Beyond Service: State Workers, Public Policy, and the Prospects for Democratic Administration 9781442671362

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
Part 1: The View from the Front Line
1. 'Appearing to Be in Control'
2. Class and Management in the Canadian State
3. Beyond Reason: The New Legitimation
Part 2: Border Disputes
4. External Pressures, Internal Needs
5. Bargaining and Beyond
6. Clients and Consciousness
7. Front-Line Workers and Public Policy
Part 3: Self-Management and Citizenship
8. State Workers and Democratic Administration
Conclusion: Bringing State Workers In
Notes
References
Index

Citation preview

BEYOND SERVICE: STATE WORKERS, PUBLIC POLICY, AND THE PROSPECTS FOR DEMOCRATIC ADMINISTRATION

JAPC The Institute of Public Administration of Canada

JAPC L'Institud' administration publique du Canada

The Institute of Public Administration of Canada Series in Public Management and Governance Editor: Peter Aucoin This series is sponsored by the Institute of Public Administration of Canada as part of its commitment to encourage research on issues in Canadian public administration, public sector management, and public policy. It also seeks to foster wider knowledge and understanding among practitioners, academics, and the general public. Networks of Knowledge: Collaborative Innovation in International Learning Janice Stein, Richard Stren, Joy Fitzgibbon, and Melissa MacLean The National Research Council in the Innovative Policy Era: Changing Hierarchies, Networks, and Markets G. Bruce Doern and Richard Levesque Beyond Service: State Workers, Public Policy, and the Prospects for Democratic Administration Greg McElligott

BEYOND SERVICE State Workers, Public Policy, and the Prospects for Democratic Administration

GREG McELLIGOTT

IPAC The Institute of Public Administration of Canada

IAPC Llnstitut d'administration publique du Canada

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com University of Toronto Incorporated 2001 Toronto Bufalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 0-8020-4766-1

Printed on acid-free paper

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data McElligott, Greg, 1959Beyond service : state workers, public policy, and the prospects for democratic administration Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8020-4766-1 1. Employee-management relations in government - Canada. 2. Civil service - Canada. 3. Canada. Employment and Immigration Canada (Dept.) - Officials and employees - Case studies. 4. Management Employee participation - Canada. I. Title. HD8805.2.C2M33 2001

331'.04135171

COO-933100-X

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ABBREVIATIONS ix

Introduction

vii

3

Part 1: The View from the Front Line 1 'Appearing to Be in Control' 17 2 Class and Management in the Canadian State 3 Beyond Reason: The New Legitimation 81

53

Part 2: Border Disputes 4 External Pressures, Internal Needs 107 5 Bargaining and Beyond 145 6 Clients and Consciousness 162 7 Front-Line Workers and Public Policy 188 Part 3: Self-Management and Citizenship 8 State Workers and Democratic Administration Conclusion: Bringing State Workers In

NOTES

253

REFERENCES INDEX 331

307

238

217

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Acknowledgments

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Research for this book was also supported by the SSHRC, and by the openness and candour of members, staff, and officials of the Canada Employment and Immigration Union. Library staff at the Centre for Industrial Relations (University of Toronto) provided friendly assistance and access to a host of relevant resources. Among many who have contributed editorial advice, the patient efforts of Leo Panitch and Ken McRoberts were invaluable, and often inspirational. My thanks go out as well to the two anonymous readers of the final manuscript, copyeditor Harold Otto, and Siobhan McMenemy and Virgil Duff for their faith and patience at University of Toronto Press. Naturally, none of them bear responsibility for any deficiencies in the final product. Patience and support cannot begin to describe the contributions made by my family to this project. Whatever is truly valuable in the following pages belongs as much to Alex, Zoe, and Zach as it does to me.

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Abbreviations

ACTC ADM AFDC AIP BCNI CAW C&C CCAF CCC CCF CD CEC CEC-S

Average Comparability of Total Compensation Assistant deputy minister Aid for Families with Dependent Children (US) Anti-Inflation Program (1975-8) Business Council on National Issues Canadian Auto Workers (union) Capital and Class Canadian Comprehensive Auditing Foundation Classes in Contemporary Capitalism (Poulantzas) Co-operative Commonwealth Federation Canadian Dimension Canada Employment Centre Canada Employment Centre for Students

CEIC

Canada Employment and Immigration Commission (EIC)

CEIU CEP CGV CHST CJPS CJS CLC CLFDB CLMPC CPA CR CRS CSC

Canada Employment and Immigration Union Communication, Energy and Paper workers' Union Committee on Governing Values Canada Health and Social Transfer Canadian Journal of Political Science Canadian Jobs Strategy Canadian Labour Congress Canadian Labour Force Development Board Canadian Labour Market and Productivity Centre Canadian Public Administration Clerical and Regulatory (bargaining unit) Claimant Re-employment Strategy Civil Service Commission

x Abbreviations CSN CSC CSR CUPW DRIE EDB EIC EID ES ESENA GLC GST HRDC ILGWU IMAA IMF INCO IRPP ISOE JIG LAC LEI LEWRG LFDS MBO MIU MR NAFTA NLR NDP NPM OAG OCG OECD OFL OPEC OPMS OPSEU OTAB PAG

Confederation des syndicats nationaux Civil Service Commission Civil Service Review Canadian Union of Postal Workers Department of Regional Industrial Expansion Employment Development Branch Employment and Immigration Canada Economic and Industrial Democracy Employment Services Economic Security Employees National Association Greater London Council Goods and services tax Human Resource Development Canada (successor to EIC) International Ladies Garment Workers Union Increased Ministerial Authority and Accountability International Monetary Fund International Nickel Company Institute for Research on Public Policy In Search of Excellence Job Information Centre Local Advisory Council Labour, Employment and Immigration London Edinburgh Weekend Return Group Labour Force Development Strategy Management by objectives Manpower and Immigration Union Monthly Review North American Free Trade Agreement New Left Review New Democratic Party New public management Office of the Auditor General or Auditor General Office of the Comptroller General Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Ontario Federation of Labour Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries Operational Performance Measurement System Ontario Public Service Employees' Union Ontario Training and Adjustment Board Public Accounts Committee

Abbreviations PCO PEMS PLA PM PMO

xi

Privy Council Office Policy and Expenditure Management System Prior learning assessment Programme administration (bargaining unit) Prime Minister's Office

PPSC

Political Power and Social Classes (Poulantzas)

PRB PS PSAC PSC PSSRA PSSRB PY QWL RCMP ROE ROH SLB

Pay Research Bureau Public Service Public Service Alliance of Canada Public Service Commission Public Service Staff Relations Act Public Service Staff Relations Board Person-Year Quality of Working Life Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report on Employment Report on Hiring Street-level bureaucrat or bureaucracy

SLB

Street-Level Bureaucracy (Lipsky)

SND SOA

Service needs determination (interview) Special Operating Agency

SPE SPS

Studies in Political Economy State, Power, Socialism (Poulantzas)

SQ TARA TBS TEC TINA TQM UI

Service-quality There are real alternatives Treasury Board Secretariat Training and Enterprise Council (U.K.) There is no alternative Total quality management Unemployment insurance (later Employment Insurance, or El) Unemployment Insurance Commission Value for money

UIC VFM

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BEYOND SERVICE: STATE WORKERS, PUBLIC POLICY, AND THE PROSPECTS FOR DEMOCRATIC ADMINISTRATION

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Introduction

Beyond Victimization

Leftist critiques of neoconservatism have for years suffered from a depressing tendency to overestimate both the strength of this movement in Canada and the tenacity of its grip on the state. With an implicit call for victims of neoconservatism to unite on the basis of their victimization - that is, on the basis of their weakness - this emphasis has created a discourse which is inherently self-limiting and increasingly obsolete. It is the contention of this book that workers within the Canadian state represent not only a missing link in left strategy, but also the key to transforming the impotent discourse of victimization into a new, more creative kind of politics. Such a transformation requires, however, that we get beyond approaches merely 'empowering Public Servants to serve Canada as effectively as possible'1 and consider how the interests and power - of these workers could be truly integrated into a new movement of the left. This task would be simpler if the political significance of state workers were widely recognized, but this is far from the case. When speaking of state personnel, mainstream political scientists and public policy analysts have tended to concentrate on the interface between politicians and senior bureaucrats and to use very limited notions of 'accountability' which reinforce this tendency. Further consideration of the details of policy implementation (the realm of most public sector workers) is left to other disciplines. Public administration, management, and organization theories explore the details of implementation. But their fixation with upper-level personnel lends itself too easily to the development of new forms of control from above. Within such a framework it is very difficult to see any unity or pattern in the

4 Beyond Service behaviour of workers beyond deviation from the 'norm' of control by managers. Widespread influence from the front line is neither conceivable nor acceptable here, since popular control of the state is seen to rest on the integrity of its bureaucratic hierarchy. Current democratic values rely rather too heavily on a purely instrumental use of state workers, and management privileges are too often confused with fundamental democratic conventions. In this book I try to steer a different course, by presuming that politicians and state managers do not have the right to invoke democratic authority in support of their demands. Consequently, I reject the legitimacy of hierarchical control and the imperative of obedience. The premise here is that current democratic forms are so flawed, and attacks on essential services so threatening, that many front-line workers now have a moral justification for resistance and 'sabotage.'2 As will be seen, this right must be exercised wisely, but recognizing it is an essential starting point for any critical approach to public administration. Industrial relations, political economy, and Marxist state and labour process theory have displayed more sensitivity to the power of workers in general, but comparatively little to that of state workers and their unions, and almost none to any direct influence on policy that they might exert during working hours. Surprisingly, they share with the other theories a propensity to compartmentalize public sector workers and separate their actions from state policy. Often they assume that the unfettered operation of a bureaucratic hierarchy has this same effect. Political science and political economy have marginalized state workers, treating the daily workplace experience of hundreds of thousands of people as if it was merely incidental to the policy process. Given the comparatively high proportion of women in the state's front-line workforce, this pattern of neglect may indicate more profound gender biases among researchers. It also reflects a general failure to challenge the essential features of bureaucracy. As Kathy Ferguson notes, bureaucracies subordinate their employees and clients, but 'both groups ... learn the skills necessary to cope with that subordinate status, the skills that women have always learned as part of their "femininity."'3 These skills are part of a larger arsenal - the 'weapons of the weak' - that may be employed whenever subordinates are in close contact with their oppressors.4 The impact of resistance at this level, while well documented in other fields, has been largely ignored in studies of policy-making and the state. Even efforts to enrich political analysis by bringing workers or the state "back in' rarely

Introduction 5 include, or mention, state workers.5 This omission creates a false picture of bureaucratic efficiency, overlooks class and other divisions within state workplaces, and assumes that shifts in elite policy are smoothly translated into decisive political actions. For Marxists it is the equivalent of studying production at General Motors without mentioning the people on the assembly line floor. This book begins to reconstruct public administration and state theory from a perspective that assumes that state workers matter. They matter because their needs are important, and because they have the capacity to act on those needs. Their power may be exercised through 'proper channels' like collective bargaining and electoral politics. These have had significant effects on the macroeconomic posture and labour market policies of the federal government, as will be seen below. But precisely because such channels are 'proper,' they are ultimately of limited use. Those who work on the state's front line already express themselves through more subtle, individualized means. Among these are techniques of 'mundane resistance' that may feed, and be fed by, more visible forms of defiance. But mundane resistance is significant in its own right. Mundane resistance needs to be seen as an ongoing challenge to hierarchical control and thus as a regular contributor to the policy process. Its effects may become more pervasive when other channels are shut down and more important when connected to the struggles of clients and other workers. In the pages that follow, I show how front-line resistance has affected the behaviour of the Canadian state and the ruling ideas of its senior officials. Management ideology there has evolved in response to the growing power and consciousness of front-line workers. Workplace struggles in one strategic department (the former Employment and Immigration Canada, or EIC) demonstrate that front-line workers can influence labour market policy, often in progressive ways. The experience of EIC's workers and their union (the Canada Employment and Immigration Union, or CEIU) shows that this resistance can be linked to the needs of clients and to struggles for a deeper kind of democracy. Before any of this can be convincing, it is necessary to cover the theoretical ground in a more thorough fashion. This is done in Part 1, which first seeks space for resistance in theories of organization and the state and then looks for traces of it in federal management studies. Part 1 asks: (1) Is it conceivable that front-line state workers could affect policy outputs in politically significant ways, while defying or evading the

6 Beyond Service wishes of managers? (2) Has concern for this sort of 'policy slippage' been evident in the ideologies and strategies of federal administrators? Part 2, the case study of labour market policy and EIC, tries to pin down more specific policy effects and link them to particular groups of state workers. The questions to be addressed here are: (3) Did EIC workers affect policy outputs in politically significant ways, despite management efforts to contain them? (4) Were these effects 'progressive,' that is, did they contribute to broader class solidarity and increase the potential for democratic control of the state? Part 3 deals with the larger implications of front-line resistance and tries to clear a path to new, more democratic forms of service provision, before concluding with a recapitulation and rebuttal. It asks: (5) Can mundane resistance, and its collectivized forms, be justified ethically? (6) Is worker self-management viable inside the state, and can it be reconciled with community control? It will not be giving away very much to reveal that the answer to all these questions is 'yes.' Putting the pieces together this way allows us to glimpse a new left agenda and to acknowledge a sort of slow, grinding heroism that has been ignored for too long. Democratic Administration and Neoconservatism

This agenda both complements and extends recent studies in 'democratic administration.' The latter draw from the experience of the Labour government in the Greater London Council (from 1982 to 1986) and from more recent critiques of mainstream public administration in Canada and elsewhere. They aim to deal head on with the 'administrative question' so often avoided by political economy, and so often the bane of leftist governments.6 In an age where massive state restructuring follows the corporate model because it seems to be the only one available, these writers seek ways of 'deepening' democracy rather than curtailing it in the name of efficiency.7 Chapter 8 tackles this problem directly, although the concerns of democratic administration are present throughout the book. But this work goes beyond the current parameters of democratic administration in a number of respects. Its empirical content is more typically Canadian - focusing on a federal department during a period of weakness and decline for the parliamentary left. And the major political agents here are state workers and their clients, rather than politicians and senior bureaucrats. Democratic administration seeks a decisive break with 'control from above' strategies, but has yet to accomplish this -

Introduction 7 either in theory or practice - inside the state itself. This book builds from the premise that state workers' views and interests are different from those of senior bureaucrats, despite the many efforts to convey a contrary impression. It also asserts that power and autonomy on the front line should be nurtured and not feared.8 These points will be linked to the relatively small critical tradition in this area. Authors such as Michael Lipsky and Nicos Poulantzas illuminate some of the defining features of work inside the state, and help to justify the use of state workers as units of analysis. They also help us to appreciate the constant effort that is needed to maintain bureaucratic and hierarchical work relations. The latter insight is particularly important in any study of policy-making and implementation: until our conception of hierarchy in this domain is significantly weakened, there is simply no room for the daily struggles of state workers to have a substantial impact.9 The argument that state workers can and do affect policy, then, must simultaneously make the case that the bureaucratic form of organization is weaker than is commonly believed. A key element of neoconservative discourse is the proposition that the state is staffed by an undifferentiated category of parasitic or power-hungry 'bureaucrats.' Theorists such as Glaus Offe and James O'Connor have placed such attacks in their proper context, linking the paralysis and debt of the Keynesian welfare state to its essentially impossible social role. Neoconservatism may be seen partly as a rational response by capital to the dilemma faced by a state in fiscal crisis. Attempts to 'recommodify' parts of the state, to break down the 'Chinese walls' of bureaucracy for colonization by private capital, are intended to convert many legitimization expenses into accumulation opportunities, or abolish them entirely. Profits are expected to rise as the deficit falls, fuelling a new, more enduring, burst of prosperity. But the erosion of material legitimization is predicated on the hope that coercion, mystification, and/or economic growth will be effective substitutes in suppressing dissent. It now seems that the last of these is no longer the panacea it used to be, as a 'jobless recovery' has produced both record profits and continuing layoffs. It is not surprising that the cutting edge of neoconservatism has become increasingly punitive and moralistic, and that state power over the 'undeserving' has become more intrusive and brutal. This trajectory explains the choice of terminology here. While 'neoconservatism' and 'neoliberalism' are often used interchangeably, the state's shifting features are more effectively captured in the former. The burden of state regulation

8 Beyond Service may have receded in areas like international trade, energy, and environmental policy, but state workers and most of their clients are bound in increasingly dense layers of red tape. The stern hand of the paternalistic state is raised so often that exceptionally coercive approaches to welfare, youth crime, international relations, and, of course, collective bargaining, are now taken for granted. Tree' markets have always required strong states, but it is not clear that the old paternalism can be reconstructed today. Legislatures may pass increasingly coercive laws and regulations, but they will not be automatically enforced or obeyed. This book deals most extensively with problems of enforcement, but it goes to print amid what seems to be a rising tide of civil disobedience - particularly in female-dominated public services like nursing and teaching. Neoconservatism, then, remains a risky way to paper over quite severe crises and contradictions, and after more than two decades, it is neither firmly ensconced, nor exactly robust. At the federal level, the neoconservative transition has been slow and incomplete. Although major confrontations now tend to happen in the provinces (where 'cutting edge' governments are taking neoconservatism to the next level), Ottawa has long found its capacity to aid this transition undercut by 'management problems' on the front line. This is not surprising when one considers how closely the three pillars of Canada's public management orthodoxy parallel the state's principal functions. Managers are guided by deference to the market, respect for private sector expertise, and faith in the arbitrary power of management. The state itself fosters capital accumulation, tries to legitimize it, and coerces those who threaten it.10 Difficulties in balancing management goals are thus intimately connected to the much larger problems associated with the social role of the state. Contradictions in management practice should be expected, then, especially in a context of fiscal crisis. These can take the form of schisms among management personnel, organizational rivalries, or outright defiance of political authorities. Problems at this level are neither abnormal nor unfamiliar to management theorists: they cannot by themselves be taken as evidence of a crisis in the hierarchy. Looking beyond the Elites

In this book resistance to the neoconservative project by deputy ministers and other management personnel will be largely ignored. This omission is not because of a lack of evidence: Canadian public administration

Introduction

9

and their deputies and has examined the problem of alienated middle has shown a continuing interest in the relationshhhip between ministers

managers.11 Governments themselves have matde considerable efforts to reorder the environment in hwhich managers work, and to instil in them the entrepreneurial spirit of their private sector equivalents. In the early 1980s the fhtederal government carved a service-wide management cadre out of disparate professional and senior personnel, and nurtured managerial consciousness thhrough constant dissemination of the latest in management theory (as recommended by the auditor general). Parallel initiatives tried to make decision-making more 'rational' and more sensitive to the imperatives of fiscal restraint. Schemes like management by objectives, policy and expenditure management systems, and programbased budgeting all assumed that, left to their own devices, managers and politicians would be obstacles to these ends, and so had to be subordinated to them procedurally. Similar assumptions underlay the public choice and agency theories so popular among Conservative governments, but their prescriptions focused less on regulation and more on altering 'incentives' through market-inspired restructuring.12 All of these efforts have reflected tensions between the centralizing tendencies associated with cost control and pressures in the opposite direction arising from attempts to liberate 'entrepreneurial' management.13 These in turn engage longstanding disputes between central agencies and line departments, as well as a culture of internecine struggle characterized by 'an excess of ruthlessness, powermongering and cronyism in the upper echelons of government, extending to the senior public service.'14 While management intrigues and coordination problems at this level have undoubtedly shaped the way neoconservatism has evolved, the very extent to which such topics have been covered argues against pursuing them here. Moreover,, the incestuous elite focus of management theory and public administration has made discussions such as these both interminable and largely unenlightening. As one critic notes, 'The "debates" that commonly go on within the literature on administration center on small questions, questions that beg the larger issues of coercion and control.'15 This dismissal of administration's theory and practice may seem severe, but it comes from an attempt to view bureaucracy from below, from a place deliberately outside managers' traditional frame of reference. Such a perspective is essential if we are to get beyond a purely instrumental view of state workers and appreciate, as well, the broader

10 Beyond Service contradictions of management's position. In any case, administrative theory is built upon equally severe exclusions, which allow managers to do their jobs in good conscience, but which systematically marginalize the concerns of those they employ. Attacks on the welfare state touch the livelihoods of front-line workers - and their dependent clientele - to a degree rarely, if ever, experienced by senior management. Managers may, in fact, be materially rewarded for inflicting pain of this sort. Nonetheless, the administrative literature tends to generalize from the experience of managers. Typically, the 1979 Royal Commission on Financial Management and Accountability (the Lambert Commission) relied heavily on a survey of senior bureaucrats and called for fewer restraints on hiring by managers. The justification was that: 'while we have not examined the question of appeals and redress of grievances in depth, we have identified the major issues with which senior managers who met with us are most concerned.'16 Later the commission's report discussed motivating and disciplining managers: 'While we have limited our investigations to senior personnel, the principles enunciated here are equally applicable to employees in bargaining groups.'17 As will be seen below, the most influential studies of management in the federal government all sent management experts to interview senior bureaucrats, ascertain their priorities, and generalize the lessons learned across the public service. It was assumed that what motivated managers motivated workers, and that managers had to be appeased. From Glassco to Public Service 2000 and La Releve, this has been the dominant approach to studying public management in Canada. The insensitivity thus fostered among managers may be seen as functional, since it allows them to act boldly and decisively. But it is potentially dysfunctional in an environment where productivity increases depend on tapping employees' reservoir of 'discretionary effort,' where the scope for material incentives has been drastically reduced, and where workers' frustration is fast overcoming their fear of retribution. Management everywhere involves an ongoing struggle to keep employees committed to organizational goals, but in the human services field this means continually regulating relations between employee-citizens and client-citizens in the interests of social control. Neoconservative restraint measures, to the extent that they involve simultaneous attacks on the livelihoods of both employees and clients, can destabilize this pacification process. The recent preoccupation with service and quality may reflect concern about such problems, as it focuses attention

Introduction

11

on the lower reaches of the public service, and thus departs from the dominant administrative tradition. The service-quality thrust has accompanied the ascent of neoconservatism politically, and shares some of its central ideological components. In many respects it is neoconservatism in condensed form, an ideology operationalized for administrators. As such, it provides indirect evidence of resistance by front-line workers, since neoconservatism is often portrayed as an attempt to curb 'excessive' worker power. Consequently, this strain of management theory will be explored in Chapter 3. How might we account for resistance of this kind? Is there evidence of an internal 'legitimation crisis' provoking it? Levels of productivity inside the state are sensitive to variations in the morale of workers and/ or their emotional commitment. These variations relate to 'effort bargains' struck at the frontier of management's control, and in the federal public service such bargains tend to be worked out at an individual level between employees and supervisors. Collective agreements, policy directives, and regulations still leave substantial scope for individual negotiation and discretion in this regard.18 If the speed of front-line work is dependent to some extent on individual discretion, this is even more true of its content, as the work of Lipsky and his associates will show. When aggregate trends in either dimension prove worrisome to management, then one could say 'mundane resistance' has reached significant levels. Such resistance is mundane in the sense that it is part of the daily workplace routine, and not necessarily the product of collective organization. But it is resistance insofar as it represents conscious defiance or evasion of management directives. Such defiance is usually expressed in small ways, which may nonetheless have a great impact on individual clients. Often, because of the strategic significance of front-line work, resistance is linked to larger political debates in ways that are clear both to state workers and to state officials. In many other cases, of course, mundane resistance may have a political content that is difficult to trace back in any systematic way to traditional ideological coordinates. Mainstream accounts are of little help here, as management and organization theory tend to assume that workers' political views are not, and should not be, relevant to their performance on the job. Since management is depicted primarily as a process of technical coordination more or less inevitable in modern society, many political questions linked to its coercive control function simply do not arise.19 Thus much of what I would term 'mundane resistance'

12 Beyond Service would be seen as problems of communication or coordination without inherent political significance or oppositional intent. Idiosyncratic individual behaviour, perhaps motivated by the neglect of some universal human need (such as those revealed by Abraham Maslow) might be acknowledged, but the effect of fundamental social divisions - like class - on individual behaviour would likely remain unexplored. Part of the challenge of 'bringing state workers in' analytically is to avoid the presumption that state managers and state workers normally do their jobs in some neutral way, untouched by 'political' issues of coercion and control. Such a presumption is especially difficult to sustain on the front lines of the welfare state, where control of the public sector workforce is so clearly enmeshed in broader issues of social control. Yet it is evident that managers find some levels of mundane resistance tolerable, and others threatening. Moreover, standards with respect to performance, efficiency, and error rates can vary tremendously, especially in times of rapid social change. This is why management attitudes are relevant here. Like barometers, they can be used to measure pressure indirectly. Neoconservative visions of a post-Keynesian future presuppose a widespread consensus that the welfare state and its fiscal crisis have become the primary impediment to economic growth. They encourage higher expectations regarding the state's productivity and market sensitivity and ask state managers to produce measurable improvements in both respects. Obviously this task will be made more difficult if workers' morale is low and their commitment weak. Overt labour-management conflict is likely to be particularly disruptive in this respect, since loyalty to management is openly discouraged for at least the duration of any strike, and recriminations afterward may distract from the job at hand. Neoconservative governments, insofar as they demand both higher productivity and 'macho-management' from the state, may, in fact, be demanding the impossible unless state unions can be completely cowed and their ideological influence neutralized. Thus survival, mobilization, and growth among state unions in the face of such attacks might very well facilitate mundane resistance of the sort described above. However, an exclusive focus on collective bargaining would miss some of the most novel and decisive labour-management conflicts of the neoconservative ascendancy. This period has been characterized by a very low margin for material concessions to labour, attacks on 'free' collective bargaining itself, and strategies - like the service-quality thrust - which bypass unions entirely.20 During the period considered below (1977-91), bar-

Introduction

13

gaining in the federal public service was usually in a state of suspended animation, as contracts were frozen or extended by legislative decree. There was in any case never anything particularly permanent about the attachment of federal public servants to free collective bargaining in Canada. Achieved only by the vanguard action of postal workers in the 1960s, collective bargaining and strike rights were extended to the rest of the federal bureaucracy without similar levels of militancy, or even support, from other public servants. These rights came wrapped in red tape restrictive even by the rigid standards of Canadian labour law, were increasingly subject to overriding legislation, and were largely atrophied by lack of use. After 1975 they were rather easily removed, revealing in the process the dangers of relying on laws and deal-making rather than mobilization.21 If we are to venture beyond collective bargaining, as we are doing here, how can we approach management questions without adopting managers' traditionally insensitive and instrumental view of state workers? One way is to place front-line work in a broader context and look seriously at the capacity for resistance there and in similar positions elsewhere. This is the intent of Part 1.

