By Daniel Tarade

Scabs. Those workers who cross picket lines. In doing so, scabs undermine the collective bargaining process. By refusing to work, the bosses lose money, and workers tip the scales and wield some power. But, if the bosses can bus in non-unionized workers to keep the machines running, the effectiveness of a strike, the only leverage available to the working class, becomes neutralized. It is no coincidence that such an ugly word is reserved for so-called ‘class traitors.’ Scab made the jump from a description of the sores caused by diseases like syphilis to a description of moral character. But, the use of scabs is just one of the strategies employed by the capitalist class. The strategy works by picking at class solidarity and taking advantage of working class desperation. It is imperative that we shine a light on these dirty tactics. By doing so, we build a disciplined and conscious working class movement.

As a fourth-year undergraduate at the University of Windsor, I was offered a Teaching Assistant position. As someone eager to go into academia, teaching experience would be a boon to my grad school applications. But, a few days before orientation, our manager called me into their office. They asked whether anyone approached me about getting hired. No, I replied, not sure where this was going. They informed me that a graduate student, upset that they weren’t offered the position, blamed it on me because undergraduate students normally didn’t apply. It took me years to realize, but I was a scab.

Well, not exactly. At the University of Windsor, two types of teaching assistants belong to the same union. Teaching assistant (TA) positions are typically held by undergrads, and graduate assistant (GA) positions are held by... graduate students (i.e. Masters and PhD candidates). Despite performing the same job, undergrad TAs are paid between $19-21 an hour while GAs are paid double at $37-41. In the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, where I schooled, graduate student stipends included a guaranteed GA position. That is to say, the pay received as a GA makes up a significant portion of their financial support. PhD students are guaranteed seven full-terms as a GA and Masters students three, but each can apply for up to one extra term. That was the position occupied by the anonymous, would-be GA who blamed me for taking their position. Did I receive this position because I was meritorious, or because I was more affordable?

There is some language in the collective bargaining agreement that tries to prevent the administration from simply hiring only TAs in a bid to save money; “…the ratio of TA hours to GA hours within that course for that semester shall not exceed 2.0 (TA) to 1 (GA).” But, this is only a meagre protection. Instead, I want to focus on the University of Windsor’s long-term strategy for dealing with unions: divide-and-conquer.

The GAs and TAs at the University of Windsor found themselves in a ‘two-tiered’ bargaining situation. In fact, GAs and TAs are themselves further divided; a first- or second-year undergrad makes less than a third- or fourth-year undergrad; a PhD candidate makes more than a Masters candidate. Again, the responsibilities and work are the same (the only exception is that GAs are hired for more hours). As written by the Canadian Union of Public Employees, “once successful in establishing a second tier, the employer will try to shift work to workers who cost less, away from workers who enjoy full pay and benefits.” As “there is nothing fair about people doing the same job for different wages,” union solidarity erodes and infighting explodes.

This is not the only example of two-tiered bargaining at the University of Windsor. The Windsor University Faculty Association (WUFA) represents professors, instructors, lecturers, ancillary academic staff, and librarians. Librarians are divided up into four separate tiers; ancillary staff too. But, the more insidious two-tiered bargaining on display is the stratification of sessional lecturers and instructors and assistant, associate, and full professors. Much like TAs and GAs, there is a lot of overlap in the roles of lecturers, instructors, and professors that make the difference in salary, benefits, and job security unconscionable — all teach and design courses while some professors also conduct research. Lecturers belong to the lowest tier in the WUFA collective agreement, assistant professors the second-lowest, associate professors the third, and full-professors sit at the top. This gradient may appear reasonable except that most assistant professors progress to associate professor status within their first five years. There is no similar route for lecturers. Rather, lecturers and instructors are contract employees. Shepherded away from the professors, they stand alone.

It is difficult to figure out how much the average lecturer makes. The salary range for the lowest bargaining tier is $57,269 - $97,357, but this also includes the lowest tier of ancillary staff and librarians. But, associate vice-president academic Jeff Berryman said in 2018 that associate professors make “somewhere in excess of $54,000,” which probably puts them at the bottom of the salary range. For full professors, the average salary is around $140,000. Worse treated are instructors. While lecturers teach a guaranteed six courses during an eight-month contract, instructors are instead paid a flat fee of $8600 a course. Much like TAs, the University of Windsor takes advantage. Instructors and lecturers taught a full two-thirds of UWindsor courses in 2018. Instructors alone taught 979 courses out of a total of 2500. As neo-liberal austerity ramps up, squeezed workers take what they can get, and the gains of past working class struggle are erased.

