A Message to the Labor Movement: Stop and Think!

Abstract

Trade unions and workers in North America have been objectified and instrumentalized by all political regimes, including the social-democratic New Democratic Party in Canada. And it is means-end non-thinking that characterizes government policies. Liberal elites and policy-making have marginalized ordinary workers making them “superfluous” without any vision of an “ethical community” and demonstrating contempt for democratic initiatives. There are oppositionary voices to the dominant social structures that oppress and undermine community and solidarity. However, trade unions and occupational health and safety “activists” have yet to reassess their strategies on workplace health and safety reforms, but are on the defensive in North America. Further, they are complicit with the dominant ideology and the occupational health and safety establishment, including the various and diverse professionals, who shape how we think about work environment matters; and they accommodate government regulators in mediating worker experiences and expectations with employer interests. The author suggests the beginning of a strategy that does not succumb to present-day liberal public policy-making and the atrophy of alternative options. In part, this strategy calls for a rudimentary phenomenology of moral judgment and a reconstruction of labor “tradition.”