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Parti: The View from the Front Line

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1

'Appearing to Be in Control'

Napoleon played his part as representative of authority quite as well at Borodino as at his other battles - perhaps better. He did nothing harmful to the progress of the battle; he inclined to the more reasonable opinions; he made no confusion, did not contradict himself, did not lose his head or run away from the field of battle, but with his sound judgement and great military experience calmly and with dignity performed his role of appearing to be in supreme control. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

You have neither choice nor chance. The whole Complex Situation of which you are merely one balancing part is the result of Economic and Social Forces, and so will be the fateful outcome. So stand by quietly, like Tolstoy's general, and let events proceed. Even if you did act, the consequences would not be what you intended, even if you had an intention ... For you are, in fact, an impotent item in the historical fate of your times; and moral responsibility is an illusion, although it is of great use if handled in a really alert public relations manner. C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite

Mason, of Mathematickal Necessity there do remain, beyond the Reach of the V.O.C., routes of Escape, pockets of Safety, - Markets that never answer to the Company, gatherings that remain forever unknown ... I'd be much oblig'd if we might roam around together, some Evening, and happen we'll see. Mind, I'm seldom all the way outside their Perimeter, - yet I do make an effort to keep to the Margins close as I may. Thomas Pynchon, Mason &Dixon

18 Part 1: The View from the Front Line Organization Theory and Front Line Work1

Somewhere between the impotent commanders of War and Peace and the potent but irresponsible elites parodied by C. Wright Mills there lies a space where state workers can act autonomously but responsibly, and state managers can be held accountable for the human consequences of their actions. Mainstream administrative theory has been sending scouting parties into this space for several years, and those on the margins have recently rediscovered it. While lately it has been spilling onto the streets, resistance has long boiled away within the very social organizations built to contain it. Fascination with the structures of power, and the techniques of control, helped to erect an enormous academic armature over these containers. It was easy to lose sight of their limits. But now, as the cracks appear, many people are reconsidering the dignity and potential of localized resistance.2 Perhaps the most ambitious effort in this regard has been undertaken by James Scott, who has demonstrated quite persuasively that neither brutal domination nor sophisticated hegemony are ever likely to overwrite the 'hidden transcripts' of resistance or to squelch the social spaces in which it is rehearsed and elaborated. The transcripts that Scott tries to recover are hidden, not only because some are secretly whispered, but also because many enter the 'official' transcript in disguise (as, say, 'rumors, gossip, folktales, songs, gestures, jokes'). Insubordination of this sort, when combined with low-level material resistance ('poaching, foot-dragging, pilfering, dissimulation, flight'), form the 'infrapolitics' of dissident subcultures. When a hidden transcript is first openly declared, 'its mobilizing capacity as a symbolic act is potentially awesome ... That first declaration speaks for countless others, it shouts what historically had to be whispered, controlled, choked back, stifled and suppressed.'3 In advance of such defining historical moments, Scott studies what Don Nonini calls 'everyday forms of popular resistance.' Although often secret and evasive, these acts express the defiance of those with 'an extremely constrained set of options for resistance ... exercising what little room for maneuvering they have against the capitalist state.' Nonini warns against dismissing such resistance as ineffectual or individualistic, and suggests that the test should be: 'Is it part or not of a beggar-thyneighbor strategy? That is, is the behaviour directed against other working-class people, or other people of color - or against the state and monopoly capitalism?'4

'Appearing to Be in Control' 19 One could cite older works in other fields on the inevitability of resistance in practically every social situation. Erving Goffman spoke of 'secondary adjustments' within 'total institutions' like prisons and mental hospitals.5 E.P. Thompson, in his rich study of forest politics in eighteenth-century England, locates resistance to the 'great predators' of the Court in poaching and in the jury box: 'The acquittal of John Huntridge by twelve men, who knew themselves to be exposed to the retribution of "interest" and who were probably astounded at their own temerity, provided a salutary check to the growth of arbitrary power. Men will, on occasion, act not according to their own interests but according to the expectations and values attached to a certain role. The role of juror carried (and still carries) such an inheritance of expectations.'6 Thompson's jury was resisting a new regime of forest laws which trampled over customary rights for the sake of more exemplary punishments and more expeditious accumulation by the 'great predators.' History is full of such moments, of course, but I mention this one because it so nicely captures the position of state workers in a period of neoconservative consolidation. As the balance shifts away from legitimation towards coercion in most human services, and privatization and contracting out help line the pockets of a new generation of predators, many state workers nonetheless cling to the roles and expectations of a previous era. This 'role confusion' can be politically portentious, as will be seen in Chapters 6 and 7. But how much does it matter? If one makes the common assumption that personnel in the lower ranks are rule-bound automatons, then their dilemma would have no political relevance. However, there is a persistent undercurrent of doubt on this question. Herbert Simon found in 1945 that even military hierarchies respect at least some degree of subordinate autonomy. Alvin Gouldner documented policy evasion among professional employees and concluded that out of three kinds of bureaucratic rules, only 'representative' ones were consistently obeyed. In 1955 Peter Blau argued that public employment agencies were more effective (at helping the unemployed) when their employees ignored formal rules. Later he noted that workers often recovered their client orientation and willingness to defy management after an intervening period of cynicism and burnout.7 Any hope one might gain from this research tends to be quickly dispelled when reading analyses of the 'bureaucratic personality.' Here bureaucrats are said either to be absorbed in power games and/or obsessed with rules which enhance their status and differentiate them from clients. This latter orientation is likely to produce attitudes which

20 Part 1: The View from the Front Line are excessively punitive and excessively deferential to management. Since the 1960s it has been attacked by welfare rights movements, whose critiques of front-line discretion seem to see this 'enforcement' mentality as universal. Strategies to better the lot of their members nonetheless assume that front-line attitudes can be changed, whether by lobbying state managers or storming government offices.8 It is not surprising that front-line agencies have been a focus of both management theory and radical strategy, since they operate at the level where state policy is supposed to become concrete and where large groups of marginalized people are often waiting to be 'processed.' They are, in other words, arenas of struggle defined by their location on the outer boundaries of the state. The exercise of discretionary power within these agencies thus becomes a crucial political act. Clearly there are varieties of discretion and distinguishable effects for each variety. The crucial demarcation, however, is a prior one: is discretion a management problem subject to technical solution, or is it a political act imbued with social meaning and affected by social forces?9 This study embraces the latter view, and will seek out discretion with substantial social consequences. The 'problem' of political discretion in fields like energy and taxation is not only a practical concern for corporations seeking subsidies, but also a more general theme in academic research.10 There is to my knowledge only one school of thought which, by 'standing the study of policy implementation on its head,' extends the critique of Max Weber far enough to assert a direct causal link between the actions of lowerlevel public servants and the policy output of the state. This is the theory of 'street-level bureaucracy' (SLB) developed by Michael Lipsky and two of his associates in the 1970s.11 According to Lipsky, 'The decisions of street-level bureaucrats, the routines they establish, and the devices they invent to cope with uncertainties and work pressures, effectively become the public policies they carry out.' The jobs of these workers - people like receptionists, welfare case workers, claims processors, teachers, police, doctors, legal aid lawyers, judges - require 'frequent and significant contacts with citizens,' which in turn necessitate substantial autonomy in dealing with them.12 Lipsky intentionally highlights state-client relations, and the role of SLBs in mediating them, at the expense of a more precise analysis of the occupations involved. This means that SLBs are often hard to distinguish from other workers and from front-line managers. Lipsky says that relations of mutual dependence with local management give SLBs far

'Appearing to Be in Control' 21 more 'resources for resistance' than other low-level workers, but he also attributes part of their power to traditional public service privileges, such as greater job security, which now seem to be on the wane.13 In the next section, class analysis will be used to add greater precision to Lipsky's category and more depth and context to his explanation of SLB behaviour. Nevertheless, his depiction of the peculiar dynamics of frontline workplaces is very persuasive. Their structurally requisite autonomy has led one of Lipsky's associates to suggest that street-level bureaucrats 'are the policy-makers in their work arenas.' Consequently, senior officials 'can only hope to influence the work-role definitions that street-level bureaucrats "make" for themselves,' and the former actually exert only highly mediated control over client service. Systems analysis and other monitoring techniques may track paperwork well, according to Richard Weatherley, but they are incapable of revealing the 'underlife' of the organization - the undocumented pattern of informal 'adjustments' that workers make to formal job requirements.14 Senior officials are limited in a larger sense by the power of other social forces. Glaus Offe says that 'the developments and innovations of state social policy can be conceived not as the cause of concrete social conditions or changes, but only as the initiator of conflictual interactions, the outcome of which is open and ambivalent precisely because it is determined by the structural relationship of power and the constellation of interests.'15 The theory of street-level bureaucracy suggests that, even at the lower reaches of the state apparatus itself, policy from above ignites 'conflictual interactions' with outcomes contingent on the array of forces present. Social policy does not cause social change directly, and the meaning of policy itself is disputed on the front lines. In Lipsky's model this problem is conceptualized in terms of boundaries. In contrast to the Weberian pyramid analogy, where senior bureaucrats straddle the only significant organizational boundary (the so-called political boundary) and issue authoritative instructions downward, the theorists of street-level bureaucracy posit two significant boundaries and a donut analogy. The second boundary is, of course, that between the bureaucracy and its street-level environment, so street-level bureaucrats, like their very senior colleagues, occupy a 'boundary-spanning role' which is a source of power within the organization. This gives rise to the image of the donut, with power vectors emanating from both the hole (the political boundary), and from the outside edge (the street-

22 Part 1: The View from the Front Line level environment), into the donut (the bureaucracy). Thus power does not follow the formal lines of authority downward, but is distributed within the bureaucracy by a complex interaction of these vectors.16 Boundary-Spanning, Class Categories, and Front-line Behaviour

Other authors have located professionals and service workers near similar boundaries, but they have not seen boundary-spanning as a source of power. Offe says service work exists where 'the rationality of "industrial economy"' and 'the rationality of "mediation and conciliation"' intersect. The former requires standardization and detailed control, while the latter requires flexibility and individual discretion, but this disjuncture simply produces tensions between a service worker's 'bureaucratic and professional orientations.'1 Writing in 1973, James O'Connor took a different tack. He linked role confusion to fiscal crisis and described front-line workplaces as a 'socioeconomic milieu that breeds politicization and radicalization.' Business norms had penetrated the state, leading to the effective proletarianization of state workers, and much closer monitoring of their clientele. Human service workers found themselves performing 'social control functions that many find incompatible with their self-image.'18 O'Connor distinguished between the formal and actual goals of work in the human services ('serving the needy' vs 'regulating the poor,' for example) and expressed confidence in the ability of state workers to do the same. These people were trained to understand social problems, and, given time and some help, they would find it impossible to reconcile the stated aims of their department with the increasingly coercive and intrusive duties they were being asked to perform. Some would try to redefine their jobs in practice. This would mean reconsidering who benefits from their work, challenging management's answer (a vaguely defined 'public'), and attempting to truly serve their clients.19 Fiscal limits might actually facilitate this consciousness-raising since front-line workers' 'nominal function requires far more resources than their real function - social control and social investment.' Tight budgets would expose this gap, perhaps prompting resistance from state workers still faithful to their 'nominal' function. O'Connor wrote just as the first neoconservative wave was breaking, but there have been many since. And every time state workers have been asked to do 'more with less,' the contradictions involved in their work have deepened.20 O'Connor hoped that coalitions of state workers and state clients

'Appearing to Be in Control' 23 would be facilitated by such contradictions and that together they might develop new visions of a post-Keynesian state. But in 1973 'only a handful of state workers ha[d] made the leap and begun to identify politically with their clients.' Writing a few years later, Nicos Poulantzas was more pessimistic. He felt that the potential of state workers for collective action was limited by their petty bourgeois background and by a divisive wage hierarchy. But these constraints are not inescapable, and state unions have proven more useful than these authors foresaw.21 Later Marxist authors began to glimpse the strengths, as well as the limitations, of front-line work. Erik Olin Wright, for example, lists 'control of organizational assets' among his determinants of class position. Jobs which exert such control are part of a larger category of 'strategic jobs' which are 'difficult [for superiors] to monitor but highly sensitive to differences in conscientiousness [among their occupants].' If Wright were to recognize informal patterns of effective control, he might, like Lipsky, see that boundary-spanning gives some workers access to key organizational assets - state clients.22 SLB jobs would then be 'strategic' because their occupants adjust the flow of rules and reduce the uncertainties of policy implementation. And, 'to the extent that he [sic] can contain contingencies, and to the extent that the contingencies are important to the organization, the individual is powerful.'23 Such a concession on Wright's part would create a category uniting all front-line personnel, regardless of their skill level, on the basis of their contact with citizens. But this is a very loose appropriation of an author who has himself been criticized for eclecticism.24 Furthermore, it raises a number of questions regarding the class position of those who work on the front line, their relations with clients, and the class content of front-line decisions. Wright has no separate category for state employees (he prefers the more general 'state-linked employment'). SLB theory is more specific in this regard, although real-world ambiguities have sometimes led its proponents to a similar ambivalence.25 The SLB approach does not use class analysis, and it therefore stresses common characteristics and aggregate tendencies among individuals who are united only at a conceptual level.26 While these authors are more concerned with policy implementation than with class mapping, even this emphasis requires more attention to social context and collective consciousness than Lipsky et al. provide. At this point it seems sensible to adopt a somewhat more specific

24 Part 1: The View from the Front Line object of study than Lipsky's street-level bureaucrats, while accepting many of his insights. In the pages below, 'front-line workers' will refer to those boundary-spanning, non-management, public sector employees working in human services agencies, who have significant contact with clients from subordinate groups. It is understood that front-line workers exercise some autonomous discretionary powers, but that the scope and nature of these powers are objects of struggle. In SLB theory, individual discretion is used to relieve tensions arising from the boundary-spanning role. This role typically involves overwhelming client demands; chronically inadequate resources; complex and changing work rules; high but conflicting public expectations; and, often, physically dangerous work. SLBs respond with coping mechanisms, such as stereotyping or routinization, which allow them to balance external demands with their own priorities. This means categorizing clients, allowing most to proceed on through 'mass processing,' but retaining some for individual attention and/or service. The underlying motive here seems to be the preservation or expansion of individual autonomy, so some SLB theorists speak of 'autonomy-enhancing strategies' rather than coping mechanisms. But the form and content of such strategies are structured - not only by regulations from above, but also by external 'reference groups' and by 'prevailing cultural assumptions' which SLBs internalize.28 One of the tenets of SLB theory is that the first of these - imposed regulations — is not nearly as restrictive as is commonly believed. The sheer volume of contradictory but ostensibly equal work rules enable SLBs to exploit 'zones of relative indifference' to management, while respecting de facto 'core rules.'Jeffrey Prottas says SLB discretion actually increases with the number and complexity of the rules imposed. Perversely, then, SLBs 'implicitly barter the enforcement of some rules for the abandonment of others. The street-level bureaucrat is forced into permanent defiance of many of the rules he [sic] was hired to c '29 enforce. There is some space for SLBs to ration time and effort according to their own informal criteria, but what shapes these criteria? Lipsky's original research concentrated on American police, for whom clients' race and attitudes (respectful or not) seemed most important. Peer groups and external actors like judges and politicians conveyed social expectations which reinforced (or at least tolerated) these priorities. These were the 'primary reference groups' for the exercise of police discretion, but for other SLBs the major influences might be, says, profes-

'Appearing to Be in Control' 25 sional associations or unions.30 However, in all cases, as Lipsky observes apologetically: 'We should note the relative unimportance of nonvoluntary clients ... they do not primarily, or even secondarily, determine bureaucratic role expectations ... It may not be that street-level bureaucracies are generally unresponsive as is sometimes claimed. Rather they have been responsive in the past to constellations of reference groups that have excluded a significant portion of the population with whom they regularly deal.'31 The influence of reference groups is of course wrapped up in choices that all bureaucrats make in defining their mandate and their clientele. These choices are inherently political and will be discussed below. But it should be noted that senior officials are often excessively attentive to the population with whom they deal, at the expense of other interests.32 At other points SLB theory is more open to client-oriented behaviour. Weatherley sees front-line workers as utility-maximizers, but interprets utility to include 'concern for clients.' And many of Lipsky's SLBs begin their careers as sincere client advocates. However, over time, the behaviour of individual clients (whether deferential or disruptive), institutional rewards, and a structural bias in favour of the wealthy seem to predominate. Lipsky is troubled by the 'generations of thoughtful and potentially self-sacrificing people [who] are disarmed in their social purpose' by the dynamics inherent in front-line workplaces. Here, as elsewhere, a more precise appreciation of larger dynamics might sharpen his analysis.33 While mass processing forces SLBs to ration their attention to individual clients, Lipsky acknowledges that the discretionary choices they make are 'colored by prevailing cultural assumptions.' In America this means they may promote self-reliance, and an extreme sensitivity to social service costs. However, this pattern is not invariable. While overly generous SLBs may be penalized during recessions, their overly strict colleagues may find themselves targeted when the economy recovers. Lipsky does not dwell on this point, although he cites O'Connor in referring to SLB agencies as the 'organizational embodiments of contradictory tendencies in American society as a whole.' O'Connor, of course, traced such vacillations to the state's need to promote accumulation, while regulating social conflict. None of the SLB theorists make this connection, and in their work state policy follows an unpredictable, but basically democratic, course.35 The absence of a class context leaves SLB theory unable to appreciate the significance of the state's oscillations at the micro- and macro-level

26 Part 1: The View from the Front Line and unable to draw a clear distinction between SLB interests and those of management. Lipsky, citing Dahrendorf, criticizes the notion that organizations have shared goals. However the 'intrinsically conflictual' nature of front-line labour relations is downplayed as his book proceeds, and mutual dependence is increasingly stressed.36 SLBs are said to enjoy unusual autonomy partly because the quality of their work is hard to measure. Yet 'mass processing' is portrayed as almost inevitable in the human services.37 So SLB autonomy is constrained again - this time, in effect, by the inevitability of social problems and the inevitability of capitalism. Lipsky describes the alienation of SLBs in terms which echo Marxist labour process studies and seem to envisage the radical democratization of state workplaces. SLBs are seen to have a crucial role in making the delivery of social services more client-centred and more democratically accountable, and Lipsky underlines their potential as client advocates. However, the barriers between clients and SLBs are breached only as those between SLBs and management come tumbling down. Lipsky's concluding proposal is a pseudo-corporatist arrangement, featuring innovative managers, liberated SLBs, and integrated clients. All are seen to have a shared interest in a defensive alliance around this program, even if it involves workers giving up the right to strike. Lipsky's bottom line is that service to clients has to be maintained and improved, even in a context of fiscal crisis. Ironically, SLBs remain merely instrumental to this end, and he never seriously challenges relations of production inside the state. Lipsky is on firmer ground in noting the state's reliance on SLBs to buffer social conflict - mainly at their own expense. They provide the human face which allows citizens to see their troubles with the state 'as conflicts associated with lower-level workers.' It is commonly observed that bureaucracies reduce human beings to 'clients' or 'cases' — carving away most life experience and shaping the rest into portions that can be processed by the system. But individualization is a two-edged sword. It also reduces the state to a few front-line bureaucrats in the eyes of the client. The state not only isolates and categorizes those it encounters, but appears itself to be fragmented in the process.w Lipsky's use of the word 'client' is problematic, not only because it glosses over differences among the users of various 'human services' (which he admits it does). Many state agencies, including Employment and Immigration Canada (EIC) also use it in ways which disguise the class identity of beneficiaries and obscure the class content of struggles oo

'Appearing to Be in Control' 27 over government programs.40 This question will become important below, as we discuss the scope and democratic legitimacy of front-line 'policy-making.' It can be said, then, that SLB theory goes as far as mainstream approaches can go without recognizing the centrality of class and class struggle - and thereby passing out of the mainstream. A dominant but contradictory ideology is seen to penetrate the structure of the state. In some circumstances, SLBs seem able to act as client advocates, despite incentives to the contrary. SLBs and managers seem to have distinct interests, but both need or want to improve client service.41 And while SLB-client interactions usually serve the state's purposes, they also transform both sets of participants in ways that are not entirely predictable. In the end, individual SLB choices remain fairly unstructured, especially with respect to their class character. They seem to flow from the specific dynamics of state work and connect with the policy process in ways that Marxists do not appreciate. Their content is generally conservative, yet the reason for this is unexplained, and the influence of external reference groups is largely untheorized. Forces that might foster a critical or collective consciousness (such as unions and professional bodies) are barely addressed. Factors which divide SLBs are not considered in any depth. So while Marxists may be guilty of the opposite failing, clearly SLB theory specifies organizational boundaries only at the expense of obscuring class boundaries. Class in the State

Even works that embrace class analysis tend to hesitate when applying it inside the state. Rianne Mahon sees federal departments as surrogates for various class fractions and finds that an 'unequal structure of representation' helps to preserve the state's 'contradictory unity.' But unity within departments is assumed in her analysis. Evidently, the efforts of managers to control and motivate staff do not compromise the representation of external interests. This assumption is challenged by the evidence presented below. Labour struggles within EIC had discernible effects on its policy output and affected the way it regulated external labour markets.42 Class analysis does help to shed light on the choices made by SLBs and on the development of their political consciousness. It suggests that the behaviour of all state personnel is determined not by the random influence of external 'reference groups,' but rather by the state's rela-

28 Part 1: The View from the Front Line tionship to social power structures and to an ongoing class struggle. Although the state's internal life may seem chaotic, Nicos Poulantzas argues that chaos is kept within reasonable bounds by a unifying ideology ('fused' into bureaucracy itself) and by the state's social functions.43 These factors bring coherence to the state's actions, but hierarchy and unequal salaries divide state workers, according to Poulantzas, and prevent them from intervening as an autonomous political force. This point has been disputed by Bob Jessop, who argues that parts of the public workforce can adopt strategies that make them more 'class-relevant' than others. But Poulantzas in his early work depicts ideology as the state's 'internal cement,' binding public servants to official purposes with claims of neutrality and talk of the 'national interest.' Later, however, he grew less certain, and as the Keynesian state sunk into crisis he notes that 'the struggles of the popular masses constantly call into question the unity of the state personnel as a category in the service of the existing power and hegemonic fraction of the dominant classes.'44 Here both the integrity of the bureaucratic hierarchy, and the effectiveness of its political interventions, are contingent upon conjunctural factors like the strategies and tactics of the, very narrowly defined, working class.45 Bureaucratic unity is no longer assumed, policy and management overlap, and the 'contradictory unity' of the state is constructed not only horizontally between branches, but also vertically within them. This does not mean that Poulantzas saw much space for individual resistance. His emphasis on classes, categories, fractions, and strata left little room for it, and his use of 'individualization' equated it with weakness. Moreover, the class position and class origins of state workers were said to foster conservative attitudes. Even those 'state personnel who go over to the side of the popular masses often live their revolt in the terms of the dominant ideology, such as it is inscribed in the framework of state.' Concern for 'stability' and 'national unity' might lead them to oppose blatant violations of the state's supposed neutrality, but also to defend bureaucratic hierarchy and the division between rulers and ruled.46 'Indeed, nothing is clearer than the profound distrust which mass initiatives for self-management or direct democracy awaken in sections of the personnel otherwise favourable to democratization of the State.'47 Like SLB theory, Poulantzas emphasized the privileges and power associated with work in state bureaucracies. To Poulantzas, Lipsky's SLBs 'participate, even if in a simple executive capacity ... in the tasks of ideological inculcation and political repression of the dominated classes.' Each bureaucrat 'tends to exercise induced relations of author-

'Appearing to Be in Control' 29 ity and of the secrecy of knowledge over subordinate agents' (including colleagues and clients) to a degree which finds no equivalent within the gradations of the manual working class.48 These characteristics (along with the 'unproductive,' mental nature of their work) led Poulantzas to situate all but the most senior state officials among the 'bureaucratized petty bourgeoisie' or 'new petty bourgeoisie.' In a Marxist context, this categorization tends to reopen old wounds. Drawing from a classic but dated study, Poulantzas casually observes that members of the (traditional) petty bourgeoisie generally constitute 'a large part of blacklegs among the personnel of an enterprise on strike.'49 The traditional petty bourgeoisie have been linked to support for authoritarian regimes and to a long history of vacillation, indecision, and betrayal at workers' expense. But Poulantzas was intent on discovering both the specificity of the new petty bourgeoisie and its potential in terms of revolutionary alliances. He continually emphasized that the support of even progressive fractions of this class could be won but not automatically counted on, and could always be lost to the blandishments of the bourgeoisie.50 Poulantzas consistently labelled all state personnel either bourgeois (at the 'upper reaches' of the hierarchy) or petty bourgeois, old and new (at the 'intermediate and subaltern levels'). This claim seems to refer both to the class character of jobs inside the state, and to the class origins of their occupants. The bureaucracy expands to absorb 'surplus population,' to transform atomized subordinate classes into 'supporting classes,' and to take advantage of their inherent 'power fetishism.' But it is overwhelmingly the petty bourgeoisie who fit the bill in each of these respects.51 Poulantzas did not see this process reaching out to displaced members of the working class, as James O'Connor did.52 Writing in different contexts, these authors perhaps reflected the varied composition of French and American 'surplus populations,' and the divergent strategies used to contain them. In Canada the federal state absorbed thousands of war veterans after 1945, and since many were draftees their class origins were fairly diverse.53 In any case, the growing insecurity of state work has led to eclectic employment histories in both the public and private sectors. Making a priori assumptions about the class backgrounds of state workers would thus seem increasingly unwise. Poulantzas would probably reject the notion that 'boundary-spanning' could determine the interests and behaviour of front-line personnel. He explicitly denied that institutional location could delimit class location, and he linked this notion to bourgeois ideology and organiza-

