend of “small and statistically insignificant wage increases” alongside increasing “output per worker.”
There’s a reason for this: Workers and bosses do not have a shared interest. Profits are the unpaid wages of the working class. And profit is maximized at the expense of workers’ pay and benefits. We know how employers have tried so far to recover from the pandemic and the deepest recession in Canadian history—they’ve launched a wave of lockouts aimed at cutting wages, slashing pensions and clawing back benefits.
The Tory policy, meanwhile, fails to even mention how many seats workers would get, beyond saying it would be “at least one.” A minority of seats would require employee representatives to convince shareholders’ representatives—eager to impose cuts on workers—not to. This would be about as helpful as begging.
For employers, however, including worker representatives may make imposing cuts easier, if it means dividing the workers and using a phony “representative” board to let off steam.
No friend of workers
O’Toole’s platform also includes clauses backed by an Uber lobbyist to deny “gig workers” Canada Pension Plan and Employment Insurance coverage. O’Toole has personally called for cuts to emergency COVID-19 support for unemployed workers and for legislation making it easier for employers to cut company pensions. His party is also a longtime advocate of strike breaking and right-to-work legislation. We should expect no better from them.
Canadian Labour Congress president Bea Bruske correctly pointed out that workers have no reason to trust the Tories based on the party’s long anti-worker track record. Bruske further told CBC: “Erin O’Toole won’t provide details, because he knows full well his policy has no teeth and is a non-starter for these companies.”
This is likely true. But even if the Tory policy was fully implemented, it is unlikely that workers will see their livelihoods improve on the basis of collaboration with management. Last year’s massive recession and the present, glacial “recovery” will either mean lower profits or lower wages. There is no way to keep both workers and management happy.
And if the owners of the country’s largest businesses can’t guarantee their workers a future—especially with the help of over $700 billion in corporate bailouts—why should workers cooperate with them anyways?
Real workers’ control would put the power in the hands of the people who do all the real work in society. Instead of there being one measly worker representative drowned out by a throng of ladies and gentlemen in suits, we don’t see why these failed corporate parasites should have a single member on the board. These people have failed to develop the economy and protect the wages and conditions of workers, so they have lost the right to rule. It is workers who have kept these companies running through the crisis, and now workers must be allowed to inspect the books, block layoffs and halt changes to working conditions contrary to workers’ health and well-being.
This is badly needed during the present COVID-19 crisis, which has seen massive increases in unemployment alongside huge numbers of workplace infections. Meanwhile, as the executives of many of these massive companies laid off workers, cut their pay and undermined workplace health and safety, they gifted themselves even larger bonuses through 2020. Wages, hiring, and workers’ health could wait—but executive pay could not.
So long as these companies are owned privately and run for profit, the needs of profit will dominate. You can’t control what you don’t own. Workers can’t have any sort of say so long as the idle rich, who again and again have demonstrated their willingness to destroy working class lives, maintain ownership. These present owners must be replaced by workers, if workers are to have a genuine say in the operations of the workplaces they built and maintain.
This, however, would certainly extend beyond the limits of right-wing politicians’ professed gentle feelings for workers.