This desperation provided the administration with lots of leverage when negotiating a new contract in 2014. The administration decided to meet many demands put forth by the instructors and lecturers while ignoring the demands of professors. The gains enjoyed by contract employees would be more than offset by concessions made by the better-paid professors. In forcing workers into conflict with each other, the university hoped to make off like a bandit. It seems like it may of worked — ratification of the new contract passed with only 66% of the vote after months of fighting. Clearly, many workers wanted to keep up the struggle, but with poor labour leadership, union fell apart.

So, what should I have done as a fourth-year TA? I could have refused the position, but my graduate school applications would have suffered. But, by accepting the position, I deprived a graduate student of their much-needed income. It appears that there is no easy decision. Because, once two-tiered bargaining becomes entrenched, someone is going to suffer — either by losing their job to someone in a lower tier or instead being relegated to a lower tier. To prevent this, unions must fight for the rights of the rank and file. All teaching assistants should be paid the same wage for the same work. Graduate students should be guaranteed a GA position for the full duration of their studies, or their stipend should be uncoupled from a GA position in the first place. By forwarding these demands, the class struggle grows and and the material conditions of workers improves. But, broader divide-and-conquer strategies need to be recognized and overcome.

Although two-tiered bargaining and the use of scabs denote specific strategies, the principle of divide-and-conquer lines the bedrock of capitalist domination. American colonizers made small concessions to white slaves specifically to undermine solidarity with black slaves. Irish immigrants in mid-19th century America, “themselves poor and despised,…ignored the plight of blacks.”[i] Because immigrants were desperate for work, the bosses brought them in as scabs — in 1874, striking miners in Pittsburgh murdered three Italian strike breakers. In 1891, convicts were brought in as de facto slaves to replace Tennessee miners who refused to sign a contract that limited their right to strike. As farmers organized alliances in the late 1800s, blacks and white remained segregated; “When the Colored Alliance declared a strike in the cotton fields in 1891 for a dollar a day wages for cotton pickers, Leonidas Polk, head of the White Alliance, denounced it as hurting the Alliance farmer who would have to pay that wage.” The dire economic situation in which most workers find themselves often forces us to fight among ourselves just to make ends meet in the short-term. But, for any long-term victory, we must organize and fight together.

What about contemporary examples of divide-and-conquer? A wage gap still persists between men and women because feminized jobs pay less than men-dominated positions even when similar levels of experience or education are required. The bosses push for an expansion of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program, where non-Citizens work for $5 an hour and no overtime pay. In my hometown of Windsor, Ontario, the automobile capital of Canada, workers in feeder plants, like my father once-upon-a-time, made a third of the hourly wage that a unionized worker in the Big Three (Chrysler, GM, Ford) would make. Uber undercuts taxi drivers while also providing no benefits or security for its own drivers. When Foodora couriers won the right to unionize, a big victory for gig-economy workers, the company instead shuttered its operations in Canada. In Ontario, only certain ‘essential’ employees qualified for a pandemic premium — midwives and grocery store clerks did not make the cut. Some workers are more essential than others.

In these manufactured dichotomies — men vs. women, black vs. white, citizen vs. non-citizen, contract workers vs. employees — pressure from the have-nots is perceived as a challenge to the fledgeling gains of the have-slightly-more-but-much-not-much-at-alls. How else can you explain the pushback to an increase in minimum wage from those who make just slightly more than minimum wage? The fight against ‘illegal’ immigration because ‘they’ are stealing ‘our’ jobs? The reactionary “All Lives Matter” response to “Black Lives Matter?”

All workers suffer under capitalism — its wars, its austerity, and its alienation. But, the suffering is not equal. All revolutionary socialists will fall short if they neglect ideas of intersectionality. We must categorically denounce the capitalist myth that for one to prosper another must suffer. In our unions, we must abolish two-tiered bargaining. In our nations, we must demand that no one is illegal. In our international struggle, we must stand by the right of oppressed nations to defend themselves against imperialism. In our colonialist backyard here in Canada, we must fight for indigenous self-determination. Only with the dissolution of capitalism and its replacement with a true worker democracy will we be able to overcome economic divisions along lines of race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ability, and ethnicity. Only with a workers’ democracy will true human liberation become possible.

[i] Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. New York: Harper & Row, 1990. These quotes and other historical examples discussed here can be found in chapters “The Other Civil War” and “Robber Barons and Rebels.”