30 Part 1: The View from the Front Line tion theory. To him 'apparatuses are never anything other than the materialization and condensation of class relations,' and so they could only mediate more fundamental class effects.54 Nevertheless, those new petty bourgeoisie he considers most likely to polarize to the side of the working class include fractions nearest the boundary with workers (in terms of pay, promotional opportunities, working conditions, and personal connections) and those 'more or less separate from the actual bureaucratic hierarchy.'55 These criteria obviously echo the requirements for client contact and discretion which define the SLB category. Elsewhere, attacking Braverman's contention that all service work is becoming more regimented and factorylike, Poulantzas claims that bureaucratization is not the same as factory despotism and therefore is not producing a homogeneous 'waged working class.' Nevertheless, he and Braverman reach very similar conclusions regarding the prospects of nurses and health workers, public sector clerical workers, and other victims of mechanization.56 As many of these people are SLBs, there is evidence here of a fairly broad consensus on the significance, if not on the explanation, of militancy among front-line state workers. Challenges to bureaucratic hierarchy are central to both SLB and Poulantzian approaches, although their mechanics and substance are conceptualized quite differently. The influence of structural factors is much more clear-cut in the SLB literature: all SLBs are defined and shaped by their position at the edges of the state system, and within some limits their behaviour is a variation on a standardized universal response - individual 'autonomy-enhancing' or 'coping.' In Poulantzas these influences are more complex, reflecting hegemonic ideologies and the evolving class struggle. However, neither he nor many other Marxists would dispute the importance of the particular boundaries identified by SLB theory. These might help determine a fraction's political stance (its position in the class struggle) even if they were irrelevant to its 'objective' class location (its place in the class structure).57 It is clear that Lipsky et al. believe that state structures offer space for individual SLBs to exercise autonomous influence over policy: enough space to evade the formal hierarchy and muddy the lines of authority with 'countervailing' power.58 Thus the aggregate effect of SLB behaviour may be to undermine or displace the policy preferences of their nominal superiors, irrespective of whether SLBs are collectively organized. Yet since SLB preferences are assumed to be 'individually self-maximizing,' and since these theorists stay for the most part within the confines of mainstream thinking, their conception of SLB power is a limited one. In

'Appearing to Be in Control' 31 this theory, policies may be neutralized or general democratic principles offended, but capitalist democracy is never fundamentally threatened. People in strategic jobs may wield disruptive influence, but potentially more severe effects at this level are not really explored. Lipsky can envisage SLBs participating in a larger social movement for relatively radical reforms, but his failure to seriously examine the state's relations of production leads him to overestimate the potential for reconciliation among SLB, management, and client interests. Lipsky and other SLB theorists effectively 'live their revolt in the dominant ideology.' Poulantzas also failed to consider the full spectrum of human action. Individualization among the subordinate classes was, to him, a sign of weakness. Resistance along these lines was functional for the system as a whole, and incapable of producing even the disruptions noted by SLB theory. In any case, the state's prime imperative (to organize the reproduction of capitalism) was meshed with bourgeois ideology and inscribed in its structure. It served to separate state workers from the potentially 'dysfunctional' influence of the working class. Distinct class locations were thus created and different interests invoked. On the other hand, Poulantzas could at least conceive of collective action among bureaucrats and circumstances under which it might threaten capitalism (as progressive fractions aligned with workers to struggle for democratic transformation of the state).59 And he had a more nuanced view of their interests - which are placed in a changing social context and reflect both background and position. SLB theorists tend to use simple universal assumptions to account for individual preferences, and these are qualified only by the random effects of ideology and external 'reference groups.' Of course, in the real world events do not parcel themselves out so neatly into examples of individual versus collective action or functional versus dysfunctional effects. SLB theory displays a sensitivity to microlevel phenomena not normally considered within the purview of political science, and Poulantzas builds explicitly on the class structures obscured by Lipsky et al. Neither pays much attention to the organizations whose existence and actions are likely to have substantial influence over all these matters - state sector unions. Unions in the State

Considering the phenomenal growth and relative militancy of state sector unions over the past thirty years, it is remarkable how little their

32 Part 1: The View from the Front Line presence has affected assumptions about the state. The absence of collective action in SLB theory, and of mobilization in Poulantzas, are symptomatic in this respect, and they typify a larger pattern of neglect. Of course, Marxists have debated the link between trade unions and class consciousness for well over a century. Perhaps because this debate has largely ignored the public sector, it continues to produce excessively disheartening generalizations about the demobilizing effects of unions and collective bargaining. The evidence presented below suggests the neoconservative assault has, in some cases, actually loosened union restraints on membership mobilization. Clearly much of what is wrong or right about unions is contingent upon specific external conditions. Attempting to generalize about what constitutes a 'progressive' worker demand is tricky. Rosa Luxemburg, for example, suggests that 'only in the strong atmosphere of a revolutionary period can every partial little clash between labour and capital build up into a general explosion.'60 The converse of this statement, however, is that on some (admittedly rare) occasions, practically any worker action might have revolutionary consequences. The claim that economic demands lead inevitably to sectionalism and consumerism must be tempered by the recognition that economic crisis can make such demands unusually threatening. A diminished margin for concessions on the side of business and the state might combine explosively with workers' new or retained aspirations. This may be true whether or not these demands are part of a consciously coordinated national agenda - diffuse discontent sometimes becomes unmanageable, even for the 'managers of discontent.' Furthermore, there is no reason to assume that 'a fair day's work for a fair day's pay' is an intrinsically conservative demand. Richard Hyman observes that if 'fairness' is defined as reaping 'the full fruits of their labour,' it will always be a revolutionary aim under capitalism.62 Ideological struggle clearly plays a crucial role in determining the 'real' meaning of labour goals. There are practical reasons to respect the priority that workers themselves have accorded to economic demands. As Sheila Cohen reminds us, progressive agendas should not be conceptualized so narrowly that 'only struggles which do not exist ... can be seen as politically significant.'63 Similar concerns arise with strategies for worker control, which are often posed as the progressive alternative to perpetually escalating wage demands. Management may dislike any extension of the influence of labour, but there are at least two dangers evident here on the workers'

'Appearing to Be in Control' 33 side.64 First, ambiguities in the notion of worker control have been exploited by management to legitimize new work techniques (for example, total quality management or quality of working life), which usually offer little more than repackaged Taylorism and symbolic participation. Such initiatives have left a divisive legacy and often dilute and discredit the whole notion of workplace democracy. Second, the uneven pattern of success, which is bound to characterize any struggle for worker control, means that this agenda may provoke as much sectionalism as a more economistic one would. Leo Panitch suggests as much when emphasizing the need to guard against the victories of self-management becoming 'sporadic, defensive, and localized.' Similarly, green studies of cooperatives have begun to ask whether reconciling worker control and social and environmental responsibility will be as easy as is often assumed.65 In the case of state employees, worker control raises a third problem related to popular conceptions of democracy. Because the conventions of responsible government rely upon an unchallenged bureaucratic hierarchy to enforce the 'will of the people,' almost any attempt by state workers to encroach on the prerogatives of management can be labelled an attack on democracy itself. Responsible government, as we know it, is built on the instrumental use of state workers. However, all workers have both a historic investment in current democratic forms and a material interest in debates over the speed and quality of service delivery. Economic issues, and issues of control, are entwined here in exceptionally complicated ways, and management is able to range workers against each other by invoking both 'democracy' and 'efficiency.' So sectionalism remains a significant problem regardless of the nature of union demands and, as elsewhere, is partly a product of the contradictory relationship of workers with the welfare state. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the occasional mass confrontations that have accompanied the rise of neoconservatism provincially, in which public servants have usually played a central role. Prominent examples here include Quebec's Common Front strike of 1972, British Columbia's 'Solidarity' coalition of 1983, Ontario's 'Days of Action' after 1995, and its teachers' 'political protest' in 1997. The first was crushed by a bipartisan back-to-work law and the jailing of three union leaders. The Quebec union movement has never regained either the organizational or strategic unity it had for a few brief days in 1972. B.C.'s Solidarity broke new ground in forging unity between unions and community coalitions, but ended in what was

34 Part 1: The View from the Front Line widely perceived as a betrayal of the latter by the leadership of the former. Coalition work had advanced considerably (as had neoconservatism) by the time the confrontations occurred in Ontario, and both produced impressive mobilizations initially. Both also ended precipitously as the more conservative participants withdrew. None of these protests produced a decisive shift in government legislation, although how much worse it might have been in their absence will never be known. Minor legislative changes were gained, governments were often forced to alter the pace of change (or at least the sales pitch that accompanied it), and new links were forged among activists in many communities. However, in most cases the protests were cut short by those who promised to continue the struggle in other venues (at the ballot box or the bargaining table), and their efforts have met with even less success. Victory and defeat are surely relative concepts here, and neither can be measured solely in legislative terms.66 What can be said is that these provincial struggles clearly transcended the normal limits of bargaining in post-Second World War Canada. They crossed bargaining unit boundaries, united public and private sector workers, made links with other struggles, and were explicitly 'political' in their orientation. Major attacks from the right put the old rules in flux and allowed new arrangements (not always more restrictive ones) to emerge. While recent Ontario governments have tried to isolate and scapegoat public sector unions, they have also helped to reinforce alliances between the Ontario Public Service Employees' Union (OPSEU) and the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), and push teachers' unions into the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL). Similarly, a number of unions, notably the CAW, Steelworkers, and the Communication, Energy, and Paperworkers' Union (CEP) have been pushed by membership loss and employer hostility into aggressive expansion campaigns in 'non-traditional' areas. In the CAW these efforts are seen as part of a process that will create 'one big (general) union,' which is 'a broad centre of political resistance and mobilization,' both at work and beyond. This ambition obviously raises questions about the union movement's historical relationship with the New Democratic Party (NDP), and provides a basis for unity with Ontario's state unions (the prime victims of the Rae government's 'Social Contract'). But it has also been a source of conflict with the so-called Pink Paper unions (Steelworkers and the CEP), who have similar organizational aims, but more faith in the NDP. The labour movement is still debating various means of solidifying and extending C-l-j

'Appearing to Be in Control' 35 the alliances created around the Days of Action, but these have yet to make a decisive break with electoralism. This topic will be pursued further in Chapter 8.68 State unions may develop class-conscious strategies precisely because they are forced to confront issues that other unions can avoid or postpone. One of these is the connection between workplace and broader democracy. Another is the link between producers and consumers of state services. Service workers like those on the state's front line share a more intimate knowledge of their clients than workers on an assembly line, for example, usually possess. Perhaps their relative distance made it easier for postwar manufacturing unions to pass on the costs of their wage gains - as inflation and surplus population - to workers in other sectors. For a brief period, state unions seemed to possess the power to drive comparable bargains relying on the tax system. These arrangements ended with Keynesianism, and as state unions increasingly recognized their common ground with clients, they have expressed at least a rhetorical interest in 'better service.'69 Unions represent employed or recently laid off workers. Welfare state clients, by contrast, tend to be long displaced or dispossessed. Their attachment to the workforce may have been attenuated by age, infirmity, discrimination, or the collapse of local industry. Those looking to Poulantzas for guidance on coalition strategy would rank these people high among potential allies, as he sought a basis for unity between industrial workers and other progressive class fractions. In this respect, state unions involved in the national labour movement, and linked at least nominally with the interests of state clients, provide one of the more promising organizational frameworks already in existence. In Lipsky's terms, state unions are collective 'boundary-spanners,' well placed to work out a reconciliation of client and SLB interests. If state workers' sense of their own interests is affected at all by their interactions with clients, then front-line work can be seen as a daily ideological dialogue between members of these two groups. Clearly this is a space which progressive unions must penetrate if sectional differences are to be transcended. New workplace practices aimed at 'deepening' democracy might enable both groups to work 'in and against the state' and avoid 'the hopeless dilemma of after-hours socialism. The dilemma of strengthening capitalism by working as agents of the capitalist state by day and try [sic] to weaken it by our socialist activity in the evenings and at weekends.'70 For state unions to be vehicles with political promise, they must be tactically flexible. Actions at the individual level - involving

36 Part 1: The View from the Front Line the politically informed use of discretionary power - need to be built upon, not discouraged. Such actions may presage future collective ones, and respecting them displays a faith in 'the potential of people to sustain and recover their humanity despite contributing to or being subjects of oppressive social systems.Vl The British state workers who propose a strategy of 'material counterorganization,' in In and Against the State, start from similar premises, and like Lipsky they view private sector union practices as largely inappropriate in the state setting. Strikes are seen to be particularly harmful, as they cause more serious damage to state dependents than to state management or capital.72 These authors are also fairly pessimistic about traditional union structures which 'fail even to perceive, much less to help collectivise, all the thousands of acts of everyday resistance.' Others have noted that management control of the organization of production, and its consequent influence over the structure of bargaining, mean that 'not even politically conscious stewards can escape the implications of their captivity within the employer's chosen battleground.'73 However, as Panitch points out, unions reflect not only the shape, but also the contradictions of the production process. They are 'an indigenous working-class oppositional structure within capitalism,' and their internal dynamics are marked by a continual tension between democratic and technocratic tendencies. New leaders often expand the traditional means and ends of collective bargaining when old-style leaders are unable to 'deliver the goods.'74 Glaus Offe's influential essay on this topic argues that such swings reflect oscillations between the two fundamental sources of union power: membership mobilization and deal-making with employers and politicians. The latter he views as basically unstable since it leads to neglect of the former and thus undermines the capacity to resist counterattacks on whatever deals or legal victories were achieved. These victories may also be undermined by changing circumstances and rankand-file resistance. Panitch has shown that corporatism and wage control programs produce increasing pressure on union leaders as they (almost inevitably) become too onerous for the membership to bear.75 Hyman has described the labour process as a 'frontier of control' where the 'effort bargain' struck in general terms in collective agreements is given concrete meaning in daily struggles at the point of production.76 This occurs mostly in interactions between individuals, or in small groups, where the presence of major organizers like unions and management is only dimly felt.

'Appearing to Be in Control' 37 Collective agreements share with official government policy, then, the characteristic of being many times removed from the process of implementation, and both paint front-line realities in very broad strokes. SLBs are only indirectly controlled by senior bureaucrats, partly because state unions have become more influential. Front-line workers have, in effect, become objects of struggle for what might be seen as competing 'managements' - but clearly there are limits to the influence of both. This means that studies of policy production cannot be fixated on formal negotiations and agreements. This is especially true in the case of Canada's public sector workers. Their limited collective bargaining rights were not granted until the 1960s and have proven to be ephemeral unless used very conservatively. The frequent absence of 'free' collective bargaining leads one to wonder what has happened to worker resistance. Has it been suppressed or rechannelled, or does it simply not exist? The partial separation of union organization from collective bargaining in the largest federal public service union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), may allow lower-echelon leaders unusual scope for mobilizing. PSAC central handles negotiations for all its (occupation-based) bargaining units, while the union's 'components' are organized on departmental lines. Since collective bargaining has normally been considered a moderating influence on union militancy, these components may tackle a wider variety of issues and encourage more individual resistance than would otherwise be the case. This is what I hope to show with regard to one of those components, the Canada Employment and Immigration Union (CEIU). To understand production relations inside the state, one must have a conception of resistance which is not limited to the relatively public rituals of collective bargaining. Clearly there is a spectrum of relevant behaviour here, which runs the gamut from secret individual obstructionism, through mobilization and alliances of solidarity, to class-conscious revolutionary struggles. Poulantzas and the SLB theorists concentrate on opposite poles, and both, it may be argued, are weak on movement through the spectrum. All of this is potentially relevant to the theoretical plausibility of policy-relevant front-line resistance, as it alerts us to evidence of worker discontent in less organized, more localized, and more secretive forms. If, as some believe, worker discontent lies permanently simmering beneath the surface, then attempts to suppress it will only produce new channels of resistance. This is why Don Nonini examined things like employee theft and working-class tax eva-

38 Part 1: The View from the Front Line sion during the Reagan era.77 To find comparable channels in the state, one might first consider management's typical response to resistance there. Altruism and Public Service

The most persuasive neo-Marxist theories of the state contend that modern capitalist states try to secure a hegemonic sort of class rule. This means they maintain a degree of autonomy from short-sighted business demands in order to construct compromises involving minimal concessions to other groups. The interests of the leading capitalist fractions are privileged nonetheless.78 Such states facilitate the accumulation of private capital, while controlling subordinate classes with a mixture of bribery (legitimation expenses) and fear (coercion). This does not mean the state's role is easy or invariably functional for the system as a whole. Striking the correct balance is difficult, and the 'equilibrium of compromise' tends to be unstable; its maintenance frequently requires complex reorganizations of the state itself. New regulations, new apparatuses, and new, more appropriate 'values' must be grafted onto existing bureaucracies if high policy is to reach the front lines. Failure to coordinate the internal and external dimensions of reform may distort the whole project. Here state workers can exercise real political power by resisting incursions on their autonomy and job security. At such moments - when organizational goals are in flux, and executives are reinterpreting their 'mission' — managers draw upon core values like altruism and service to reassure their workforce. The use and abuse of altruism has been a recurrent theme in a wide variety of progressive literature related to the welfare state. Lipsky, as was noted above, was drawn to study front-line workplaces partly because he wanted to understand how sincere client advocates were 'disarmed in their social purpose' once there. The authors of In and Against the State grappled with similar problems, noting that for state workers 'caring makes the (capitalist) world go round' by forestalling more substantial social change. This is, of course, the classic argument against reformism. But as these authors recognize, it is a difficult one to make on the front lines of the welfare state, where immediate human needs are so persistently overwhelming. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a work situation more conducive to liberal and social democratic interpretations than front-line welfare work.80

'Appearing to Be in Control' 39 Among women on the front line, the call for self-sacrifice may tap into more fundamental gender constructs supporting the sexual division of labour. In caring professions dominated by women, such as nursing, these will have been reinforced by specific forms of professional indoctrination. Such inducements to self-denial are not uniformly effective indeed nurses, clerical workers, and teachers (all predominantly women) have been quite militant in the past two decades, perhaps because they experience the contradictions of 'caring' so acutely. Yet altruism remains evocative for state workers on a number of levels (whether as 'public servants,' caring professionals, or parents), so it is not surprising that state managers have come to appreciate its multidimensional utility. Altruism also has its uses in collective bargaining. If state workers can be focused on needy clients (which capitalism produces ad infinitum) then support for strikes, or any other service disruption, will be undermined. Income support may be inadequate and intrusive, but state dependents suffer real harm when it is withdrawn. Yet few other union tactics come packaged with the legacy of practical experience and folklore that supports strikes. In this domain, altruism privileges each of a potentially limitless series of client needs, while stigmatizing one of the few proven methods of advancing state workers' claims. Altruism, then, forces the immediate interests of state clients into conflict with the immediate interests of state workers, demands a tradeoff in favour of the former, and provides no means of conceptualizing any longer-term or shared interests. Inasmuch as state workers are also clients of other state services, or both are members of a larger entity (the working class), it pits 'ourselves as wage earners against ourselves as consumers.' This contradiction is especially severe under social democratic governments (and in the voluntary sector) where management effectively says: 'We are going to ensure that we exploit your labour power to the full as [state] workers, in order to give you, as members of the public, the best and cheapest possible service.'81 Fostering unreflective consumer consciousness while turning state workers' nobler impulses against them, the client-focused service approach also creates more subtle divisions. By encouraging state workers to see themselves as dispensers of favours, and clients as fortunate recipients, altruism reinforces paternalistic professionalism and charity. The depiction of human beings as 'consumers' or 'clients' rather than 'citizens' also has serious implications for their relations with the state. In liberal ideology, citizenship connotes equal rights and equal treat-

40 Part 1: The View from the Front Line ment before the law. On the front line, other categories may be more important. Kathy Ferguson notes that public administration and organization theory tend to acknowledge two ways people relate to large bureaucracies, while suppressing a third. The recognized categories are as 'clients' and 'consumers,' but some groups act as 'constituents,' and the distinctness of their role is hidden.82 Consumers merely buy their products through the market, and so are the most passive of recipients. Clients, on the other hand 'must interact actively with the organization, demonstrating deservedness and proof of eligibility.' Members of neither category have much influence over the organization's product, because they are atomized and manipulated: 'Advertising, marketing, sales and so forth are concerned with controlling the behaviour and attitudes of consumers in ways not dissimilar to those used by welfare bureaucracies over poor people or schools over students. The groups Ferguson refers to as constituents are organized and 'interdependent with a bureaucracy ... able to exercise significant control over it.' She has in mind both corporate and professional lobbies, which often get lumped together with welfare recipients under the generic category of client. Vast class-related differences in power and influence are thereby nullified, since welfare agencies 'are not normally compelled to recognize and negotiate with their clients, nor do they draw personnel from client groups.'84 Rianne Mahon derives a comparable distinction. The 'unequal structure of representation' she sees inside the Canadian state allots the interests of one or more class fractions to each department. However, departments responsible for subordinate social forces act primarily to repress and control, rather than to represent them. In departments like Finance, this balance is inverted and representation is primary.85 The state, in effect, serves 'constituents' at the expense of 'clients.' So when management documents, like Governing Values,86 ask for sacrifice on behalf of clients, their neutral terminology invokes a tradition which actually cherishes the expeditious reproduction of class inequality. Why are such exhortations necessary? What motivates such elaborate attempts to reassert 'governing values'? Both Ferguson and Mahon recognize the importance of organizational capacity in mediating the way interests achieve representation. However, neither contemplates the consequences of mobilization - that is, greater organizational capacity - among front-line state workers. This is unfortunate because the whole service thrust in management public QO

'Appearing to Be in Control' 41 relations can be seen as evidence that these workers have begun to produce serious distortions - 'static' - in the social functions of the state. More precisely, they have created management problems in a strategic location where tolerance for such problems has markedly declined. Many previous innovations in management theory have been driven by the need to overcome mobilized or recalcitrant workers. State managers should be more receptive to such innovations when political pressures and/or morale problems are exceptionally severe. The nature and scope of the service-quality campaigns of the past decade suggests that at least some state managers discerned a kind of internal legitimation crisis within the Canadian state.8 They looked to public administration and management theory to provide answers to essentially political questions and thus resurrected the old debates between scientific management and the human relations school. In these debates 'the "touchers and feelers" argue with the "pushers and shovers" over how to best control people; no one argues against control itself.'8 As Silver notes, this literature is basically blind to the needs of workers, so its motivational capabilities are inherently limited. Ferguson takes us deeper into the manager's mindset: The terms of this discourse make any talk of altering the work process absurd; issues such as genuine workers' self-management would never arise because by definition workers are objects to be managed and the work process is an event to be directed by others ... Calls for genuine workers' control are seldom confronted in the administrative discourse; they are simply not spoken of at all ... Thus protest is seen as unruliness among the "human resources," and the answer is in the managerial provision of "psychological space." No conception of rebellion is possible in this language, nor is it thinkable that workers could participate in the direction of their own work ...' human resources' have only a function, not a point of view.89

One suspects that, as the internal legitimation crisis becomes more severe, such weaknesses will make management theory increasingly inappropriate.90 In 1989, when senior federal bureaucrats were called upon to consider workers and incorporate their values, they came up with a plan 'empowering' them to serve, and to serve in the subordination of their compatriots.91 The potential for a sophisticated ideological offensive began to evaporate as the limits of management science were reached. When insights were borrowed from a private sector momentarily

42 Part 1: The View from the Front Line obsessed with customer satisfaction, in a period of neoconservative ascendancy, those to be served were reconceptualized accordingly. The generic imperative to serve clients has been operationalized as an injunction for more responsiveness to constituents. Poorer clients find that 'better service' means fewer state workers, in fewer locations, distributing fewer benefits. Privatization turns some of these lower-order state clients into 'consumers.' This transformation weakens both sides of the service transaction: robbing state workers of the discretionary power to determine client eligibility, forcing clients to pay for some services, and sanctifying payment as the pre-eminent means of communication with the state. Passivity is further encouraged while citizenship suffers another setback. Those state workers who retain discretionary powers find their clients alerted, and periodically surveyed about new service standards and performance. The focus on client needs privileges the privileged in practice, but is legitimated in theory by the usual altruistic distortions. State managers who can no longer command loyalty to themselves now invoke client interests to control state workers, and these are interpreted so as to encourage unreflective consumerism among clients, demand ever-increasing productivity from state workers, and reinforce the conflicts which divide both groups. Engendering Resistance

In speaking of a legitimation crisis inside the state, and the significance of newfound organizational capacity among state workers, it is crucial to underline the intersections of class and gender around both. As will be seen below, the strike by federal clerks in 1980 rocked established elites on both sides of the bargaining table and fundamentally altered the political context of state work. Those elites were overwhelmingly male, and the clerks were 76 per cent female. Their strike was one of a few key struggles that heralded the arrival of 'a new breed of working-class feminists,' and convinced 'traditional unionists ... that women had won their union stripes.'92 But this victory raises many questions about why union women had to prove themselves in this way, and how they were able to do it in the midst of the neoconservative ascendancy. Our focus on front-line policy-making precludes a really thorough investigation of either topic, but some intriguing possibilities emerge from a brief review of the literature. The wildcats that preceded the 'official' clerks' strike, as well as the tone of the accompanying mass picket in Ottawa, led many to conclude

'Appearing to Be in Control' 43 that this struggle 'was as much about the subordination and lack of respect women experienced in their own union as it was about their low paid subordination within the workplace.'93 The latter has been amply documented by Graham Lowe, in his account of the 'administrative revolution' that transformed office work during the first decades of the twentieth century. The advent of scientific management and cost accounting, along with successive waves of technological change (from typewriters to punch cards) served to deskill and degrade clerical work. 'By the 1920s,' according to Lowe, 'the generalist male bookkeeper had become a relic of the past in most large offices, succeeded by teams of female functionaries monotonously processing financial data with the aid of machines.'94 The past few decades have witnessed another wave of automation that has cost thousands of clerical workers their jobs. But the earlier revolution had the opposite effect, producing ever more finely graded job hierarchies within vastly expanded clerical 'factories.' Work was not necessarily more monotonous than it had been at the lower grades before, but it no longer 'provided men a stepping-stone into management or entrepreneurship.' Instead, specialization 'gave rise to occupational ghettos that trapped women in menial, dead-end jobs.'95 Inside the federal public service, this transformation was initiated with a bang in 1918 (as Taylorism was deployed against patronage and the spoils system), but complicated by the state's role in absorbing veterans after both world wars.96 As administrators struggled to reconcile their need for new workers with the restrictions imposed by prevailing gender roles, a rigid division of labour gradually took shape. After 1918 women were, by law, confined to the bottom rungs of state employment. Hiring practices and later restrictions practically excluded women from permanent positions, and until 1955 they could not remain public servants if they married. When these constraints were removed, unofficial discrimination continued to reinforce the pattern of occupational segregation, as the Glassco Commission recognized in 1962. The vast majority of female employees worked as administrative support staff, and even within this category the classification system privileged the men who remained. After 1945 the latter became 'general clerks' with the career options Lowe describes, while women were hired on as secretaries, stenographers, and 'typerwriters' with lower pay and fewer prospects.9 Acting on advice from private sector management consultants, the state had reproduced market hierarchies based on class and gender

44 Part 1: The View from the Front Line within its own ranks. As will be seen in Chapter 4, this function is a central feature of the state's external labour market activity as well. So the state helps to reproduce the same relations that it internalizes. This circular flow is neither automatic nor flawless, and it is nearly always challenged in some way. Lowe has been criticized for depicting women as passive victims of this process and providing no hint of the militant agency clerks would display in the 1980 strike.98 Although he notes that reorganization was exceptionally intense in the federal bureaucracy, his thoughts on clerical militancy are generalized across the whole economy, and they are generally pessimistic. However, this is only true of overt, collective forms of protest, and Lowe felt future research might indeed 'reveal more subtle and covert modes of resistance among those most affected by the march of office rationalization.'99 Lowe continues to regard gender as primarily a 'controlling device' within organizations. Managers, he says, shape 'paternalistic methods of supervision' from stereotypical feminine traits like altruism and deference.100 And these strategies seem to be effective - although the context here seems to recognize only overt, collective action as resistance. It should be clear by now that this is a common view. Management and union negotiators who were surprised by clerical militancy in 1980, as well as academics who wait for it to spill over into the public realm, may actually share a gendered notion of what constitutes resistance. Union women had to prove themselves with strikes to be seen at all through this lens. But the lens itself was changing. If strikes gained union women visibility and respect by the beginning of the 1980s, then something had shifted in the old paternalistic order. As Julie Guard has shown, women were front-line participants in the postwar strike wave, but neither mainstream nor union media treated their militancy like men's. Newspapers of the day tended to ignore women strikers, and even radical unions solicited donations with 'poignant images of women workers victimized repeatedly by greedy employers, brutal police and an uncaring state.' Thus the courage and power women displayed by striking were undercut by the 'relentless invocation of female fragility; an image that conformed to, and indeed, reinforced, prevailing cultural expectations of feminine dependence.' The promise of union organizing was differentiated as well, for 'women were consistently portrayed as dependent on the same unions that made their brothers strong.'101 As long as this approach prevailed, female strikers were likely to be

'Appearing to Be in Control' 45 vaguely threatening to both unions and the state. The postwar regime was founded on the image of the nuclear family headed by a male breadwinner, and women were portrayed as 'secondary' earners at best.102 Never a very accurate depiction of reality, this image became harder and harder to sustain as women flooded into workplaces across the country. The welfare state's last major expansion in the decade after 1965 employed many of them in schools, hospitals, and social services, and these sectors were the focus of Canada's last great wave of unionization, occurring around the same time. Thus Keynesianism peaked and began to wane just as women surged into the workforce, the state, and the union movement. The rebirth of feminism, and new challenges to the old gender roles, occurred in this context as well. Many female-dominated bargaining units (like PSAC's clerks) came into their own in this period, only to run up against retrenching employers and the new neoconservative paternalism. For many public sector workers, the channels of collective bargaining were severely constricted (with wage controls and back-to-work laws) almost as soon as they were finally opened. This, and the fact that most Canadian workers remain entirely outside the bargaining regime, make it essential to uncover other sorts of resistance, as well as links between them. That said, there are real barriers to sensing and researching mundane resistance or 'hidden transcripts' among clerical workers. Feminists who worked inside the state were struck by the 'elaborate rules about secrecy ... and the technical and procedural complexities of the policy-making process,' which defend the bureaucracy against any 'serious examination' of its political role.103 These are buttressed by the increasing scarcity of research funds, and the pattern of neglect that has characterized academic treatment of state personnel in general, and clerical workers in particular. Moreover, mundane resistance is unlikely to leave the sort of paper trail favoured by researchers, and hidden transcripts are by definition accessible only to a trusted few. Getting a sense of their importance inside an employer as large as the federal government is in fact a huge project, of which this book is only one part.104 Nevertheless, several lines of inquiry have opened up that may be relevant here. Some researchers have placed sexuality and gender power at the heart of office work relations, and they have looked at bureaucracy in a new light.105 The first full-scale survey of 'field-level' federal employees is now available, and it offers some insights into the effects of administrative reform on front-line work (while consciously avoiding 'gender issues' and remaining remarkably management-centred) .106 Perhaps the

46 Part 1: The View from the Front Line most interesting of recent studies suggests that 'clerical collegiality' can supersede formal bureaucratic hierarchies - at least temporarily. Lynda Ames compared work relations in explicitly 'alternative' organizations (a community newspaper and clinic) to those in a large social service bureaucracy. All were vulnerable to the ideological power of hierarchy as a kind of 'default' common sense. Yet she found that clerical workers had created an alternative organization inside the formal bureaucracy. In practice their work relations 'took on a very voluntary, non-coerced character. Their day-to-day working arrangements were not structured by the bureaucratic organizational chart.' Evidence of such 'incipient democracy' leads her to underline the importance of constructing a new common sense, and 'attending to the ways mundane interaction facilitates or retards alternative organizations.'10 These are encouraging findings, but to my knowledge they have not yet been replicated in comparable studies of clerical work inside the Canadian federal state. Nursing, however, offers some relevant parallels. Studies here give more weight to resistance, and pay more attention to the legitimative problems that tend to accompany administrative revolutions. Reflecting its origins in convents, and later in convent-like nursing schools, nurse training emphasized total obedience to a maledominated hierarchy. Cheap labour was extracted from student nurses, and after graduation they often worked alone in private homes, quitting when they married. These conditions made organizing difficult, and nurses accepted contracts obliging them to 'obey the authorities under all circumstances.'108 The record here led one observer to suggest that 'hospitals, for all their nobility, have been one of the most exploitative social institutions in the 20th century, both in terms of harming patients and in the oppression of workers.'109 Nursing, like teaching and (to a lesser extent) clerical work, is a profession that extended traditional female gender roles into the workplace.110 In this way, employers could take advantage of a new labour reserve without crossing the bounds of gender propriety. But as nurses were gathered into state-run hospitals, contradictions began to emerge. These institutions brought Taylorism and mass production to medicine, but, like other factories, they also facilitated consciousness-raising and unionization among workers. Moreover, bureaucratic impersonality, and the emphasis on efficiency over caring, seemed increasingly at odds with the noble goals that justified the sacrifices that nurses made. For hospital administrators, 'it was more difficult to use old ideologies concerning dedication to public good as a basis for ensuring women's compliance.'1l1

'Appearing to Be in Control' 47 Lowe explains the relative lack of collective organizing among female clerical workers by referring to their 'monotonous and unrewarding' jobs. Women clerks 'typically adapt by avoiding any lasting job commitment, reacting apathetically to work problems, or quitting' - behaviours which were long reinforced, he says, by the view that 'working was a prelude to marriage.'112 However the use of 'exit' and disengagement as responses to pointless work has never been confined to women or clerks. If collective action is seen as the only alternative to these, then both men and non-clerks have been reticent as well - Canada's rate of unionization has never exceeded 40 per cent of the labour force, and unions frequently claim that only 2 per cent to 5 per cent of all disputes result in strikes. Of course, to speak blithely about 'exit' and 'voice' as workers' strategic choices is to ignore vast disparities in power among them and vast differences in the degree to which unionization is regulated by the state. Canada's postwar compromise facilitated the growth of 'responsible' and 'respectable' unions, and the Cold War red scare suppressed unions that fell outside these bounds. Moreover, organizing to secure legal recognition of workers' bargaining and strike rights is generally much easier if their jobs are permanent and full-time - and such jobs have always been dominated by white men. Eventually nurses were able to shake off these constraints and form strong, often very militant unions. Like teachers, they have not been afraid to strike illegally when other options were curtailed. This was the case in the 1960s and 1970s, as both groups sought recognition and strike rights. It happened again in 1988, when Alberta nurses demonstrated 'that a female-dominated union could take on a right-wing government and win.'114 The late 1990s witnessed another burst of 'lawlessness' among Ontario teachers, as well as nurses in Saskatchewan, Quebec, and Newfoundland. In the first year of the new millenium these disputes were still simmering, and there were signs that they were spreading. Alberta - a leader in the gradual move to private hospitals - faced another illegal strike among health care workers in the spring of 2000. Armstrong attributes nurses' earliest militancy to tighter labour markets, the women's movement, and related trends which lengthened nursing careers beyond marriage. But militancy was expressed in other ways as well. 'Passive resistance' eventually undermined the onerous and exploitative hospital training schools. Declining enrolments prompted hospitals to cede this function to community colleges, where nurses-tobe were given freer rein and exposed to a wider range of ideas.115 And I 1 ^

48 Part 1: The View from the Front Line while the last two strike bursts are clearly linked to neoconservative restructuring, nurses continue to exercise the 'exit' option. Those who leave the profession inevitably cite 'burnout and exhaustion, shiftwork and long hours, a heavy workload, understaffing, low pay and lack of power.'116 (Generational differences are also at play here, and employers are responding with buy-out packages to lure older workers into early retirement.) The experience of nurses displays the complexity of agency and choice at this level. There are no simple links between gender and tactical preferences, or occupation and militancy, or legal limits and respect for them. Strategic choices, for both men and women, usually entail some calculation of the balance of power not only at work and in the labour market, but also within a vast array of other networks.117 Johanna Brenner has introduced the useful notion of 'survival projects' to describe how workers negotiate the channels of power in a capitalist society. Although these can range from 'individualistic striving' to mass mobilization, all 'will necessarily include forms of mutual support, not only in the workplace but outside of waged work - relations of sharing and solidarity across households, in neighborhoods, in kinship and friendship networks, in communities, and so on.'118 Because there are so many hierarchical and competitive pressures in capitalism, there is always the danger that such solidarity will be very narrowly defined. As Brenner notes, 'Registered nurses have been no more willing to take "less credentialed" hospital workers into their unions than male craftsmen were willing to assimilate the "lesser skilled" women workers into theirs.'119 More exclusive strategies are only sustainable, however, if employers accept them and those excluded remain quiescent.120 The revolt of clerks, nurses, and teachers can be seen in the broadest sense as a refusal to accept their exclusion from what were supposedly the 'normal' rules of postwar labour relations. But their revolt coincided with a hardening of employer attitudes against the old arrangements, expressed in the new language of neoconservatism. When male craft workers faced similar circumstances at a local level, they often responded with a vehemence far in excess of the economic threat posed by 'cheap' women workers. Brenner says they saw female labour 'as an attack on their masculinity, their sexual and social selves.' Given the nature of craft unions as survival projects, women 'threatened the practices, feelings, and relationships through which men had constructed a culture of solidarity within their organizations.' She also sees periods of heightened labour militancy as

'Appearing to Be in Control' 49 conducive to feminist gains, so there is a sense that crises of class rule and male hegemony may very well overlap.121 There is now a substantial literature on the problems women have faced breaking through (and transforming) traditional masculine cultures inside unions. These have ranged from patronizing neglect of women's concerns, through oligarchic leadership selection and minimal access to union jobs, to 'chilly climate' and clear-cut sexual harassment.122 Organizationally, such problems have prompted many Canadian feminists to resist full integration into the union movement, and they have created new structures (such as coalitions and networks) which balance the benefits of integration with the options of ioa autonomy. The entry of women into the federal state has been marked by similar dynamics, surrounded by a more intense 'loyalty-security discourse' built upon compulsory oaths of allegiance and the Official Secrets Act. Unlike union leaders, state managers had at their disposal the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and a shadowy 'Security Panel' (a product of the Gouzenko spy scandal) to enforce the limits of official tolerance.124 These agencies targeted political and 'character' deviance, which in the Cold War context were depicted as naturally connected: 'The nation-state was constructed as male and manly with manliness associated with order, strength, "rationality" and stability. The homosexual in contrast was constructed as the feminized male ... weak, unstable, and prone to conspiracy, rebellion, decadence and irrationality.'125 Kinsman et al. conclude, however, that weakness and instability were resident elsewhere. They see the purges of lesbians and gay men as evidence of acute 'gender anxiety' among state officials. The crisis was strongest inside the military, but because 'quasi-military' management styles were so pervasive, so was the crisis. It was expressed not only in the search for 'security threats,' but also in attempts to realign gender boundaries for the modern workplace. The authors point to 'Miss Civil Service' beauty contests (1950-73), dress codes, and the lifestyle-related advice offered by the RA News as evidence in this regard.126 But efforts to redefine femininity reflected shifting notions of masculinity as well. The authors see masculine identity as intimately connected not only with the nation-state, but with bureaucratic rationality itself. Public servants were 'presumed to be men who were capable of following bureaucratic rules and regulations.' Their reason and discipline kept the workplace asexual and 'non-erotic,' it was assumed, while others were suspect on these fronts. Thus both women and homosexuals 'destabilized ... patriarchal

50 Part 1: The View from the Front Line work relations,' and detracted from 'the service of state and nation.' The postwar influx of women and the Cold War moral panic therefore demanded new approaches to 'gender regulation' so that neither group threatened 'the gender and sexual boundaries of the institutions involved.'127 Given the bureaucratic context, it is not surprising that the solution relied heavily on more sophisticated forms of gatekeeping to preserve the secrecy of government documents. Security classifications had been relatively simple when the public service was a male preserve, but as clerical work was differentiated, so too were security classifications. From the generic category of 'secret' evolved the hierarchy of 'confidential,' 'secret,' and 'top secret.' Combined with the job ghettos described above, this had the effect of keeping secrets disproportionately in the hands of men.128 Senior bureaucrats controlled the application of these classifications to particular jobs, so that someone who was otherwise qualified could be denied a job or a promotion on 'security' grounds. Jobs or employees could also be reclassified rather arbitrarily to expel an incumbent. And because normal career progression involved higher levels of security clearance, and more extensive background checks, some gay men sabotaged their chances at promotion to avoid being 'outed' by the investigation. Kinsman et al. document a case of arbitrary reclassification as late as 1983 and note that while security investigations now are less likely to result in firings, they can still block promotion, violate privacy rights, and result in unauthorized 'outings.'129 Remarkably, even when repression of this sort was at its height, and gender-role transgressions were equated with treason (and punished accordingly), the forces of order faced continuing resistance. This resistance evolved with the strategies used to suppress it and was sustained by the sort of networks Brenner described as survival projects. Kinsman et al. are careful to note that many of the examples they cite are 'individual and pre-political' in nature, and they use 'non-cooperation' to describe the attitude often taken to RCMP investigations. But as the focus of what amounted to a political witch-hunt, even the most mundane of these examples could take on a political character. Maintaining an active lesbian sex life inside a strait-laced army barracks, for example, may be as political as the passive resistance of nurses to cloistered hospital residences. Altering army records to protect lesbian friends amid a moral panic is certainly as political (and more noble) than shredding documents to contain the Somalia affair, or hiding evidence that peacekeepers were poisoned in Croatia.130

'Appearing to Be in Control' 51 Similarly, the political nature of 'non-cooperation' is clearer than these authors suggest. RCMP undercover operatives were openly and collectively mocked at a gay nightspot in Ottawa. Gay public servants seem to have adopted an ethos of solidarity that precluded 'naming names,' so the RCMP was forced to change its strategy and look elsewhere for informants. All of these behaviours ran explicitly counter to the official 'loyalty-security' discourse (and often the law), and had concrete effects on the activities of state agents following an officially sanctioned policy. Furthermore, Kinsman et al. suggest that resistance at this level may have been facilitated indirectly by unionization and by the much-lamented 'decline of deference' after the mid-1960s. So there seems to be agreement with Brenner that class-based challenges may undermine dominant gender roles as well.131 It cannot be said that any of this provides direct answers to the questions that began this section. Plainly the clerks' experience differs in important respects from that of nurses or gay men in the military. Many of those who toil in Ottawa's white-collar factories are not front-line workers of the sort that concerns this study. But the disparate lines of inquiry reviewed above do hint at some answers and can help to set the stage for our consideration of front-line policy-making. Certainly if female clerks have worked for years at low-paying, monotonous work that allows few opportunities for advancement, then it should not be surprising that an acrimonious strike eventually erupted. There simply are limits in the degree to which any group is willing to be exploited - as nurses have consistently demonstrated. And if such a large proportion of the federal workforce is effectively excluded from 'careerist' options, they will have little reason to comply and conform in hope of future gain.132 Add to this mixture the conditions specific to 1980 - inflation, the legacy of wage controls, fears of job loss through technological change, the impact of the women's movement - and a more complete picture of the strike's causes might emerge. Many of these factors also help explain why clerks had to prove themselves through a strike. Apart from their obvious economic and political impact, strikes establish a presence in the public sphere. Everything that has been said above about class and gender hierarchies suggests that these particular women, though present, were encouraged to remain invisible in the public sphere - and were consequently widely ignored. I expect that (as Lowe anticipated) future research will show clerks engaging in acts of mundane resistance prior to the 1980 strike, as well as other sorts of responses like exit or disengagement. But Ames and

52 Part 1: The View from the Front Line Kinsman et al. lead us to believe that effective survival networks can be constructed even at the heart of bureaucracy's 'iron cage' and even (or perhaps especially) in the face of severe repression. Scott's work, it will be recalled, suggests that every eruption of mass rage into the public sphere is preceded by a lengthy elaboration of the hidden transcript it expresses, and countless individual acts of 'everyday resistance.' Further investigation of these would help people like Kinsman et al. achieve their goal of 'capturing the active sense of activity and agency of the oppressed'133 The still-unwritten history of clerical militancy will help to answer the second question (concerning the recipe for success during the neoconservative ascendancy). In large measure, clerks made their own success, undoubtedly supported by a complex web of survival projects. But they were also part of a larger wave, and a larger movement, whose entry into unions and the state provoked a multidimensional challenge to the postwar regime. Fiscal crisis, it seems, was exacerbated by a crisis of masculinity inside the federal state. Indeed, if we accept the equation of state, nation, and bureaucracy with old-fashioned manhood, it is not hard to imagine the shock the clerks' revolt would have provoked among those who had never 'seen' them before. In this light, the stern paternalistic elements of neoconservatism can be seen as part of a predictable response. Fiscal crisis called for restraint, the other crisis called for discipline and order. But both neoconservatism and clerical militancy are linked to the same crises, so their coincidence is not surprising. These are complex linkages. Neoconservatism fed off both crises, promised to end them, but has probably exacerbated both. Clerical militancy helped to create the gender crisis, but was born of archly-masculine, 'quasi-military' power structures. The strike of 1980 boosted the militancy of the union representing most federal workers (about twothirds of whom were not clerks) and helped to transform its leadership and structures. This means that the clerks' dramatic defiance helped to nurture militancy across the public service - expressed through unions and bargaining, but also through mundane resistance in thousands of daily encounters and front-line transactions. These, in turn, would contribute to other crises within management ranks and new strategic responses. Some of these will be addressed in the pages to follow. Others will require projects of their own.

2

Class and Management in the Canadian State

In this chapter and the one that follows it, I will try to insert some class content into the traditional preoccupations of management theory as they have been applied to the Canadian state. The intent in the first instance is to dispel any notion that the techniques of public management have been evaluated in a scientific fashion somehow above basic political interests. Thereafter, it should be possible to see a growing concern for policy slippage among management ranks, expressed in a search for new ways to control front-line workplaces. This discussion will provide evidence relevant to the second question posed in the Introduction. The chapter begins with an analysis of the larger strategic context of the late 1970s, describing the crisis of the postwar settlement, the ascent of neoconservatism internationally, and the impact of both on the politics of front-line work. Class and management began to intersect in new ways, and some of these are explored in the section that follows. Nostalgia for a sanitized, pre-Keynesian state infected public administration and 'back to basics' here often meant invoking the Glassco Commission of 1962. This commission articulated an enduring 'common sense' approach to state management consisting of three key components: (1) respect for private sector expertise, (2) deference to the market, and (3) faith in the arbitrary power of management. Resurrecting this sort of common sense summoned up its inherent contradictions, as well as a host of practical difficulties. In the 'audit revolution' of the late 1970s, Glassco's common sense was reincarnated in the office of the auditor general. The OAG is important both as a political actor and as a prolific source of data; its aims and methodology are examined below.

54 Part 1: The View from the Front Line Neoconservatism and the New Rules of the Game Critics of Keynesianism from both ends of the political spectrum have attributed its demise to the growing power of unions and their increasingly militant wage demands. The right invokes the allegedly market-distorting effects of such demands, and of state capitulation to them, as well as their association with unsavoury 'special interests.' The left cites their destabilizing effect on the postwar settlement which had ushered in the modern welfare state. Usually dated from the 1945 White Paper on Employment and Income, the class compromise at the heart of Canadian Keynesianism promised (and temporarily delivered) relatively high levels of employment, basic collective bargaining rights, and a social safety net to the country's workers. These concessions came as Ottawa was contemplating an orderly retreat from the exceptionally interventionist economic stance it had maintained during the war, a retreat which would abandon the wartime regulatory apparatus and most of the government's nationalized productive assets. These latter were picked up at fire sale prices by private sector firms, and capital was induced to accept the broader package not only by such direct bribes, but also by the economic and social stability Keynesianism promised to achieve through relatively unobtrusive demand management techniques. Moreover, the government refrained from any untoward incursions on business's power to determine the course of economic development. The White Paper stressed export-led growth to such an extent that it 'constructed a rather unique synthesis of the traditional Canadian staples-led approach to economic development with the Keynesian theory of demand management and fiscal stabilization.'1 The postwar settlement was a compromise struck at a time of relative labour strength - tight labour markets had led to union advances during the war, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) was on the rise, and the government was anxious to avoid either a repeat of 1919 or a return to the Depression. As such, it embodied substantial gains for workers and paved the way for future victories as well. Union growth was facilitated by the more receptive legal regime and by high employment, so collective bargaining spread to many sections of the workforce after 1945. The last great burst of organizing occurred after 1960 in the public sector.2 By the early 1970s, however, dramatic changes in the international political economy, as well as the cumulative effects of contradictions in Keynesian theory and practice, had produced 'stagflation,' declining

Class and Management in the Canadian State 55 profit levels, and an increasingly intractable fiscal crisis.3 Capital's response came in the form of an international assault on the terms of the postwar settlement, crystallized first in monetarist economics, and later in more elaborate but nationally specific strategies such as Thatcherism and Reaganism. Neoconservatism in all its guises sought to inflict upon organized labour such massive defeats that a new settlement could be imposed, this time reflecting a very different balance of class forces.4 In three major capitalist democracies the parties which had ushered in the Keynesian compromise after 1945 were the first to step tentatively towards a neoconservative alternative some thirty years later. The Wilson and the Callaghan Labour governments in Britain, Jimmy Carter's Democrats in the United States, and Pierre Trudeau's Liberals in Canada all made major concessions to the monetarist right before they were replaced by more enthusiastic, more reliable, conservative parties. Monetarism conceived narrowly as a money supply obsession has enjoyed mixed fortunes since these governments left office, and it is now largely discredited. But if conceived in broader terms as increased hostility to interventionism, as an attempt to 'subordinate political discretion to the dictates of the market,' its influence persists. As Simon Clarke notes, 'Monetarism ... has rapidly established itself as the orthodox articulation of the limits of state intervention, defining the contours of political reality that have increasingly been accepted by the Left as well as the Right.'5 Some might object that such a broad view of monetarism simply conflates it with neoconservatism, or with neoliberalism, or with the ideology of the New Right (however defined). This book will use 'neoconservativism' as the generic form and assume that all its variants share the same hostility to political discretion that Clarke sees at the centre of monetarism. Their prescriptions for state workers are, in any case, remarkably similar, and stressing their differences might obscure the breadth and impact of this movement. Clarke's reminder properly returns the focus to what unites rightist critiques of the postwar settlement: an antipathy to the discretionary economic power of the state and particularly its 'unnatural' effect on the way the market distributes economic and social power. As he suggests, neoconservatives were able to impose (at least temporarily) a definition of politics which substantially restricted the boundaries of acceptable political action. Importantly for present purposes, this was accomplished before explicitly neoconservative parties achieved office in Britain, Canada, and the United States. Consequently, the governments of the late 1970s were transitional in many respects: ceding policy leadership to the

56 Part 1: The View from the Front Line monetarists while continuing to administer an obsolete Keynesian regime, they were the Kerenskys of the neoconservative revolution. To the extent that the neoconservative project required restructuring, rather than simply restraining the Keynesian state, this was an inherently unstable arrangement which ended quickly in Britain (in 1979) and the United States (in 1980). In Canada the transitional phase was much more protracted, extending from the Bank of Canada's conversion to monetarism in 1975 to the Liberals' decisive defeat in 1984. Policy trends in this period displayed a volatility occasioned both by the collapse of Keynesianism and by the incomplete victory of its enemies. Neoconservatism's 'selfish gene' both caused and survived the deaths of its bearers (British Columbia's Social Credit party and the Saskatchewan and federal Tories). Later it would reproduce itself elsewhere (in the Reform party, among Conservatives in Ontario, Alberta, and beyond) and spark mutations in other parties (like the Liberals, and NDP). But, like Keynesianism, it has wrestled with more fundamental contradictions. Democratic capitalist states require certain minimal amounts of flexibility and autonomy if they are to fulfil their essential political role. (Evidence of this can be found in the general failure of balanced budget laws when applied to national governments.) This role consists of arranging the 'unstable equilibrium of compromise' among conflicting social forces which facilitates and shapes the accumulation of capital. These social forces (notably capital and labour) have certain minimal requirements of their own that must either be respected, altered, or somehow neutralized.6 Different strategic contexts make their needs variable over time, which is one reason the equilibrium of compromise is unstable. Another is that these requirements are basically incompatible. Offe and O'Connor have linked Keynesianism's descent into fiscal crisis with the state's inability to reconcile its accumulation and legitimation functions. Each of these undermines even as it perpetuates the other, placing the state in an ever more untenable position symptomized by escalating deficits. Poulantzas saw a state increasingly unable to control the 'crisis-inducing' effects of its own actions, constantly lurching between withdrawal and intervention: 'The contemporary State is caught in its own trap ... with its back to the wall and its front poised before a ditch. O'Connor suggested in 1973 that attempts to escape this strategic impasse might begin with managed recessions and wage and price controls. Both aimed to undercut labour's bargaining power, but controls would target the public sector wages outside the reach of recession. They would also help ease the fiscal crisis in a very direct way.8

Class and Management in the Canadian State 57 The designers of Canada's Anti-Inflation Program (AIP) of 1975-8 were clearly conscious of these effects, as Maslove and Swimmer have shown. Indeed their evidence suggests that state workers were the primary targets of the program, with other large employers brought in principally for the sake of appearances. Proponents were quite explicit about the strategic value of controls: they delivered a short, sharp shock and opened a space for the broader assault from tight money and recession. But controls over the private sector obviously interfered with what were properly management decisions, and so could not endure.9 Controls ultimately violated capital's minimal requirements. On the other hand, pressure was growing for permanent controls on public sector collective bargaining, through mechanisms which would tie wages and benefits directly to their private sector equivalents. This was effectively an effort to reverse the direction of economic policy and impose private sector controls on the state. This project foundered on union resistance and on Ottawa's reluctance to part with a significant management right of its own. The existing balance offerees could not support this kind of compromise. For reasons such as these O'Connor suggests that 'the only practical long-run option available to the state is to ... increase efficiency in the state sector ... and help raise monopoly sector productivity indirectly.' He foresaw the development of a 'social-industrial complex' which would privatize large chunks of the welfare state and make the remainder more directly supportive of private accumulation (the most meaningful measure of productivity in a capitalist economy).10 Subsequent Marxist analyses of neoconservatism tended to follow a similar path, emphasizing not only the movement's ideological, economic, and political innovations, but also the crucial role it accorded state restructuring. Krieger suggests that neoconservatives aimed to overcome Keynesian compatibility problems by lexacerbat[ing] and strategically manipulating] incompatibilities between previously sanctioned demands ... and the perceived exigencies of budgetary, financial and labour market policies.'11 Neoconservative governments tried to reduce labour's minimal requirements by 'de-sanctioning' working-class demands and 'de-legitimizing' unions. Public sector bargaining was used to provide what Jessop calls 'macho-management demonstration effects' for the private sector, and it was marked by 'manipulation of fiscal policy and economic rationale to make working class and underclass demands appear incompatible with rational economic goals and the "national interest."'12 The early failure of most neoconservative governments to reach the

58 Part 1: The View from the Front Line deficit-reduction targets they set for themselves (and the tendency to move the goalposts with tax cuts and debt reduction if they did) takes on added significance in this respect. As many authors have noted, fiscal crises provide a continuing rationale for cutbacks and state restructuring, so neoconservative politicians actually have a significant incentive not to meet their targets too quickly.13 Business cares about the deficit to the extent that it funds 'non-productive' state activities, which is why the task is primarily to restructure, rather than simply to cut, spending. The presumption here is that restructuring on the scale contemplated by neoconservatism will require an arsenal of extraordinarily coercive measures to fill the gap left by declining legitimation outlays. Such measures would act to enhance, rather than moderate, what Marx called the 'dull economic compulsion' of the capitalist labour market. Another implicit presumption is that conservative governments will be able to deploy such powers effectively. The first of these has not gone entirely unchallenged. In 1980, Chorney and Hansen saw little possibility of a 'legitimation crisis' in Canada, because its political culture lacked a 'fundamental commitment to the egalitarian and communal values of democracy.' Authors like Leo Panitch have stressed that the postwar settlement struck here was comparatively hostile to the interests of labour to begin with, particularly in its minimal commitment to full employment.14 Both arguments suggest that the shift towards coercion might be more easily accomplished in Canada than elsewhere. Many early analyses seem to have discounted worker resistance as a potential obstacle to these designs. However, both O'Connor and Poulantzas thought the stance of state workers would be critical in determining the shape of any post-Keynesian compromise.15 O'Connor suggested that coalitions of state workers and clients might defend or perhaps expand the legitimative aspects of the capitalist state. He thought that state workers trying to reconcile noble goals and increasingly punitive duties might find common cause with their clients, the primary victims of the coercive shift. The alternative would be to succumb to even greater division.16 Taking another tack, Poulantzas speculated that the bourgeois-petty bourgeois alliance crystallized inside the state might well be shattered by attempts to increase productivity there. If public servants were forced to the left, conditions of 'administrative debility' might ensue. Given the state's crucial political role, this situation would worsen an already severe hegemonic crisis.17 Both of these analyses placed state workers at the epicentre of the historic transition neoconservatives were attempting to achieve. In this

Class and Management in the Canadian State 59 larger sense, all state workers had come to occupy 'strategic jobs' of the sort discussed on a smaller scale by Wright.18 State workers were now spanning not only static organizational boundaries, but also the shifting boundaries of successive hegemonic regimes. If boundary-spanning per se is indeed a source of social power, then state workers have gained an unprecedented degree of potential power since the mid-1970s. The translation of this potential into actuality is what concerns us below. The Policy Process, Management, and Resistance

The insights of class analysis are often dismissed by mainstream researchers as being too abstract to explain specific policy decisions. Neo-Marxist theories of the state, for example, focus on long-term, systematic biases in policy-making. While this reflects a necessary sensitivity to history and context, it is true that class has not yet been adequately integrated into explanations of decision-making and implementation. Giddens observes that Marxists are 'insufficiently critical of the way in which Weber actually characterises bureaucratic hierarchies. That is to say, they have accepted that bureaucratic systems of administration do have the traits which Weber attributed to them, but treat these as an outcome of the class relations of capitalism.'19 The traits Giddens refers to are those which portray bureaucracy as the most 'technically rational' form of organization, in which an individual 'is only a single cog in an ever-moving mechanism which prescribes to him [sic] an essentially fixed rate of march.' Uncritical adoption of such Weberian assumptions can lead to a substantial underestimation of the space for individual discretion or collective struggles inside the bureaucratic workplace.20 Now it may be possible for liberal analysts to treat relations of production ('personnel matters') as only a minor subset of a larger process of organizational decision-making. They have 'never explicitly addressed the question "formal organization of what?" and answered, "the labour process."'21 But looking at administration from below means starting from a position which places the labour process, and the class domination that characterizes it, into the 'absent centre' of organization theory.22 Explaining policy-making and implementation from this perspective means grappling with the problems of internal organization, labourpower utilization, state worker resistance, and external demands. To do otherwise - to overlook struggles at the point of policy production - is to indulge in functionalist and mechanistic interpretations of the state's

60 Part 1: The View from the Front Line role, and, especially in the present era, to ignore a central dimension of class struggle. It should be noted that theories of decision-making have failed to display much sensitivity to the related problems of program implementation and worker subordination. Rational, incremental, and public choice theories have concentrated overwhelmingly on the behaviour of elites within and beyond the state. It is not surprising that class struggle is absent from these theories, but it is curious how little they deal with 'implementation problems' (even as a purely technical question of coordinating personnel) at the lower echelons of the bureaucracy. Within the neo-Marxist school, studies of the capitalist labour process have rarely been extended to state workplaces. Although many of those involved in the debate with Harry Braverman insisted that the labour process was shaped by worker resistance, there has been very little consideration of what the equivalent to production-line sabotage might look like inside the state or what its larger implications might be.23 Even Glaus Offe, who investigates both labour market policy and the inadequacies of bureaucratic decision-making, neglects the workers operating in the interstices of these larger phenomena. Chris Boyle comes closer, using Offe's work to show how subordinate class interests produce 'static' in federal policy channels. But the physical presence of some of these classes inside the state is nowhere evident in Boyle's work, nor in the more Poulantzian formulations of Rianne Mahon. Part of the problem here is that there is no consensus on the class character of non-industrial workers, and researchers are understandably reluctant to shift their focus from workplaces, where class struggle and the extraction of surplus value are clear-cut, to the more ambiguous terrain of the state. However, there is substantial evidence to suggest that the state is at least indirectly productive, that its labour processes are essentially the same as those of the private sector; and that it contains fractions of all three major classes.25 Yet the 'objective' place of state workers in a class map may be only indirectly relevant to their effect on policy. Most state workers probably are members of working-class fractions, but for our purposes this is less important than their status as potential allies. Similarly, many social identities irreducible to class are relevant to policy, and the Canadian state has certainly used these for its own purposes.26 It is often argued that state workers are insulated from the 'normal' disciplining effect of the capitalist labour market, although other factors (the individualized, white collar, service, clerical, professional, adminis-

Class and Management in the Canadian State 61 trative, 'essential,' or 'unproductive' nature of state work) may keep them in check. None of these excuse the absence of state workers from policy studies, but how much do personnel problems affect other state policies? Can the 'non-subordination' of some public employees affect the state's capacity to influence its environment? As was seen in Chapter 1, Lipsky's theory of 'street-level bureaucracy' (SLB) provides a clear and direct answer: the unusual power of some front-line workers makes them crucial interpreters, if not makers, of state policy. In other fields, this has been termed the 'gatekeeping' function.28 Lipsky captures the key dynamics of gatekeeping on the outer boundaries of the state, but stops short of embracing the class analysis he needs to fully appreciate its potential. Poulantzas and other neoMarxist analysts were used to clarify this point; however, these authors have a similar blind spot with regard to the efforts of individuals. While state workers may rarely assume the position of revolutionary vanguard, SLB theory shows that workplace resistance on their part, even as isolated individuals, can undermine the social control functions to which they normally contribute. Thus some uncoordinated individual actions may have 'pertinent effects' on state policy, and they may in fact be crucial components of the struggle against capitalism. It could be suggested, of course, that this claim plays fast and loose with what is normally considered to constitute state policy. More specifically, it might be seen to confuse the influence of workers that remains confined to the realm of detail and implementation with "real" influence over the general direction of policy, presumably exerted from some identifiable point beyond the workplace. This more traditional position assumes a rather sharp distinction between policy and implementation, between ends and means, and between the inhabitants of these separate spheres. As will become evident, such distinctions still dominate analyses of labour market policy, the field which provides the empirical focus for the case study to follow. And they are implicitly assumed in current efforts to restructure the Canadian state. In contrast, and like SLB theory, some feminist approaches assert the political importance of constructing methodologies from the standpoint of individual experience, so as to remain sensitive to precisely the sort of micro-macro discrepancies that SLB theory seeks to explain. This is perhaps the most significant justification for a fairly wide definition of'policy.' Matters of high policy and debates among elites have so far been the pre-eminent concern of policy analysts, management theorists, political

62 Part 1: The View from the Front Line economists, and even neo-Marxists. This discourse has constructed a 'public policy' sphere which marginalizes both events at an individual level and individuals themselves. It leaves no room to examine policy as it is actually experienced on the front line. Studies of the implementation process (which preceded and influenced SLB theory) initiated the first challenges to high policy as an object of study, and argued for a much wider definition which is flexible along most of the lines where traditional perspectives are rigid.30 SLB theory seems to have absorbed lessons from this school, as it depicts policy-making as a struggle over both high policy and implementation, involving all levels of the state as well as actors outside it. Neo-Marxist state theory, on the other hand, allows remarkably little scope for state workers to resist their employers' functional imperatives, and consequently it is liable to accept elitist notions of policy with all their non-dialectic implications.31 Policy is not merely what senior officials declare the government's intentions to be in a certain field. It is comprised of actual patterns of practice - and neglect - at both the political and administrative levels, and it is intimately connected to social consequences both planned and unplanned/ Thus the means and ends of public policy are ranged on a continuum subject to a process of ongoing struggle. The points at which decisive confrontations are likely to occur will vary tremendously depending on the contours of that struggle. State workers, then, may affect the process in a variety of ways and in a number of places. Because Lipsky and his associates, in the strongest versions of their theory, define SLBs as policy-makers, and management as a relatively distant influence on their behaviour, one could in principle specify the front-line workers most relevant to a particular policy area in order to show how policy and state personnel management overlap there. But this theory provides very little guidance on how to compare SLB power with that of management and other social forces. Poulantzas sees both policy and management strategy as originating in a bourgeois ideology attuned to the needs of class struggle. But because the 'real' opposition in both domains can come only from the working class in its revolutionary aspect, petty-bourgeois state personnel cannot lead - they can only follow, or be dragged like the tides by the gravity of the working class. Such thinking merely perpetuates the subordination of state workers, as they remain instruments in the pursuit of broader (in this case workingclass) ends. Poulantzas also effectively rejects the possibility that state workers could have any influence as individuals, except insofar as maintenance

Class and Management in the Canadian State 63 is required on the structures which keep them isolated and alone. This, of course, is a major exception. Capitalist production processes are continually transformed so as to extend management control, and overcome new barriers to the accumulation of capital. These innovations are concerned not only with enfeebling the position of organized labour, but also with incorporating individual workers as fully as possible into the process of capitalist production. Students of the labour process, most notably Harry Braverman and Michael Burowoy, therefore examine management strategies aimed at the full range of worker resistance in much greater detail than does either Poulantzas or SLB theory.33 They also speak of strategies on the grand scale in which all employers and all employees are implicated. Such talk usually has functionalist overtones and instrumentalist ones with respect to the role of the state. But these are not fundamental flaws, since they can be corrected by spelling out more clearly the means by which the latest management strategies are transmitted to the state and the centrality of worker resistance to the whole process. One way of making this connection is to relate the trends in management theory to a larger process of ideological struggle. Jim Silver, for example, shows that one technique, namely, Peters's and Waterman's In Search of Excellence (ISOE), 'is Reaganism writ small,' in that it embodies all the essential precepts and flaws of American neoconservatism. The link to larger trends is presumably what makes state managers more receptive when an ideology materializes (in a condensed and operationalized form) as the latest fad in management theory. Of course this does not mean that the trendy approach will actually work, and Silver emphasizes the hype and hucksterism that typically accompany any new theory of this kind. Often, old ideas are simply refurbished and repackaged, so it is not even clear that managers gain new insights from these theories. Nevertheless, there seems to be a steady demand for this literature, and it can have significant repercussions inside the state irrespective of its theoretical novelty or its practical utility.34 More mainstream accounts of this process can admit that ideas are recycled, and that fads are too influential, yet still find some value in repackaging. Referring to the 'new public management' (NPM) ushered in by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Peter Aucoin notes that 'rhetoric has long been recognized as a central feature of change ... How political reformers have packaged reforms has thus had a significant influence on their acceptance.'35 Thatcher's package contained a compelling reassertion of political leadership over bureaucrats, private

64 Part 1: The View from the Front Line sector management and 'efficiency' over bureaucracy, and client needs over state control.36 Its rhetorical appeal at home and abroad was initially buttressed by her forceful personality and her exceptional commitment to administrative reform.37 But these factors do not fully explain the appeal and persistence of the new public management, even after her demise. Part of the problem here is that mainstream accounts provide only a vague sense of the limits placed upon state reform by class power, expressed both economically and ideologically. Aucoin and Savoie suggest that the 'acceptance factor' and a 'disbelief culture' restrained the progress of NPM inside Canada's public service. They agree that Thatcher, Reagan, and Mulroney arrived in office without very detailed agendas and 'appeared to know what not to do rather than what to do.'38 Consequently, all were vulnerable to trendy management fashions, and by the late 1980s 'TQM [total quality management] was the new fad and In Search of Excellence was as old as yesterday's miniskirt.'39 The new style, as well as many others, found expression in Canada's Public Service 2000 (PS 2000), which *accept[ed] just about every tenet of management reform ... in vogue at the time.'40 As will be seen, PS 2000 tried to induce 'culture change' from above and was remarkably devoid of structural innovations. It failed to satisfy managers seeking real limits on the central control of staffing, but allowed senior bureaucrats to espouse some of the more grandiose ambitions of the 'total quality' movement.41 These efforts were scaled down after the Liberals were returned to power in 1993, and a more modest and decentralized attempt at management renewal was unveiled under the banner of La Releve. La Releve is the product of another internal task force, and seeks to boost the morale of a beleaguered public service. But its loose form and vague slogans have simply allowed managers to pursue their traditional agendas under a new label. This initiative is remarkable as well for the sheer number of disparate management cliches it seeks to embrace, but it has been eclipsed by other developments.42 The Liberals regained office with a mandate to avoid constitutional entanglements, but amid expectations that they would achieve decentralization through other means. In power they have accelerated the pace of privatization, continued Conservative experiments with public-private hybrids, for example, 'special operating agencies' (SOAs), devolved effective authority and thousands of federal workers to the provinces, and loosened restrictions on the provincial use of health, education, and welfare funds. The latter, combined with continued fiscal restraint, has

Class and Management in the Canadian State 65 allowed and/or forced the provinces to consider new ways of delivering these services. At this moment of existential crisis, governments at all levels have again turned to management theory for inspiration and justification. They have found both in the book Reinventing Government, by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler.43 This bestseller is widely known for its injunction that governments should 'steer' not 'row' - that is, they should concentrate on forming policy and instigating action rather than delivering programs themselves. An appendix lists thirty-six 'alternative service delivery options,' while two tables succinctly outline the comparative strengths of the public, private, and third (non-profit) sectors, and the appropriate division of social tasks among them.44 Reinventing Government has helped to popularize the notion of 'governance,' which Gaebler defines as 'the way in which we as a society collectively make our decisions using the full resources of our society - not just governmental resources and certainly not just tax resources.'45 These authors pitch governance as at once more efficient and more democratic than bureaucratic public administration. The latter, we are told, is being transformed by the 'entrepreneurial spirit' and is increasingly open to privatization, contracting out, and other market-inspired reforms. But there are limits. 'Few Americans,' the authors admit, 'would really want government to act just like a business - making quick decisions behind closed doors for private profit.'46 In a prominent (but less-noted) chapter, the authors describe a variety of citizen involvement schemes, and embrace the concept of 'participatory democracy.'4 It is not hard to understand the appeal of this package to cocky capitalists, frustrated middle managers, and disenchanted citizens. The book is consistently optimistic and replete with concrete examples of innovative and apparently effective approaches to persistent social problems. It speaks to a real social need for new thinking about public organizations and public space - a need that will be addressed from another perspective below (in Chapter 8). But why are senior bureaucrats, whose empires are presumably targeted for dissolution, so enamoured of this project? The short answer is that Reinventing Government, like most management bestsellers, carefully avoids threatening those currently atop the pyramid and in fact caters to their egos and ambitions. Early on it notes that 'services can be contracted out or turned over to the private sector. But governance cannot.'48 In the face of calls from some quarters to privatize practically everything the state does, Osborne and Gaebler may be seen to have set out a fairly wide perimeter for 'core' government

66 Part 1: The View from the Front Line functions. Moreover, their rehabilitation of policy-making as a legitimate executive activity (versus the overwhelming recent emphasis on management} may help restore the tarnished lustre of elite public service. There are strong hints in Reinventing Government that a transition to 'governance' will actually increase the effective power of senior bureaucrats. Outside the sclerotic channels of bureaucracy, those who 'steer' are offered access to the 'full resources of our society.' In the remaining government services, workers will take 'ownership' and presumably also think like owners - a goal of employers everywhere.49 At these lower reaches, jobs may be lost in the transition, but senior officials need not worry, since 'the job satisfaction of the workers increases dramatically' in the privatized workforce.50 Perhaps more ominously, Gaebler suggests that, once the bureaucratic baggage is pared away, the challenge will be 'to create a taxpaying clientele that likes what governments do and how they do it.'51 For those who have long felt 'overloaded' by unpredictable social demands, the latter links corporate market manipulation with the promise of a more stable policy environment. This is one of the attractions of 'partnerships,' as will be seen below.52 But it hardly augurs well for a vibrant participatory democracy. In each of the cases cited above, beleaguered governments and their senior officials have turned to management theory in times of crisis. Management theory is overwhelmingly dominated by corporate models, as is the advice it offers to government. Thus it is not surprising that one of the few critical readings of the new public management sees at its core a sort of applied ideology- 'managerialism' -which acts 'as a transmission belt for neo-liberalism' and adds a 'technocratic veneer to ,a political agenda.'53 That agenda is intimately connected to real material interests and strategic preferences both outside and inside the state. In the first category is the burgeoning 'social-industrial complex' of private multinationals seeking to replace state suppliers. They now profess competence in a wide variety of fields and generally squeeze profits from government contracts with high-tech, non-union, and increasingly coercive 'services' like workfare, boot camps, and 'super-prisons.'54 In the second category may be placed the growing ranks of auditors and management consultants. These are the foot soldiers of managerialism, and as will be seen, they have taken their banner deep into the heart of the state. In the process they have secured provisions for themselves as well. Neither of these groups, nor the broader forces they represent, get much play in mainstream accounts, and consequently the class content of many state decisions is simply missed. Ideological hege-

Class and Management in the Canadian State 67 mony and class power are expressed not only in efforts to control what, but also how the state produces. And this is not new. The Canadian state has always been sensitive to management advice and has turned to consultants at several crucial moments in its history. After the First World War, it abolished patronage-based hiring and, with the help of American consultants, introduced formal job classifications and 'scientific' management. Subsequent royal commissions and inquiries into related issues were dominated by the same profession.55 The neoconservative era has been marked by the expansion of the authority and influence of the auditor general. After 1975 that office moved well beyond strictly financial audits to inspect a wider range of government management decisions. This was justified in the new language of 'comprehensive auditing' which used 'value for money' criteria like economy, efficiency, and effectiveness, to evaluate the performance of management systems. The auditor general's new role was consolidated with support and advice from some of the same multinational audit firms that had helped to introduce value for money in Margaret Thatcher's United Kingdom.56 And the influence of this office, as will be shown, was aimed precisely at instilling a 'management consciousness' in senior officials who had formerly considered themselves policy operatives. While the auditor general increasingly acted as a sort of in-house management consultant, his advice penetrated the state in a very uneven fashion. Its force depended on the enthusiasm not only of local managers, but also of workers in thousands of strategic jobs. Everywhere it faced the common propensity to initiate only symbolic or half-hearted measures and only when absolutely necessary. Until the neoconservative consensus had reached critical mass, there was little incentive to pursue the auditor general's complementary agenda, especially since it frequently encountered opposition from potential victims, as well as conceptual difficulties. Some of these difficulties were the result of unclear (or hidden) success criteria: often new regimes which promised cost reduction actually were, or soon become, primarily concerned with tightening management's hold over workers. This apparently has been the case, for example, among nurses, studied by Marie Campbell, who were subjected to a classic attempt at 'deskilling' by hospital administrators.57 The influence of management theory is limited more fundamentally by the pre-eminence of other social forces. Braverman observes that 'as in all of the functionings of the capitalist system, manipulation is primary and coercion is held in reserve - except that this manipulation is

68 Part 1: The View from the Front Line the product of powerful economic forces, major corporate employment and bargaining policies, and the inner workings of capitalism itself, and not primarily of the clever schemes of labour relations experts.'58 Although these experts may be peripheral in the last instance, as Braverman suggests, industrial relations per se are not. And in the sense that management strategies represent an ongoing response to the demands of the class struggle, Braverman recognizes this, and has been criticized unfairly for neglecting worker resistance.59 Glassco's Common Sense Appeals to nostalgia and 'common sense' often form the backbone of neoconservative rhetoric. Whether comparing the national economy to household finances, embarking on a 'common sense revolution,' or professing faith in the 'common sense of the common people,' neoconservatives expend unusual effort tracing the source of their ideas to the core values and clear reasoning of 'the people.' However, as Gramsci noted long ago, 'Common sense is an ambiguous, contradictory and multiform concept.' Calling common sense the 'folklore of philosophy,' he stressed its historical roots and resonance: 'Every social stratum has its own "common sense" ... Every philosophical current leaves behind a sedimentation of "common sense" ... Common sense creates the folklore of the future.'60 Practitioners of public administration in Canada possess a kind of common sense that guides their actions and contains the ideological residues of past struggles within their field. Its essence can be found in the 1962 Report of the Royal Commission on Government Organization, commonly known as the Glassco Report.61 The analytical framework and major recommendations of the Glassco Commission have been echoed in many subsequent evaluations, as well as in the stated aims, if not the accomplishments, of successive governments. Glassco was commissioned by the government of John Diefenbaker after a long period of Liberal rule which coincided with the first burst of welfare state growth after 1945. During this period, growth was 'accommodated within traditional departmental structures and by traditional management systems,' as the latter continued the slow evolution begun in 1867. However, in the 1960s, four major changes (Glassco, collective bargaining, bilingualism, and the Treasury Board's new management powers) 'spelled the doom of this tidy little world.'62 Glassco contributed to 'a qualitative as well as quantitative shift in gov-

Class and Management in the Canadian State

69

ernment administration' during the 1960s, which Doerr describes as a process of modernization or 'nation-building' linked to the exigencies of Keynesian macroeconomic management. Others are more sceptical. Kernaghan and Siegel note that federal managers came to appreciate the first wave of human relations techniques only in the late 1960s, and they tried to implement them in conjunction with second wave techniques which were supposed to have rendered the first obsolete: 'The entire arrangement is reminiscent of an old European building with a basic structure from one era and many additions, each bearing the architectural style of the era in which it was added.'63 Glassco's Report may be seen as an attempt to set managers' bearings, and boost their confidence, as the pace of change threatened to overwhelm existing management technologies. It would be echoed in future responses to 'overload' and 'ungovernability' crises. Glassco's common sense reflected the classic concerns of management theory, prioritized in a way that was then fashionable. Later studies shifted this ordering, but not its ideological core. Glassco's Report merits attention for the way it congealed both the fleeting and the essential aspects of management theory deemed relevant to the state. What is essential can be reduced to three principles: (1) respect for private sector expertise - private sector techniques are inherently superior to those currently used in the public sector, and clearly applicable there; (2) deference to the market nothing occurring inside the state should disrupt the 'natural' operation of market forces; (3) faith in arbitrary management power — the best way to achieve (1) and (2) is to free state managers from all non-market constraints. 'Letting the managers manage' means accountability only for measurable results. It might be noted that Glassco's common sense differs little from the comparable American version. Carol MacLennan cites 'three core principles of administrative orthodoxy' (political neutrality, managerial control, and business principles), which comprise 'a kind of folklore of governance' which is tremendously influential though largely specious.64 The first of the Canadian propositions is exemplified in both the methodology and the content of the Glassco Report. The commission consulted such luminaries as former American President Herbert Hoover, who had headed a similar study for President Dwight Eisenhower's administration. Half the commission's investigating officers were management consultants, and most of the rest were corporate executives. Management theorists Lyndal Urwick and Peter Drucker were also called upon to aid in 'the adjustment of concepts and pro-

70 Part 1: The View from the Front Line cesses of public administration to the changing circumstances' of a vastly expanded postwar state.65 This group saw personnel practices as especially inadequate in reflecting 'all the relevant knowledge and experience available today.' Transferring this knowledge was complicated by the absence of profit criteria in the state, but the latter shared with private firms 'the common objective of achieving maximum productivity ... to attain the organization's goals with the greatest possible economy of effort.' The recent advances of scientific management in clerical work further supported the view that innovations in the private sector were portable and could enrich the state.66 The simplification of work, automation, and 'objective' performance standards could deliver productivity increases of up to 50 per cent, it was suggested. Similar savings might be obtained in quality control by introducing modern statistical sampling and improving employee training and supervision. Ironically, given later developments, the report disparaged older checking procedures on the grounds that they 'stem from a desire to achieve perfection and to avoid the public criticism that may arise from comparatively insignificant mistakes.' Equally ironic (and telling) is the suggestion that clerks be enlisted in planning productivity improvements. The report spoke enthusiastically of workers' practical knowledge and its potential contribution to work simplification. But that process was to deliver staff cuts of up to 30 per cent.67 Here, as elsewhere, management experts were remarkably confident that workers would help make themselves or their colleagues redundant. Such optimism, while not entirely misplaced, presumed a degree of loyalty that would be increasingly hard to sustain. Ultimately, however, innovations imported from the private sector did not need to promise much in the way of savings. The case for contracting out 'rests primarily, not on any assumption that [external] sources are necessarily superior in virtue or in efficiency, but on the fact that the essential concern of government is with the attainment of goals of public policy.' As for the means to such ends: 'Other things being equal, it is preferable to buy rather than to make, in order to restrain the continuing spread of government and to strengthen the private sector.'68 This same reasoning was applied to a proposed staff college for senior administrators. The commission recommended against this move, believing it would promote insularity and insensitivity to relevant developments in the private sector. Contracting out was said to offer more potential rewards and fewer costs than the internal alternative.69 Pragmatic explanations like these understate the general pattern of

Class and Management in the Canadian State 71 preference for capitalist management techniques and for exclusion of the state from core productive activities (both economic and ideological) . If this bias can be justified on practical grounds it will be, but in the end these reports rely upon the broader hegemony of capital to smooth over any inconsistencies. Such flexibility is essential if the state is to be kept abreast of the latest management innovations. The fact that this effort is necessary at all attests to the difficulties inherent in translating capitalist needs into particular state policies and points to the real significance of studies like Glassco's. Despite their scientific pretensions, these periodic and wide-ranging reviews are not intended to raise state practices to some objective standard of efficiency or productivity, but rather they aim at at reconciling contemporary private and state sector practices whenever these appear to have substantially diverged. The causes of such divergences are important, and to get a better sense of them it is instructive to look at the areas which most distressed the commissioners. Although willing to countenance state leadership in the application of new management techniques, they felt that 'it may not be appropriate for the Government of Canada to lead other large employers in fixing levels of compensation, benefit programmes and the working conditions of employees.' State practices here were seen to have serious effects on the price business paid for its employees. The notion of 'comparability' (a variety of market deference) was therefore continually advanced as the principle which should guide state decision makers. The report urged Ottawa to make greater use of the Pay Research Bureau's (PRB) capacity in this field.70 Federal workers did not have collective bargaining rights at this time (the commission declined to comment on this issue), so management might have implemented the PRB's 'objective' advice relatively easily. With the advent of bargaining, competing principles and priorities were introduced, and other, less quantifiable, aspects of comparability rose to the fore - especially Ottawa's exemplary effect on 'inflationary expectations.' These accentuated questions of strategy and politics at the expense of the PRB's more mechanical approach. Comparability has nevertheless remained an important goal of state compensation policy, as will be seen below. There have also been repeated attempts to link state wages more closely to the rates prevailing in local and regional markets, and the rationale for this can be found in the Glassco Report. Most federal workers were drawn from labour markets which were not national in scope, it said, and insensitivity to regional variations often bid up private sector

72 Part 1: The View from the Front Line wages to unnaturally high levels. The 'unrealistic goal' of equal treatment for similar employees should be restricted to 'categories of personnel for which the market is country-wide.' This would have allowed only managers and some professionals to receive equal pay for equal work from coast to coast.72 Hostility to national standards extended to hiring as well. The report claimed that there was 'no longer any need for the Civil Service Commission, or any other independent body, to ensure equal right of access to the public service.'73 The CSC's antipatronage role may have been obsolete, but its regulations provided one of the few checks against discretionary abuse by local managers. Thus the principle of comparability, when combined with an empirical claim that only upper-level employees were drawn from national labour markets, would serve to reinforce both hierarchical and regional inequities within the state. This thrust became clearer when the commission spelled out how these guidelines should be applied. It noted that comparability, as well as 'simple justice' called for immediate and substantial salary increases for senior state administrators. It also cautioned that the government should not commit itself to strict comparability in non-management positions 'particularly if it were backed by arbitration machinery.' The government's options should be kept open so that it might 'pursue an independent pay policy dictated, for example, by the national needs of a temporary inflationary situation.'74 Comparability was best kept loose, in other words, to ensure that it did not actually lead to pay raises for the majority of state workers. Simple justice evidently did not apply quite so clearly beyond the ranks of management or in times when exemplary wage restraint was required. Deference to market forces, operationalized as it is in Glassco and elsewhere around notions of comparability, effectively calls for the faithful reproduction of inequality. Any other course sets an inappropriate example for private sector workers and strays from the 'essential concern of government.' Thus it is not surprising that the commissioners' remedy for state inefficiency prescribed a large dose of arbitrary management power and lauded the potential creativity of unconstrained managers (the third principle mentioned above). The Civil Service Commission's controls were seen to be a major obstacle to progress here. Artificially divorced from its natural place as a function of management (because it reported directly to Parliament), the CSC's vigilance against patronage had unduly restricted managers' efforts to motivate employees: 'Good management consists in more than the avoidance of

Class and Management in the Canadian State 73 sin, and this Calvinistic approach to public administration, while well designed to discomfit bad managers, was bound to prove most frustrating to good ones.'75 The standard for comparison in this regard was clearly an idealized private sector model. Underlying the CSC's excessive zeal, the commission discovered a 'striking' and 'widely-held' belief that public service management was inherently prone to 'arbitrariness, nepotism and favouritism.' Rather than seriously investigating such beliefs, Glassco merely asserted that 'no convincing evidence has been found that any special factors distinguish the public service from other employment in this respect.' Thus public servants needed no 'special protective machinery' beyond that available in the private sector. State workers were told to look to the latter for an alternative model, where accountable and performance-oriented managers rewarded productivity more fairly and objectively than 'negative' systems like the CSC.77 If this sounds like typical anti-union public relations, the similarity is probably not coincidental. Both asked workers to trust friendly managers, rather than impersonal rules, to protect their interests. The report said state workers remained suspicious because most of them had not experienced a system that 'regards the rewarding of performance and maintenance of morale as prerequisites for productivity, and therefore assigns high priority to fair and objective treatment of its working forces.'78 This leaves the reader wondering exactly where employees might go to find such a system, for the report offered no proof that these practices were prevalent anywhere outside the imaginations of its authors. That the commission felt no obligation to prove the concrete existence of a model it advocated for the country's largest employer speaks volumes either about the ideological strength of capitalist mythology or about their own delusions. In fact Glassco's detailed recommendations provided very little justification for its faith in managers as defenders of employees' interests. The report called for more management discretion in many areas related to discipline and performance. Departments themselves were to be largely freed from the constraints of CSC authority, and the Treasury Board was to function in a more comprehensive, but more advisory role. As the ultimate policy authority for management matters, the board was to be separated from the Department of Finance and made more clearly responsible to Parliament. Departments would evolve management structures appropriate to their needs; however; individual managers were to have more power over reallocations, transfer, training, promotions, sick leave, hiring, firing, and layoffs.79

74 Part 1: The View from the Front Line The commission recommended only two new limitations on management discretion: henceforth departments would be obliged to lay off those deemed redundant after a 'reasonable' effort to relocate them, and they would be obliged to fire those deemed incompetent. This would enhance employee morale, for lines of authority would be clearer. An employee would no longer believe 'that neither his discretion, nor the judgment of his responsible superior carries any weight.'80 Thus clarity of rules and objectives, and the personal touch of a nearby superior, were to break down bureaucratic anomie. Alternatives involving independent worker representation were linked with excessive regulation and bureaucracy. Together these constituted the sales pitch aimed at neutralizing worker opposition. But the plan to unleash management discretion through deregulation, and increase productivity with layoffs and firings, revealed the more tender intentions to be secondary at best. Management discretion was to serve first and foremost as a means of achieving measurable productivity increases. Despite its age, the Glassco Report still dominates analyses of state management. Its name is invoked among calls for management freedom and proposals which would increase state workers' exemplary exploitation. The report's significance lies not only in its many progeny, but also in the evidence it continues to provide that an important part of capital views the state as incompletely controlled, or insufficiently conducive to private sector purposes, because of the way it is managed. The Audit Revolution: Glassco Reincarnated?

In 1975 the Bank of Canada abandoned Keynesian principles to embrace deflationary monetarism, and the government enforced comparability with wage controls on the whole economy. In the same year a revitalized auditor general's office (OAG) released what it called 'the most comprehensive independent examination of the government's financial management and control systems since the Royal Commission on Government Organization (Glassco) reported in 1962.'81 JJ. Macdonnell, appointed auditor general in 1973, clothed himself in Glassco's mantle to begin his assault on systems that he found 'significantly below acceptable standards of quality and effectiveness.' According to Macdonnell, nearly all Glassco's decentralizing and deregulating recommendations had been implemented. But the central control functions that Glassco wanted placed in a small Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) had been undermined by the latter's expansion to accommodate

Class and Management in the Canadian State 75 other duties. Departmental auditors were neither powerful nor numerous enough to take on these function themselves, so Macdonnell felt that the OAG had to assume the role Glassco had envisioned for TBS. This necessitated both a larger mandate for the OAG (shifting from narrow 'transactions' to 'comprehensive' auditing) and a substantially increased budget.82 The OAG's 1975 report also proposed the creation of an accountant category among government employees, so that this profession could be more easily unified against departmental mismanagement. The OAG was to have some role here, but the report echoed Glassco in demanding that a central agency be more clearly charged with this responsibility, and with financial management in general. A year later the OAG specified that an Office of the Comptroller General (OCG) should be created to coordinate the auditing network, and this was accepted by the government in 1977.83 Macdonnell had been an accountant and management consultant, and the OAG cultivated private sector links throughout his tenure there. The first comprehensive audit in 1975 was undertaken in close cooperation with representatives from large (often multinational) audit firms, and this pattern was maintained in most later studies through executive exchange or contracting out (the OAG was an early and extensive user of the latter). Macdonnell was a tireless exponent of comprehensive auditing and upon retiring from government would resume his campaign as head of the Canadian Comprehensive Auditing Foundation (CCAF). The foundation united internal and external auditors with management consultants in an 'independent' professional organization backed by federal, provincial, and private sector money. It was influential enough that one commentator suggested Macdonnell 'has not so much resigned as he has ascended.' A foundation pamphlet outlined the profession's aspirations, which extended beyond merely 'add [ing] credibility to financial information.' It now saw auditors becoming 'agents of social control, as third-party intermediaries in an accountability relationship between ... management... and the users of its financial information.'85 Macdonnell accomplished what he termed an 'audit revolution' during his stay in office (1973-80), but he used Glassco to legitimize it claiming indeed to be Glassco's rightful heir. He led the OAG away from a narrow focus on exposing improprieties, expanded its scope, and made it a permanent conduit for the transmission of management theory into the state. Ideally suited to take on the function of an institutionalized Glassco Commission, the OAG was possessed of substantial

76 Part 1: The View from the Front Line resources and excellent contacts, legitimized by its association with a profession dedicated to credibility, and responsible only to Parliament, where it was effectively untouchable.86 The OAG could not actually issue instructions to government agencies, but the very public way it made its recommendations and monitored compliance could at least initiate negotiations. OAG influence was later buttressed by similar pressures from the internal audit network it helped to establish (linking the comptroller general and departmental auditors). The CCAF was no doubt intended to consider future directions for the audit revolutionaries. While it is difficult to be very specific about the class interests at stake here, two things are very clear. First, Macdonnell's achievements were a major boon to auditors and management consultants, whose services were promoted within the government and whose firms were subsidized directly by the OAG.8 Second, that office was not the only link between business and government to be reorganized in the 1970s. Other institutional manifestations of the rise of neoconservatism included the conversion of the Bank of Canada to monetarism, the creation of the Business Council on National Issues and the Fraser Institute, and the consolidation of labour market policy in Employment and Immigration Canada (EIC). The OAG's exposes of waste and incompetence perpetuated the notion that much bureaucratic fat remained to be trimmed and helped erode confidence in the efficacy of the state as a social actor. However its more far-reaching contribution to the neoconservative cause came in the authoritative and seemingly definitive stamp of approval it gave to one means of evaluating state activities. The form of 'social control' encapsulated in comprehensive auditing was entirely consistent both with Glassco's message and with the ideological needs of the moment which called for the reassertion of basic management truisms. Comprehensive auditing claims the ability to determine objectively whether clients (in this case taxpayers) are receiving 'value for money' from an organization's management systems. It employs three criteria: economy (cheap inputs); efficiency (output/input ratios, or productivity), and effectiveness (outputs vs program goals). Aside from problems related to technique, and its relatively high tolerance for interpretation (Macdonnell acknowledged both), comprehensive auditing is tainted by the biases implicit in its central precepts. It is in fact much less politically neutral than its defenders claim or its detractors often assume.88 Disputes over the source and nature of value constitute one of the

Class and Management in the Canadian State 77 more fundamental lines of division between mainstream and Marxist economics, and value for money contains a distinctly mainstream approach which captures and prioritizes data on exchange value at the expense of less quantifiable use values.89 This means that the organizational 'underlife' which is the focus of street-level bureaucracy (SLB) theory, and indeed all social values and relations which do not contribute directly to the production and circulation of commodities, escape detection and/or are systematically devalued by analyses using value-formoney categories. The difficulties inherent in applying value-for-money techniques to use values have led to a continual search for more meaningful performance measurements, and criticism from a variety of sources. Senior bureaucrats cite the state's unique social role, emphasizing the qualitative aspects of policy or service efficiency. Critics on the left have argued that value for money fetishizes indirect measures of performance to the detriment of actual service. Productivity at a hospital might be measured, for example, by processing speed, which could be high 'whether or not those discharged are satisfactorily treated or dead.'90 The latter group notes the artificial separation in value for money between state services and social need. The provision of the former is subject to measurement and examined in isolation from the latter, largely because value for money has no adequate way of quantifying social need (it is faithfully 'supply-side' in this respect). And since value for money is 'neutral' about appropriate input levels, while nevertheless drawing attention to the growth of government and the need for prudence and restraint, it often helps to justify arbitrary reductions in spending and services. Auditors general have consistently argued that their role does not allow comment on the propriety of policy goals, only on the most efficient way of reaching them. However, the dichotomy between policy and administration is now widely discredited, and it is clear that the OAG's public judgments have ramifications in both areas. Through the dissemination of management theory (in public and via bureaucratic networks), and by practical example (using contracting out and private sector expertise), an OAG converted to comprehensive auditing became a permanent lobby for one particular definition of 'efficiency.' Canadian commentators like Sutherland have questioned the OAG's broad interpretation of its mandate and criticized it for trespassing in areas elsewhere considered the exclusive preserve of elected officials. Sutherland observes that the OAG has managed to reverse the normal 01

78 Part 1: The View from the Front Line lines of democratic accountability by controlling the agenda of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to which it is theoretically responsible. This is possible because the committee focuses primarily on OAG reports, and the targeting and timing of these studies is left to the discretion of the OAG.92 So that office, even while tied more directly to Parliament than most state agencies, effectively operates outside the scope of Parliament's control. And parliamentary control is itself hardly a flawless mechanism of democratic accountability. The real significance of the OAG's changing role lies in its context and nature: this transformation both crystallized and advanced the neoconservative counterrevolution. Ideologically, comprehensive auditing condensed traditional value criteria, then being reasserted by the new right, and associated them with Glassco's quite similar project. This enabled the OAG to play a pivotal propagandizing role for neoconservative notions of 'efficiency' in government. Institutionally, the audit revolution produced a more direct means of transmitting management theory into federal policy. A powerful OAG now stood between energized audit networks inside and beyond the state (the OCG and departmental auditors and the CCAF respectively). Most of these victories had been set down in law by 1977, while the government was reeling from a series of scandals involving the management of Crown corporations. By this time, a pattern of close attention to legitimation programs (including EIC's) had become apparent in OAG reports, and the OAG was becoming more explicit about its preferred standards of efficiency. In its 1978 report, the OAG reviewed performance measurement systems, which then covered about 39 per cent of the federal workforce. Recognizing that previous attempts to measure productivity in government had concentrated overwhelmingly on the efficiency of labour, the OAG displayed little inclination to stray from this path: 'Monitoring and improving the productivity of labour is seldom an easy task; it is perhaps more difficult in the public sector ... Nevertheless, the efficient use of labour is a basic responsibility of management. It must receive adequate management attention to satisfy the expectations of the Treasury Board ... and to withstand the audit scrutiny of this Office.'94 First to be scrutinized by the auditor general were some 100,000 employees in twelve unnamed departments whose labour-intensive processing and clerical work were easily subjected to quantitative analysis. Systems monitoring efficiency were found to be adequate in only two cases, and they elsewhere provided data that was irrelevant or QO

Class and Management in the Canadian State 79 ignored: 'In most operations we audited, management did not know the actual level of efficiency or how much it might be increased. In most labour-intensive situations, there was insufficient effort to increase productivity.'95 Even in the two cases where monitoring was deemed adequate, productivity levels were unacceptably low, according to the OAG. Employing 'engineered work measurement standards' of the sort used by scientific managers to 'rationalize' clerical work, the OAG estimated efficiency in these cases to be 65 per cent of the standard (80 per cent was judged a reasonable rate). Generalizing from these two workplaces, the OAG deemed that every 1 per cent increase in efficiency among 166,000 potentially measurable federal jobs might save $25 million, given 'careful planning, taking advantage of attrition and non-hiring in the face of increased demand for services.'96 To improve productivity, the auditor general recommended careful consultation with the private sector to determine the precise definitions of 100 per cent efficiency and facilitate a constant push towards these goals (whether or not any human being had ever reached them). Efficiency considerations were then to be fully integrated into the policy process, effectively dissolving the distinction between means and ends which had sustained the OAG's past protestations of political neutrality.97 Not surprisingly, the use of business standards at a time of widespread attacks on workers' rights meant that 'comparability' was seen to necessitate hiring freezes, service reductions, and overwork for state workers. In these circumstances, the perennial accusation of obsolescence in the face of state-of-the-art private sector practices was exceptionally disingenuous: it amounted to an assertion that progress consisted of a return to the past. Seeking purportedly equal sacrifice in the name of dubious goals, the auditor general truly followed in Glassco's footsteps, and indeed in the footsteps of many since. Outside the state, slogans like 'efficiency,' 'productivity,' 'quality,' 'service,' and 'international competitiveness' traditionally signal new business crusades against the latest barrier (or perceived barrier) to faster accumulation of capital. These campaigns attempt in the first instance to unite business, but successful ones will simultaneously remotivate the workforce and restore confidence and trust in business leadership. They can promise prosperity for all with some credibility (because capital does control the economy) or at least offer assurances that most will benefit while the rest are taken care of (somehow). Using such slogans inside the state can be tricky. It is by no means clear that harder

80 Part 1: The View from the Front Line work there will benefit all state employees, because campaigns of this kind typically devalue work outside the market and seek to curb the state's 'parasitic' excesses. The prospects of higher wages and greater job security are more remote in the state than in the private sector. And to the extent that scientific management of this sort is deprived of bribery, and relies on fear to motivate the workforce, it must offer workers less cash for more work. Like those who later sought international competitiveness through free trade, and promised 'adjustment' programs to its victims, Macdonnell and Glassco promised productivity through efficiency standards and little but management sensitivity to those who did not measure up. In both instances the distribution of sacrifices was heavily skewed, and the compensatory measures were feeble at best. How could it be otherwise? If market rationality was being unleashed to achieve the slogan's goal, neither could be undermined by excessive support for 'losers.'

3

Beyond Reason: The New Legitimation

D'Avignon and Symbolic Legitimation

Since the 1970s the threat of international competition has been used to inflate productivity expectations and justify radical restructuring in both business and government. But with fiscal crisis dramatically reducing the margin for material concessions, and overt coercion generating as well as suppressing dissent, managers need new, cheap ways to secure employee loyalty. These conditions have increased the appeal of ideological campaigns stressing service quality, which promise to strengthen the 'internal cement' binding state workers to their managers.1 The previous chapter described how elements from the more coercive end of the state's strategic repertoire were deployed in the 1980s and how class and class contradictions influenced these choices. The pattern displayed a growing preoccupation with 'policy slippage' and the power of state workers (a response to Question 2 above). Wage restraint and charismatic leadership remained popular remedies throughout the 1980s; however, management gurus were frequently asked for advice on legitimation strategies as well. They would urge managers to build ideological icons using motivational techniques that went 'beyond reason.' This chapter will trace the progress of this trend from one of its first expressions, the D'Avignon Report of 1979. The forgotten twin of the more famous Lambert Report, D'Avignon was also fathered by the OAG, and gestated over roughly the same period. When a change of government (to Joe Clark's Tories) coincided with their birth, the auditor general saw a propitious moment to 'develop an integrated overall plan to ensure effective financial, personnel and general management of Canada's publicly-owned funds and resources.' Most impor-

82 Part 1: The View from the Front Line tantly, Ottawa's 'human resources' needed 'inspired leadership and motivation.'2 Lambert's study of financial management, and D'Avignon's review of personnel management, had overlapping mandates and similar orientations. D'Avignon's committee was tripartite, however, and it became the target of lobbying by the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), while the business-dominated Lambert commission was allowed to proceed more or less unhindered. Initially the government took Lambert much more seriously, but Ottawa's largest recent initiative (Public Service 2000) seems to borrow in equal measure from both reports.3 Lambert's report is often portrayed as an attempt to reassert central control over the decentralizing forces unleashed by Glassco. But their mutual preoccupation with managers and organizational design distinguished both reports from D'Avignon's. The latter undertook a sustained consideration of softer motivational techniques, stressing covert persuasion and 'reject[ing] the authoritarian, non-participative, uncommunicative and centralized system that should have died years ago' Sound management now required 'a flexible, entrepreneurial, professional, and participative style.'4 In later passages the Report linked the former to obsolete scientific management methods, and the latter to systems theories and organizational flexibility. The 'posidon-based merit system' was portrayed as an anachronism, and D'Avignon favoured 'a less than absolute reign of merit, a frank and open insistence (reflected in legislation) that the interests of employees cannot be maintained in a state that frustrates the efforts of management to achieve reasonable levels of efficiency in staffing.'5 Thereafter, employee interests were consistently subordinated to the flexibility and market sensitivity now deemed indispensable. The report stressed the 'value in public servants standing the test of competition with those in the outside labour market' and the need for fresh blood. (Francophones, women, and labour relations experts were seen as appropriate donors.) Carrying on part of the Glassco tradition, D'Avignon dismissed employee complaints of favouritism and patronage and urged that managers be paid more.6 Clearly market deference and the drive to boost efficiency would constrain any new legitimative appeal. Deep-seated respect, and a practical concern to motivate those implementing the efficiency drive, made bribes to managers imperative. But for everyone else, contemporary business wisdom prescribed more symbolic incentives.

Beyond Reason: The New Legitimation 83 D'Avignon interviewed private sector managers and came away convinced that explicit 'management philosophies' could dissipate internal conflicts. Workers, it said, 'are influenced by the action and attitudes of their managers to a far greater extent than they are by inanimate rules and regulations.' Future reports would share this preference for symbolism over regulation. In this one the articulation of philosophies and goals was to be made a participative process, in itself capable of restoring unity. Previous campaigns by the office of the auditor general (OAG) to sell value for money were cited as models in both style and content, as were claims like 'people are our most valuable asset' and commitments to 'fully professional management' and 'demonstrably sensitive service.'7 At this point the Committee unveiled a glorified slogan contest as its concept of participation. Even this tentative move remained armoured by a very Taylorist emphasis on selection and evaluation to enforce 'sensitive service.' The aim was to ensure that 'almost every contact' with clients instilled pride or at least satisfaction in the public service. The report justified this impossible standard by referring to exceptional examples in business and government and to 'the prevalent belief of Canadians that government employees do not generally go out of their way to meet citizens' needs.'8 Once again, arbitrary performance criteria and social policy myths would drive workers towards higher productivity, but the emphasis on micro-level service betrayed an increasing concern with the discretionary decisions of street-level bureaucrats (SLBs). Yet here the legitimative tools needed to act on it were only partially developed and still encumbered with the residues of Glassco and the auditor general. D'Avignon pointed towards a new management style, but could not describe it in any detail. The Search for Excellence Proponents of a new legitimative thrust were given a major boost with the 1982 publication of Peters and Waterman's In Search of Excellence (ISOE), a book described by the standard Canadian public administration text as 'one of the most widely read books of the 1980s on management.' Others looked to Japan, but the back cover of ISOE proclaimed in big red letters that' There is an ART OF AMERICAN MANAGEMENT - and it works? This art, exemplified in forty-three 'excellent' American companies, followed precepts like 'a bias for action,' 'close to the customer,' and 'stick to the knitting.'9

84 Part 1: The View from the Front Line The depiction of management as an (American) art set ISOE apart from other more quantitative traditions. The authors blamed 'hardheaded rationality' for management hubris and (invoking the spectre of Robert McNamara) linked scientific management to national humiliation in Vietnam. The rational model had proven 'right enough to be dangerously wrong,' and American managers were urged to go 'back to basics.' This meant relearning the importance of psychological, as well as financial incentives. ISOE claimed that 'the deepest needs of hundreds of thousands of individuals are tapped - exploited if you will - by the excellent companies.'10 While hardly devoid of 'left-brain' suggestions (the authors favour 'simple form, lean staff and 'simultaneous tight-loose' organizations), ISOE also draws upon 'right-brain' phenomena like values, emotions, and intuition. Flexible and holistic ways of thinking are encouraged to combat complexity and uncertainty. Pure reason is asked to cede ground to gut instinct and experience.11 Workers and customers are asked the same, but managers are the key, and they are ill-served by a rational model that 'doesn't teach us to love the customers' or to make 'the average Joe a hero and a consistent winner.' Neither does it appreciate 'self-generated quality control' or how giving workers 'a little say-so' makes them identify with their jobs. In short, 'good managers make meanings for people, as well as money.'12 Such themes were to emerge repeatedly in the 1980s. ISOE cast new light on earlier experiments in participative management, but union members who had lived through that trend were sceptical. Alan Lennon, who worked for the Employment and Immigration Canada (EIC) at the time, said managers had responded to job dissatisfaction ('^management problem of the 1980s') with attempts at psychic manipulation. Rather than making real changes (in wages or workload, for instance) to boost morale and productivity, participation would change workers' view of the status quo, so that they too would be keen to do 'more with less.' Comparing participative management to the brainwashing of Winston Smith in George Orwell's Nineteen EightyFour, Lennon noted the fundamentally authoritarian nature of attempts to elicit workers' total emotional commitment.13 Symbolic legitimation of this sort complemented the shift towards less costly, more coercive, and more business-friendly means of social control. However, it drew practitioners into a murky world where management's usual signposts were obscured, and rational, self-maximizing individuals were nowhere to be found. Indeed its central premise was that only emotional appeals could increase productivity, since merely

Beyond Reason: The New Legitimation 85 rational incentives (bribes and fear in Taylorism) were insufficient or unavailable. In situations where extraordinary effort was required and tight supervision was impossible, this emphasis seemed both plausible and promising; hence the appeal for those seeking more complete control over street-level bureaucrats. The new 'simultaneous tight-loose' organizations were to be 'loose' at the front line, but a 'few core values' would be fanatically upheld by senior managers at the centre. Aucoin observes that 'the implications for political leadership were obvious: conviction politics was in line with the best practices of the private sector.'14 And, inasmuch as ISOE reflected the principles of the new managerialism, it was reassuringly familiar to anyone who had absorbed Glassco's common sense. Shields and Evans show that the core beliefs of managerialism link social progress to rising productivity and new technologies, while cherishing workforce discipline and high-quality management. Thus 'to operate at an optimum level, managers must have the right to manage.'15 Even if participation and ISOE had been totally irrelevant to the state's needs, their private sector popularity would have recommended them - this is one consequence of the first principle of Canadian public management. Both techniques are part of the 'human relations' tradition, which had enjoyed a minor renaissance during the neoconservative ascent and shared the latter's emphasis on symbolic legitimation.16 Other methods derived from Japanese experience, and initiatives like quality of working life (QWL), job enrichment, quality circles, and the team approach, were part of the same stream. The development of this sort of management theory, as Jim Silver points out, is a cyclical process involving a continual repackaging of old ideas, hyped as solutions to insoluble problems. All of these 'seek the managerial Holy Grail: a means of stimulating or energizing workers, "motivating" them to increased production without higher pay or improved conditions.'17 Though the quest may be futile, it is persistent and profitable for some. As Silver notes: The pattern is unchanging. A technique is introduced with great ballyhoo, pushed by consultants and other advocates whose intentions are to win the hearts and minds of workers in order to lure from them harder work without higher pay. Laudatory articles and books follow fast and furious ... Then, on calmer reflection, the technique is revealed to be flawed - either it does not yield the productivity results claimed, or it does but for reasons ... having to do with wage rises, staff cuts and/or tighter supervision. The

86 Part 1: The View from the Front Line technique's popularity then fades, only to be replaced by another new technique, which then goes through the same cycle.18

Silver is typical of those on the left who see scientific management as the 'one best way' to extract surplus value in a capitalist society. In this view, human relations approaches may promise more, but they can only help workers adjust to Taylorism. Many mainstream accounts reject the notion that there is 'one best way' for every organization, and in fact ISOE has been criticized for its 'high faith-to-fact ratio' in this regard. But Lennon saw workers being lured into 'cooperative' partnerships where they assumed more responsibility for production and gained no real power. Workplace discussions, or self-policing teams, simply moved control over larger goals 'to a higher level in the hierarchy.'19 Participatory management in Lennon's own branch of EIC would later be closed down by a series of adverse decisions from on high. Lennon's former boss (Joan Andrew) attributed the decline to a sudden infusion of new casual employees, followed shortly by layoffs in 'reverse order of merit.' This highlighted the formal hierarchy and undermined the informal, cooperative culture that had sustained participation.20 Andrew's boss, EIC Deputy Minister Gaetan Lussier, was a fervent ISOE adherent, keen to transform the entire department.21 ISOE advised such managers to promote values responding to people's inherent need for meaning. Silver identifies the crucial section: 'The excellent companies are "rich tapestries of anecdote, myth and fairy tale" - which together, "convey the organization's shared values, or culture." The authors find that, "so much of excellence has to do with people's being motivated by compelling, simple - even beautiful - values"; and that, "shared values in excellent companies are clear ... because the mythology is rich."'22 Silver dismisses such claims as misleading and methodologically flawed. Lennon felt that workers' solidarity, and their actual experience with managers, would inevitably produce conflicts.23 But both (correct) observations underestimate the rationality of ISOE-type strategies given the state's peculiar social role. Governing Values

Poulantzas stresses that bureaucratic unity is built on ideology - the state's 'internal cement.' Yet the edifice of neutrality, founded on administration ('the motive force of efficiency and general well-being'), has been shaken by 'popular struggles' and neoconservative assaults.24

Beyond Reason: The New Legitimation

87

In 1987 a committee of senior bureaucrats set out to 'mix' the cement in the public service. Led by EIC's Lussier, this group aimed to find and reassert the core values of the federal public service after a decade of upheaval. In its 1987 discussion paper, the Committee on Governing Values (CGV) addressed fissures created by the formal ascent of neoconservativism in 1984, the broader attack on the state, the most severe recession since the 1930s, and the mobilization and statutory suppression of PSAC's bargaining power. (The clerk's strike of 1980 had been followed in short order by another, more targetted program of legislated controls. Limiting wage gains to 6 and 5 per cent between 1982 and 1984, the '6&5' program set off a wave of similar legislation at the provincial level, and allowed the state to enhance, rather than moderate, the disciplinary effect of the recession.) Echoing Poulantzas, the committee observed that 'values are always the unifying force of organizations which have a strong identity.' They allow workers to 'relate and commit and thus, the by-product is pride in, and loyalty to, the organization.' Echoes of D'Avignon and Lipsky follow. Value-deficient organizations are said to be prone to poor morale and low productivity 'because employees are left to interpret the value system on their own.' More seriously, they '... may actually work at crosspurposes to the organization and each other because they are left to draw solely on their personal value system as their guide to action.' In the end, such dangerous autonomy gives the organization a bad reputation because it allows clients to draw their own conclusions.25 Beyond the new buzzwords, the inordinate fear of autonomy in this passage hints at a restive workforce: there is a sense that the power entrusted to street-level bureaucrats might soon be abused. Scientific managers might have tightened supervision, but the CGV respected the discretion of 'strategic' workers and sought to induce voluntary compliance. This was the point of the 'values search' - to reveal and reconcile diverging value systems among 'the majority of the current and desired workforce' (vs the usual, narrower, focus on managers). Personal value systems were seen as threatening to the extent that they were not integrated, and superficial adherence was insufficient. The CGV's report Governing Values demanded 'the "hearts as well as the minds'" of employees in order to 'release and harness thefir] human energy.'^6 The search was on for a few good values to appeal to workers 'at a visceral, rather than only an intellectual, level.' But in this search the process was 'as important' or 'more important' than the product. The point of the exercise was to 'enshrine' core values 'so that everyone integrates

88 Part 1: The View from the Front Line the values in everything and thus the organization takes on a consistent and predictable behavior pattern in whatever position is held or action is carried out.'27 The concern for thoroughgoing consistency in behaviour, and the willingness to go beyond reason to achieve it, were a product of fiscal restraint and a revised view of 'workers of today.' Fiscal restraint was hard on employee morale, and it encouraged workers to 'distance themselves emotionally' from their jobs at the expense of productivity. Today's workers were unlike previous generations. They 'question management more freely than in past, speak up when they feel unfairly treated' and refuse promotion or relocation to safeguard their personal lives. Managers must use this new 'emotional maturity' to meld 'these aspirations [with] organizational needs' and 'make these workers valuable allies of management. Viewed from Poulantzas's perspective, this was a strategy aimed at renewing the bourgeois - petty bourgeois alliance at a time when many of the junior partners had adopted working-class positions or were wavering and irresolute. Governing Values, stressing partnership and professionalism might help reconstruct the old petty bourgeois identity. Viewed from Lipsky's perspective, the Governing Values exercise can be seen as yet another (somewhat novel) management attempt to control front-line discretion. The practice of issuing additional regulations had been discredited, so the new effort had to take on another form. Employing an indirect approach, it tried to shape the value systems underlying street-level decisions, rather than the decisions themselves. The creative use of front-line discretion might actually be encouraged, rather than suppressed, once this had been accomplished. Some authors derive street-level power from the ability to 'contain contingencies' which are important to the organization. In Governing Values, the concern is client service: 'Thousands of encounters' each day put 'the reputation of the Public Service' on the line. Moreover, 'the public of today demands an emotional commitment from the people who serve them.' Satisfying these customers, and improving service quality, require more 'emotional labor.' So employee involvement would reflect not a '"soft" desire to keep workers happy,' but 'enlightened self interest' for management: 'labour costs are high and worker commitment is critical [to] ... a high level of productivity.'29 Those costs were said to account for about 50 per cent of operating expenses, or roughly 14 per cent of the total federal budget. Also they were easier targets for demonstrable downsizing than other items, like transfers and interest payments. But productivity remained difficult to quantify, as 'private

Beyond Reason: The New Legitimation 89 sector companies in the final count are about profit, profit and profit while we are about service, service and service.

a*\

Describing what the state does as nothing but service in a variety of forms is, in terms of 'actually experienced policy,' a fundamental distortion, and precisely the kind that Poulantzas anticipated. Perpetuating the myth of a neutral state standing above social struggles, it suggests that oil companies seeking tax concessions, and dispossessed workers seeking subsistence, are both served with the same cheerful equanimity. In fact, performance of the state's central functions (accumulation and social control) results in very different treatment for different sorts of people, and these inequities tend to be exacerbated quite transparently by neoconservative governments. The service emphasis deflected attacks on the Keynesian state towards front-line employees and personalized a host of structural problems. The service-quality movement seems to embody a massive admission of failure on the part of capital and the state, but left in the hands of managers, blame is quickly shifted elsewhere. Thus client expectations rise, larger issues are ignored, and the myth of welfare incompetence is reinforced. But what sort of identity and purpose was this emphasis intended to evoke? The answer becomes more explicit in the draft 'mission statement' proposed by Governing Values. This document was to serve as a basis for discussion, first among managers, and then beyond. But the exercise was not to deteriorate into 'a litany of complaints.' It would focus on values that instil pride and 'forge unity among all public servants to create a stronger "community" or "family" and make this a great place to work.' Ultimately these were reduced to the following, under the banner of 'People Serving People': OUR mission is SERVICE Our PRODUCT is SERVICE

Our goal is superior SERVICE We believe this service must be based on: RESPECT

RESPONSIBILITY and RESPONSIVENESS.

As public servants we want to: - put people before things - put our clients before ourselves - aim for excellence in everything we do - create a growing, learning environment

90 Part 1: The View from the Front Line - be creative and innovative - have strong leadership, and - work as a team. When we do these things our clients will know that we are: - serving them to - serve our country, and - are a unique and special service.31 Annexed to the paper was a series of provocative aphorisms. Some mentioned buzzwords like 'empowerment' and 'entrepreneurial spirit.' Others stressed the material costs of poor morale in sick leave, long breaks, and so on: 'small and simple actions which add up to astronomical amounts of time and cost the taxpayers millions of dollars.' But perhaps the most honest simply noted that: 'indoctrination is just as important as technical training if employees are to feel part of a special tradition.'32 The service mantra occupied eight of the mission statement's twentyone lines. Initially it was linked to greater productivity and harder work, but the goal was to 'serve people,' not the organization. All of this was premised on the need to transcend rigid bureaucracy, so the state was hardly in a position to command much loyalty to itself. The statement proceeded to embrace such traditional (and deferential) petty bourgeois values as respect and responsibility, with the twist that these were now linked (elsewhere in Governing Values) to the auditor general's slogan of 'accountability' and updated with a third 'R' - responsiveness to stress organizational flexibility. Eventually service was described not only as patriotic, but as the ticket to public redemption: the restoration of white-collar privileges was clearly implied. Service would bring respect, the statement promised, not only from other workers, but from management as well. Sandwiched between the service enjoinders, beside some symbolic concessions to workers' interests and popular business cliches ('excellence,' 'learning environment,' 'innovation,' 'leadership,' 'teamwork') was a direct appeal to the distorted altruism of public service. The traditional plea to 'put our clients before ourselves' had been refurbished with the fashionable rhetoric of service and quality and promoted to state managers as a solution to internal legitimation crises. But this refit encumbered the product with claims that deeper frontline control was both possible and increasingly essential. The auditor general soon seized upon both points and made their implications clear.

Beyond Reason: The New Legitimation 91 Values, Service, and Performance: The OAG View In 1988 the auditor general's office again condensed the key insights of recent management theory into a few pages of recommendations. Five years earlier, a similar effort had produced 'Constraints to Productive Management in the Public Service' - a traditional catalogue of complaints about red tape.33 The 1988 report, on the other hand, followed the same holistic and legitimative bent as Governing Values. The OAG had (unusually) found 'well-performing organizations' within government and derived from them some common attributes: an 'emphasis on people,' 'participative leadership,' 'innovative work styles,' a 'strong client orientation,' and 'a mind-set that seeks optimum performance.' This method followed In Search of Excellence and echoed its conclusions. And, like 'Constraints to Productive Management' (and the whole Glassco tradition), it idealized capitalist firms thought to operate without bureaucratic rules.34 The difference here was that internal deregulation and management freedom were linked to cultural transformations of the sort envisaged by Governing Values. Good communications let these organizations 'challenge, empower and develop' employees, 'combining] the needs of the organization with the needs and desires of their people.' The auditor general was at pains to stress, however, that the 'shift from control to commitment' did not entail wholesale concessions. The reliance on 'people and on relationships' was 'balanced by reliance on measurement and control systems, which provide the "hard edges" to their operations.' Legitimation would remain armoured by coercion in the last instance.35 The report allowed that these hard edges needed to encourage results, rather than mere compliance with regulations. But this was a tactical retreat as much as anything else, for the 'orderly, predictable and certain' template that bureaucratic rules tried to impose on a 'messy' world had become outdated. People were spending 'much of their time and energy [trying] to "beat the system."' The solution was to stop seeking artificial order and instead 'develop managers who can perform productively in work environments that are messy, uncertain, and changing.' They would guide the value shift within organizations, instilling a 'sense of mission ... a feeling of ownership ... shared values and a common vision. This team spirit seems to be a key ingredient.'36 The end result was described by way of analogy. Bureaucracies were compared to guns firing 'blind' bullets along a set course: 'any guiding

92 Part 1: The View from the Front Line intelligence is disconnected the instant they leave the barrel.' Well-performing organizations, on the other hand, used high-tech missiles. These 'smart' weapons were guided by shared values and relied on their own judgment to reach the target. Their organizations 'can virtually be put on "automatic pilot." People know what is wanted, they are committed to it and they perform accordingly. The shift from control to commitment has been achieved.'37 Common goals had, it seems, made autonomy 'safe' in these agencies. The OAG may have misread these organizations and overestimated the prospects for organic unity elsewhere. But its analysis clearly expressed higher and more intrusive expectations of state workers. Securing their obedience was no longer enough; workers now had to love their organization and act in its interests even when unsupervised. Discretion might be inescapable, but team spirit would control its use. It is worth restating that all of this was seen as a major shift from the status quo and a response to inadequate productivity and avoidance of rules. This message was repeated in balder terms in the OAG's 1990 Report. A study entitled 'Values, Service and Performance' criticized the 'control and compliance' approach for failing to provide the personal touch needed for workers who are 'unwilling to blindly follow rules.' It offered instead the techniques of 'managing through understanding,' which required 'fewer directives and more discretion wherever possible. Such advice was broadly similar to the traditional OAG line on managers, but was now applied to employees more explicitly and consistently. Recognition and added discretion were designed to build trust and ease front-line frustration. The report quotes one front-line worker (who seems to be an EIC employment counsellor): 'What increases the stress is the system's excessive demand for paper and its doubt of our judgment ... Our word is worth nothing unless it is on paper. Our actions are not trusted - they must be documented for possible scrutiny later on. We have to provide answers to questions that may never get asked, just in case they do get asked. The system is cold, impersonal and machinelike. It will not believe our judgments, nor the words we say; it will demand "Show me in numbers."'39 The OAG sympathized with such feelings, but noted headquarters' need for precisely the 'information that the field hates to put on paper,' as well as public servants' complex accountability to clients, central agencies, and Cabinet ministers. The solution it offered was better communication. If each group appreciated the pressures of others, there would be more satisfaction and fewer unreasonable demands - for

Beyond Reason: The New Legitimation 93 'awareness improves collaboration.' But this solution did not address other problems listed in that same quote, namely, 'the shortage of staff, the increase in workload and the rule against overtime.' The unnamed worker felt that 'the system drives us forever in the direction of doing more paperwork and less people work. We are torn between serving the system and serving our clients, between providing information about our work and doing the work itself. More and more of our time and energy is taken by the system. The system is winning.'40 This is the classic dilemma of the street-level bureaucrat, balancing pressure for mass processing (and for evidence of it) with the time-consuming personal attention that their training and conscience demand. Underfunding and staff cuts exacerbate this dilemma, and in choosing to deal only with a symptom (job dissatisfaction), the OAG effectively endorsed both restraint and symbolic legitimation. Its concern was with productivity, and if improvements there required raising false hopes to smooth over dissatisfaction, the end would justify the means. 'Good leaders empower their people,' according to the report, but the point of this was not to be nice or to solicit genuine participation. The point was to 'tap the knowledge that resides in the minds of employees. "Workers know things that management doesn't know. They may not be as articulate as the bosses, yet their knowledge is better than the smarts of many bosses."'41 It would be hard to find a more explicit advocacy of the rationale behind 'deskilling' strategies. These are usually used against workers who have retained an inconvenient monopoly over some key piece of production know-how. This position allows them to exercise an unusual degree of autonomy, which, in itself, may annoy managers. When external pressures demand another drive to intensify exploitation, such autonomy often becomes intolerable. So management, whether by time and motion studies or by participation, suggestion, or reward programs, seeks to seize, standardize, and cheapen this knowledge. Such goals are difficult to achieve inside a welfare state. In the Canadian case (as elsewhere), scientific management's span of effective control had always fallen somewhat short of the front line. Discretion there was not worrisome as long as front-line workers identified with managers, and shared the latter's notion of 'public service.' Productivity at this site already involved ideological judgments about the state's broader social role, which (as O'Connor noted) fiscal crisis tends to destabilize. A novel ideological approach might shore up a wavering front line. Another OAG paper made the links between legitimation, discretion,

94 Part 1: The View from the Front Line and productivity levels clear. 'Recognizing what employees value is essential to tapping the "discretionary effort" of the work force,' it suggested. Such unpaid effort was said to be crucial to productivity - this is what made work-to-rule tactics effective. But could it be encouraged? The OAG studied QWL experiments undertaken after 1975 and decided that current circumstances required a wider, more gradual initiative, which secured broader management support.42 These conclusions dovetail quite nicely with those in Governing Values, and tell us much about why PS 2000 evolved the way it did. Public Service 2000: Empowering to Serve

For over thirty years so-called experts from the private sector have presented a remarkably consistent critique of federal management practices stressing three key principles: respect for business expertise, deference to the market, and faith in management power. This traditional recipe was reworked along neoconservative lines, internalized by state managers during the PS 2000 exercise and partly embodied in a Public Service Reform Act, passed in 1992. Since those principles parallel the central functions of a capitalist state (legitimization, accumulation, and coercion respectively), contradictions inevitably emerge in initiatives like PS 2000. Deference to the market again imposed de facto wage controls on federal workers after 1991. But similar past efforts had contributed to PSAC's first full-fledged mobilization, and these ones would undermine PS 2000's novel (and trendy) legitimative approach. This initiative was perhaps the most ambitious since collective bargaining was introduced in 1967. Unlike previous efforts, its major thrust was administrative (not legislative), as it sought to transform the 'organizational culture' of the federal public service.43 It did so following the path laid out in Governing Values: goals and values were generated internally, and management consensus was made a priority. Ten management-dominated task forces set to work at the end of 1989, issuing their reports to government acclaim only eight months later. Critics attacked the process as exclusive and one-sided, since the few non-managers involved tended to be corporate executives, and 'focus groups,' rather than unions, represented employees. But John Edwards, who headed the PS 2000 secretariat, defended the 'bias for action': 'This is indeed an unabashedly management-driven exercise, and is based on a gamble: that we can do better than a conventional royal commission, that we know the problems, we are capable of finding the solutions, and per-

Beyond Reason: The New Legitimation 95 haps most important we will be around to inculcate the changes into the public service.'44 The obvious danger here was that 'rolling the dice' in this fashion would simply reveal the limits of management's political sophistication. In form and general content PS 2000 turned out to be very consistent with fashionable management theory, but it also took aim at a number of traditional targets, including complex job classifications (which were to be consolidated), the right to strike (which was 'deferred' during elections), and 'red tape' allegedly restricting managers' power (to fire, discipline, transfer, and contract-out). In line with previous tendencies, much of the talk of 'empowerment' in the PS 2000 documents was actually aimed at mollifying front-line managers, not their employees. Traditional analyses of white-collar work suggest that career advancement tends to encourage ideological conformity within bureaucracies. In many respects the PS 2000 initiatives were aimed at bolstering such incentives through other means, at a time when fiscal constraints and the so-called plateauing effect had cut the prospects for promotion in half.45 More generic classification categories and appointment procedures, combined with more extensive use of 'deployment' (transfers without job competitions), were sold to employees as opportunities for lateral career development and 'multiskilling' and to women as means of escaping traditional job ghettos. Yet the government's record on actually providing the resources to back such claims (in terms of training or pay equity, for example) is hardly inspiring, and it seems more likely that other workers' experience with 'flexibility' schemes will be repeated here. In 1992 women clerks at the International Nickel Company (INCO) in Sudbury were given the option of going underground or being laid off. A month later 2,800 Bell Canada employees were given two weeks to accept transfers to a new subsidiary or face the same fate. Similar choices regularly face state workers whenever decentralization becomes politically opportune. Flexibility can also mean work intensification, obligatory participation (to appropriate workers' knowledge and bypass unions), and higher levels of stress. One of the task force chairs admitted that senior bureaucrats sometimes confused empowerment with 'a crushing degree of delegation.' Under these conditions, multiskilling simply meant more work, not more autonomy.46 PS 2000 gave state managers more systemic 'flexibility,' through means likely to disorient workers and disrupt unions. However, the exercise was also supposed to produce a new 'organizational culture'

96 Part 1: The View from the Front Line focused on service and quality. This legitimative rationale was drawn from the 'total quality movement' (TQM). Its continuous quest to "delight" customers might be particularly potent in the human services, where customers' demands were insatiable and the myth of welfare incompetence almost inescapable. TQM traversed the government almost as quickly as the related ISOE strain, and the auditor general spread the infection to the Service to the Public Task Force, one of the few PS 2000 groups with union representation.47 To understand TQM's appeal even among workers, a few words on 'quality' are in order. One commentator calls TQM 'a broad-based populist religion' aimed at frontline workers. Reworked organization charts place them at the apex of inverted pyramids, with management in a supportive role. They are told 'that through their commitment, suggestions or smiles, they are crucial to the success of the organization.' While combatting front-line alienation, TQM taps into the traditional altruistic distortions of public service, but its emphasis on client service also 'reinforces and gives meaning ... to a broader social ideology, namely of belief in the virtue of the free market and consumer sovereignty.'48 TQM thus seems an ideal prop for the neoconservative transformation of the state. It promises not only to rein in loose cannons on the front lines, but to inspire (in a cheap, non-bureaucratic, and business-friendly way) total emotional commitment and, presumably, exceptional discretionary effort. The evangelical tenor of the movement also helps to cloak in noble rhetoric a nasty strategy Lipsky calls 'bureaucratic disentitlement,' which discretely limits access to welfare services by 'changing the operating ideology of the system toward one in which workers [are] less helpful and recipients [are] more apprehensive.' Harassment and petty rule changes are typically described by officials as a 'tightening up of routine surveillance mechanisms with which honest people should be happy to comply.'49 Such initiatives tend to accompany the 'rationalization' of service delivery, which, as Lipsky notes, produces savings largely by transferring costs to less visible or powerful recipients. Internally, this results in overburdened staff and festering administrative problems. Externally, 'the costs to recipients as a result of additional travel and office inaccessibility [are] not calculated or publicly discussed.'50 Yet rationalization (at EIC and elsewhere) is nearly always portrayed as an effort to improve quality or service. As in the case of altruism, there is a long history of abuse and distortion connected to these terms. Lipsky regards the pursuit of quality and the drive to eliminate 'error' as potentially eternal because they feed on the 'social policy myth' of wel-

Beyond Reason: The New Legitimation

97

fare incompetence. Quality control programs are to Lipsky a particular sort of bureaucratic disentitlement aimed at 'reducing the rolls without specifying who is unwgrthy,' which nevertheless expect 'that unworthy recipients will be revealed through tightened administrative processes.' These randomly restrictive programs maintain legitimacy through their evocative goals and their links to 'technical processes bearing scientific management overtones.' Like other forms of bureaucratic disentitlement, they also produce victories that can be hailed, and failures that can be hidden. Data collection tends to focus on front-line errors that cost money (read: welfare overpayment) and not on those that save money (read: underpayment or disuse as a result of inaccessibility) .51 The 'service to the public' philosophy enunciated in PS 2000was both a major strategic turn and the public sector equivalent of TQM according to Francine Seguin. But the 'trigger' for TQM in private companies is heightened competition, which forces firms to seek an edge through better quality, service, or productivity. (Marx cited this same factor in explaining the need to increase exploitation.) Seguin claims that state agencies are generally insulated from this trigger, so 'only a crisis, or at least, a critical situation where the lack of quality of the service and client dissatisfaction assume major proportions' can force them to adopt TQM. Unfortunately, 'such situations are rare and one can therefore not expect them to act as triggers in many instances. Here client satisfaction surveys and sunset clauses are useful, not only because they force comparisons with market alternatives, but also because they create the sense of crisis necessary for major strategic shifts: 'While it is true that crises and adverse conditions are powerful triggers, one must nevertheless ensure that public sector organizations do incorporate into their operating modes procedures likely to give rise to such adverse conditions. Otherwise, the public sector will be sheltered from triggers that promote strategy change.'53 Client input is to be mobilized, then, not for its own sake, or to broaden participation, but rather to intensify the market's 'dull economic compulsion.' Comparability would now mean more than lower standards for wages and equity - survey results would prod the state into a closer dance with the tacticians of corporate management as well. Having created a sense of crisis once, TQM techniques would make the crisis (and this union) permanent. Opinion surveys undertaken by David Zussman in the late 1980s had helped 'trigger' strategic panic among senior bureaucrats,54 and the Service to the Public Task Force used public dissatisfaction to push for 1

•

•

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5^2

98 Part 1: The View from the Front Line 'major change' and TQM: 'Canadians are looking for new approaches to government: they want a more accessible and more service-oriented public service; they want real participation in the design and implementation of public policy and programs; and they ."want the same high standards of service they receive from competitive private sector businesses.'55 Lipsky, it should be remembered, traces such attitudes to an inescapable 'social policy myth.' After nearly two decades of nurturing that myth, some management theorists felt it was safe to rehabilitate the trappings of participatory democracy. Client surveys in this context could help embed neoconservative ideological victories in the state itself, and ensure that future management fads and fancies were translated more quickly into government practices. They would also tap into the ongoing drive for 'competitiveness,' which was said to require 'strengthen [ed] ties among business, labour and government.' A competitive state would be a 'client-centred organization' that focused on 'high-quality service and citizen satisfaction.' It would be more 'open and consultative in its relationship with the public,' and all its staff would work 'enthusiastically, energetically and skillfully ... for the good of Canada.' Stale pleas for tripartism, cooperation, and enthusiasm were thus repackaged in TQM, along with fresher ideas about client consultation. The latter were seen as following naturally from the commitment to service.56 However, the client focus required a significant shift in bureaucratic thinking, for 'it has not been customary for the public service to regard Canadians as clients.'57 Task force members seem to have been as confused as frontline workers about the meaning of service, and their confusion can be traced to the sort of discrepancies between structure and function that Offe predicts. Task Force Chair Bruce Rawson later observes that 'all our work rested on the fundamental premise that the federal government itself is, through and through, a service organization: in all its functions, domestic and international, civilian and military, it exists to serve the people.'58 But two pages later Rawson says something very different in describing state structures, to justify internal deregulation: 'To put it bluntly, the system is not built to serve. It is built to avoid error, deflect criticism and justify actions. It is a defensive system with so much fail-safe built in that it is complex, time consuming, and costly to operate.'59 Recognition of such discrepancies is central to most of the current government literature on service and quality. Inevitably the discovery of problems here is followed by a pitch for closer attention to private sector experts and more respect for individual managers (echoing Glassco's 'common sense'). The state is alleged to be a service organization when

Beyond Reason: The New Legitimation 99 justifying the application of TQM, and it is alleged not to be one when managers need to justify the elimination of 'red tape.' Both views are reconciled with the claim that the state is a failed or struggling service organization, but other possibilities are more suggestive. It might be argued more plausibly that the state is not a service organization, and any attempt to depict it as one is both a fundamental distortion and a misleading guide to the reconciliation of structure and function. This position has been outlined in Chapter 1 above, and it is supported by the wild contortions which the task force had to go through in order to define service in the context of the state: 'The notion of "service" in the regulatory content [sic] can be somewhat paradoxical since, for example, criminals who are incarcerated would be unlikely to regard their jailers (public servants) as "providing a service" to them. The difference between this situation and the conventional service transaction is that in the latter case, the recipient and the beneficiary of the service are the same individual. In the case of regulatory activities, the beneficiary is society at large.'60 This loophole, which is based ultimately on the myth of the state as guardian of the public interest, is indeed wide enough to allow everything the state does to be considered a service. But it is also tautological: the state is a service organization, so everything it does is a service. Presumably, then, internal restrictions on the arbitrary use of management power constitute a service as well, and the beneficiary must be society at large. This is not a conclusion that the service proponents ever reach, but it sheds light on the selectivity with which they apply the public interest loophole. Part of the problem here is that the TQM approach was initially created and sold to corporate managers who like to believe in a similar myth of service. In this view corporations exist to serve clients, not to secure profits through the exploitation of their workers. Greed is altruism, as individual self-interest drives society forward. And services are provided with equanimity to whoever can pay for them. In this mind-set it is neither necessary nor possible to distinguish between luxuries for the wealthy and the essentials of life for the poor, nor indeed between advertising-induced demands and social needs. All that is seen are clients to be served. The notion of service has already been severely diluted in TQM literature, and the transmission to a public sector context only debases it further. At times the task force comes close to suggesting that service is just a better way to sell work intensification. 'Employees are ordinarily more motivated by the goal of improving performance and providing better

100 Part 1: The View from the Front Line

FIGURE 3.1. The Client-Centred Organization: A Composite View

service than by mandates to reduce costs or raise productivity,' it suggests. Yet gains in the former can lead to 'improved cost effectiveness and productivity.' Elsewhere the task force advocates 'continuing consultation' to fuel the demand for total quality. But consultation has greater promise: it is touted as the means to repair a tattered bureaucratic hierarchy, by building 'networks which link policy formulation and decision-makers with those who deliver service and the clients themselves.' The task force urges senior officials to go beyond traditional practices of 'elite accommodation' and respond to an alienated public as well as 'considerable resentment' on their own front lines.62 Consultation is described as a process of aligning the divergent 'perceptions, priorities and values' of clients with those of 'service providers' in the government. The task force had already endorsed a Governing Valuestype approach within the state, seeking 'to create a service culture consisting of beliefs, values and norms which give priority to the client.'63 There is great emphasis throughout the report on the 'service transaction,' and a series of diagrams are presented which focus on the boundary-spanning role of front-line workers (see Figure 3.1, the consolidation of the series).64 These diagrams, and indeed the whole report, reveal a clear recognition of the power of street-level bureaucrats, use analysis very similar to Lipsky's, and prescribe a major ideological offensive to restore the integrity of the hierarchy by reshaping it fil

Beyond Reason: The New Legitimation 101 into a more sustainable form. The only major difference is that the task force authors are even more vague in describing the front-line workforce: Tn short, the "front line" in the federal government is not just a few chains of offices with counters. It is everywhere. Anyone who deals with the public, whether face-to-face in meetings, by letter, on the phone, or by other forms of technology is "on the front line." Being involved in front line service does not require a public servant to be in a particular location - but it does require a client-centred state of mind.'65 The additional emphasis on consultation in effect extends the scope of the 'values transformation' project so that it reaches beyond the boundaries of the state to envelop clients as well. Where service consists of regulation or coercion, 'consultation increases the probability of wider compliance, thereby saving enforcement costs.' It also 'encourages a non-adversarial, co-operative relationship with stakeholders and citizens affected by the regulatory process.'66 At this point the 'human relations' approach to management has been stretched by the client service focus into a call for more sophisticated strategies of legitimation. A few pages later, the task force lauds the Canadian Labour Market and Productivity Centre as a model for future endeavours and notes its 'real power and influence over public policy development.' The CLMPC model seemed to hold more promise than the tripartite experiments of the 1970s.67 In effect, updated consultation technology was to process political demands until they approached the clarity and simplicity of market signals. Refining the input process in this way would make service goals more achievable and the client-centred model more applicable. One commentator has pointed out that enhancing consultation may unnerve senior bureaucrats more than improving service, because the former means empowering 'organized, vocal and critical interest groups,' while the latter hands influence 'to clients, who as individual recipients of benefits, often remain politically unorganized. This suggests that state officials will more enthusiastically gather input from organized groups which are 'co-operative' and 'responsible' and from 'representative' individuals who possess these characteristics. The process by which PS 2000 itself was created suggests that 'focus groups' and surveys will continue to be favoured methods inside the state, even though organized alternatives (notably unions) exist there. State managers continue to experience difficulties in adopting the new 'participative' mind-set. The PS 2000 process displayed little concern for the views of the government's own workforce, and one union staffer attributed /?Q

102 Part 1: The View from the Front Line this to the fact that 'senior managers of the public service cannot accept that employees and their representatives are stakeholders in the reform of the public service.'69 Evidence of a somewhat limited notion of participation can also be found in the task force report. It advocates more executive exchange programs involving business, government, and labour, but does not go so far as to contemplate exchanges between senior bureaucrats and other client groups - welfare recipients, for example.70 The entreaties to cooperation on the frontline, while tentative, are sometimes quite enticing. One employee information package speaks glowingly of 'upward appraisals' in which employees evaluate their boss, and '360 degree appraisals,' which solicit the views of clients and managers as well. Another lauds quality-circlelike 'councils for change' which 'soften[] the line between supervisors and the supervised, and promot[e] a greater sense of being members of a team among all staff.'71 Such forays were only the tip of the ideological iceberg, as the larger project was to instil a kind of 'service panic' in response to popular alienation from governments and (at the time) a growing representation crisis in the party system. 2 The service-quality emphasis directs public antipathy towards the lower levels of the bureaucracy and seeks to enlist the aid of both client-citizens and employee-citizens in monitoring and controlling each other more effectively. The rhetoric echoes the language of participatory democracy, and there are hints that this is meant to appeal to a new generation of workers - the baby boomers on both sides of the 'service transaction.' Yet this latest management obsession also embodies a fundamental ideological concession: it admits that current state (and business) structures do not 'serve' society and links this failure to excessive hierarchy. This should be fertile ground for the left, for at base it is the same conclusion arrived at by neo-Marxist state theory. But while the left has challenged the divisive scapegoating of state workers, it has yet to take the service dilemma very seriously, much less offer state workers anything as concrete as 'upward appraisals.' PSAC again focused on those aspects of PS 2000 most related to collective bargaining and returned to the old game of deflecting blame for mismanagement, low productivity, and poor service. " And tactical innovations like the positive strike may, perversely, bolster state arguments that there is room for 'client-centred' work intensification on the front line. Such tactics may fuel more altruistic delusions and unreflective consumerism, without instilling a vision of life beyond the welfare state. *yo

Beyond Reason: The New Legitimation 103 The government, on the other hand, now has a comprehensive approach which has enlisted private sector support and which has outlived the Conservative regime. The talk of 'organizational cultures' emphasizes the long-term nature of the project, and distinguishes this campaign from the discredited short-term fixes of the past. Initially the clarification of departmental goals is a pre-eminent concern, so these are reduced to slogans masquerading as 'mission statements,' which establish the central themes of future communication strategies. Thereafter employees are bombarded with information, and the slogans become as inescapable as advertising. Meanwhile, the notion of 'quality' is used quite inconsistently: auditors are asked to dilute their definition of management error so as to encourage innovation and risk-taking, whereas a commitment to 'total quality' is expected of workers. And because error is a politically charged concept on the front lines of social control, official tolerance for 'errors of stringency' has far exceeded that for 'errors of liberality.' Since 1977 the auditor general has been trying to reduce errors of liberality in unemployment insurance payments, while implicitly encouraging errors of stringency. Even so, neoconservatism's administrative watchdog has largely failed in this endeavour, as the OAG's own figures attest.74 A more basic problem here is the reliance on quantitative measurements, which are of dubious relevance to the state sector, and which have the effect of consistently discrediting legitimation expenses. Elsewhere in the public sector, 'service' can entail a significant degree of coercion for individual clients, justified in the name of a wider public good. There is, of course, a pattern to the distribution of coercion among government services, corresponding roughly to the social power of particular client groups. Generally speaking the poor and socially marginal are most likely to be dealt with through coercive means (regulation, penalties, campaigns against 'abuse,' and so forth) since in their case social control is paramount and service distinctly secondary. Their interests are continually pitted against the 'public interest' in prudent state spending and against the interests of other client groups deemed more deserving. So like any other state initiative, the impact of an ideological offensive using service and quality as its themes will be filtered through the unequal distribution of social power. Improving quality in the apparatuses of social control means more stringency and more coercion for clients who are dispossessed workers, but more liberality and more attentiveness insofar as business clients are concerned.

104 Part 1: The View from the Front Line Any unity gained in the state's organizational culture will come at the expense of working-class clients, and another wedge will be driven between state workers and their private sector colleagues. In this respect the service-quality campaign seeks to reinforce the sagging status divisions between white- and blue-collar work and again is quite consistent with previous management practices in Ottawa. But it may also be obsolete, insofar as a more hostile labour relations climate, resistance from the front line, and the reality of social need may combine to scuttle the 'values transformation' envisioned by PS 2000. The next chapter will examine this possibility in the specific context of one front-line department.

Part 2: Border Disputes

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4

External Pressures, Internal Needs

The Case Study

Chapter 1 tried to show where there is space in theory for front-line workers to affect policy outputs in politically significant ways, while defying or evading the wishes of managers. Chapters 2 and 3 engaged in a critical reading of government-wide management practices, seeking 'contradictions ... lines of rupture ... [and] residues of resistance.'1 The next four chapters will gradually take on a more concrete focus, as we explore the impact of employees in one federal department, the former Employment and Immigration Canada (EIC), and one policy field labour market policy. EIC was formally known as the Commission and Department of Employment and Immigration. The department, housed at national headquarters in Hull, Quebec, concerned itself with labour market information, program evaluation and planning, and public relations. Most front-line programs and their support services were part of the Canada Employment and Immigration Commission (CEIC). It was organized on a regional basis and overseen by a commission on which business and labour had symbolic representation. All reported to the minister of employment and immigration (now the minister of human resources development) .2 Measured by person-years (PY), EIC was the third largest federal department. It averaged around 24,000 PY annually, and with the (formally separate) unemployment insurance account included its budget ranked second (ahead of that of the Department of Defence). This account is an increasingly important source of government revenue, contributing about 11 per cent of the total since 1983. EIC handled over

108 Part 2: Border Disputes three million UI claims a year, and activity in two other branches (immigration and employment services) meant that 'one out of every five people in Canada - immigrants, workers, employers, young people - is in direct contact with Employment and Immigration Canada.' The diverse nature of EIC's clientele, and the exceptionally decentralized way in which its programs were delivered (through 571 permanent, 400 summer, and 187 itinerant employment centres), made it a microcosm of the federal government and the latter's most visible presence in many communities.3 The creation of EIC in 1977 marked an attempt to unify federal government labour market programs under one minister. Its three branches reflected previous departmental boundaries and the merger which created Human Resources and Development Canada (HRDC) in 1993 made these the core of an even larger entity. Since 1977 Ottawa's labour market policy has been developed and implemented through the EIC core, and if any front-line employees influenced that policy field, they would likely be found here. EIC's authority over its personnel is limited to some extent by the regulations of the Public Service Commission (PSC) and by the Treasury Board's control of collective bargaining and management procedures (see Chapter 5). But EIC's reputation as a management innovator, its related responsibility for labour market policy, and the general trend to decentralization and devolution combined to counter these limitations and enhance the autonomy of EIC's senior officials. EIC management practices, like its labour market policy, are relatively self-contained. Focusing on this department will allow us to consider how 'personnel problems' might affect the delivery of labour market policy. Since these will inevitably involve large numbers of frontline workers, the claims of street-level bureaucracy (SLB) theory may be put to the test here. This focus will also engage theories of trade unions and collective bargaining, for the EIC is home to one of the more militant components of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), the Canada Employment and Immigration Union (CEIU). Seeking the sources of this militancy, we will find hints that workplace struggles at EIC expressed and reproduced contradictions in the state's larger labour market role. If CEIU activism has spread through the state via PSAC, then collective bargaining and union structures will have dispersed militancy, rather than containing it. Research for this study concentrated on EIC's employment services (ES) and UI branches at the expense of immigration. This seemed rea-

External Pressures, Internal Needs 109 sonable at the time, given the latter's secondary role within EIC, and its relatively small impact on the labour market. Nevertheless, immigration policy periodically becomes EIC's most controversial output, condensing questions of race, class, and gender in complicated and fascinating ways. Some implications of union militancy in this context are touched upon below. But any sustained consideration of front-line resistance, immigration's enforcement culture, and the definition of Canadian citizenship has been left for future projects. Readers may also notice a certain 'Ontario-centrism' in the pages below. This imbalance reflects not only patterns of militancy within the CEIU, and in the distribution of EIC's presence across the country, but also resource limits on the study itself. The year 1977 was chosen as a starting point largely because it witnessed the creation of EIC. It is also as good a point as any from which to observe the ascent of neoconservatism in Canada. Choosing an end point is more difficult, since the core EIC programs keep lurching towards dismemberment by the provinces and the private sector. While the present must be prevented from casting too much of a shadow on the past, these developments have undoubtedly influenced the analysis which follows. Unemployment Insurance, the State, and Society

Labour market policy in the neoconservative era has been marked by campaigns to end 'misguided' state interventions and eliminate their 'unnatural' effects on wages and work discipline. Of crucial symbolic value in this regard is the alleged generosity of unemployment insurance schemes, which are said to distort the economy and reward idleness at taxpayers' expense, while being administered so loosely as to allow widespread abuse and fraud. Here all the central themes of postKeynesian politics are distilled in terms which tend to favour neoconservative alternatives: political discretion is linked to ineptitude, empirebuilding, moral laxity, and social parasitism. In Canada academic studies of UI have fleshed out debates over its political content with research into its historical origins. The debate between Leslie Pal and Carl Cuneo over the origins of UI integrates questions of internal state decision-making with questions about the state's external role in the labour market, and focuses on the largest federal program in this area. It also reveals an underlying and mistaken consensus that front-line state workers are irrelevant to questions of policy.

110

Part 2: Border Disputes

In setting out a 'state-centred' explanation of UI's origins in Canada, Leslie Pal attacks 'society-centred,' neo-Marxist, and elite pluralist approaches for their view that state policy responds to articulated business demands. He assumes that the only actors inside the UI bureaucracy who have policy-relevant autonomy, and significant discretionary power, are the senior officials present during a few decisive internal battles. Cuneo, on the other hand, seeks explanations in larger class struggles outside the state.4 But does it still make sense to ignore class struggles inside the state? As will be seen below, on this key symbolic battleground it is the limits to the power of state managers which are most apparent, and UI agents seem to employ coping strategies and resistance tactics of the sort described by Lipsky. But Pal and Cuneo do identify the central ideological and economic features of UI, so their debate is worth exploring. According to Pal, the evolution of UI has been driven by the 'actuarial ideology' of the senior bureaucrats who designed it in the 1930s. This ideology is embedded in the UI statutes and in the ethos of the commission that administers them. One of those key bureaucrats described its content succintly in 1932: 'The word "insurance" means a provision, by means of single or periodical payments, for protection against an event likely or certain to happen in the future and a system of insurance is one set up by which an insurer receives the payments from the insured before the insurance of the event insured against.''" Guided by such 'insurance principles,' the UIC would provide unemployment relief only to regular contributors (at first comprising just 42 per cent of the labour force), only for a limited amount of time ('to facilitate and induce the return of men to work'), and only insofar as the UI fund could be kept financially sound. The latter restriction was used to justify constant vigilance against 'bad risks,' 'moral hazard' (abuse), and 'overinsurance' (benefit levels high enough to discourage return to work) .6 In making this case, Pal defines policy as 'a stable framework for decision-making,' and he searches for 'formative events' in the documented history of the senior bureaucracy. Since most day-to-day politics and management are thus taken out of consideration, it is not surprising that he fails to see much evidence of class struggle using this methodology. Nor does he feel obliged to show that elite policy decisions were actually operative at the street level. It is enough, given his approach, to show that the ideology of senior bureaucrats (if it is truly 'theirs') sometimes affected how laws were drafted.

External Pressures, Internal Needs 111 Of course, Pal is riot alone in defining policy, and policy-relevant actors, so narrowly. We will cast a wider net in hopes of uncovering conflicts in unexpected places. This approach acknowledges no universal criterion of policy relevance: at some points the skirmishes that academics are prone to ignore will have decisive long-term effects. Pal himself shows how socially dependent even his purportedly independent and internal actuarial ideology was in practice. He admits that this ideology tends to lead senior bureaucrats to conclusions endorsed by business, that it encourages reliance on private sector experts and expertise, that it entered the state as a result of political crisis and industrial unrest, and that it was sometimes overridden by the demands of other agencies.8 In these respects actuarial ideology shares many characteristics with the management and accounting techniques that have so influenced the neoconservative era. And like these discourses, which lend a veneer of objective expertise to all kinds of state decisions, the ideology Pal regards as proof of state autonomy is actually a mechanism linking public and private decision-making. The UI policy process is, in Poulantzas's words, 'through and through constituted-divided by class contradictions.'9 Carl Cuneo has exposed this class content in greater detail. He notes the influence of international bankers on Pal's experts and the compatibility of UI with Taylorist methods. To Cuneo the emphasis on discipline — the enforcement mentality that separates 'deserving' from 'undeserving' claimants - is consistent not only with stingy and suspicious insurance principles, but also with 'the maintenance of a cheap reserve army of labour within the working class available and forced to work at wages determined ultimately by the capitalist class. Business interests as well as insurance principles demanded that UI benefits remain below wage levels and that they be linked to a 'good employment record,' demonstrated by regular UI contributions. This rewarded those who had 'offered themselves up to their employers as vessels of pliable labour power.' It also helped to keep workers poor. So long as benefits could only be a fraction of former wages, the working poor were placed in 'a more severe state of poverty' while on UI. Finding work simply meant returning to their former level of impoverishment.11 In failing to provide flat-rate relief or relief based on need, UI followed the principle of 'non-interference' in private sector wage hierarchies. The UI system might redistribute income from 'low risk' to 'high risk' industries, but relative wage differentials would be strictly respected, and the UI commission was structurally insulated from pressures to do otherwise.12 Thus UI tackled unemployment, but retained

112 Part 2: Border Disputes the pain of that condition as an incentive to find work. It also maintained over the unemployed a kind of pseudo-management presence in the form of a UI commission operating on insurance principles. The program's designers were keenly aware that they were assuming responsibility for disciplinary duties normally left to capital and lamented that 'many workers once on benefit are not so zealous in their search for work as they would be if they had no income at all.' This citation is used by Pal to underline a 'critical part of actuarial ideology,' but it makes the distinction between the ideology of actuaries and the ideology of scien1^ tific managers truly obscure. Even in unemployment there was to be no freedom from management discipline, except through deeper poverty. Those deemed ineligible were stigmatized - as 'bad risks' or 'abusers' - with poisonous effects on working class unity. On the other hand, a contributory UI program was the one least opposed by capital and most likely to divide workingclass organizations agitating for reform. So, according to Cuneo, the original Unemployment Insurance Act helped to unify business, divide workers, and reinforce 'capital's control over labour through state auspices.'1^ Actuarial ideology, then, can be seen as a local variety of managerialism which, like public administration and comprehensive auditing, helps to reconcile state operations with the strategic needs of private employers. In the case of UI, this involved concessions to the unemployed which did not disturb the market's broader disciplinary logic. Cuneo identifies the central purpose of most state labour market interventions: to tend the labour pool and assure capital a steady stream of capable, orderly workers. Pal correctly notes that internal factors affect the state's strategic choices here, but his treatment of these is rather superficial. Ultimately both authors agree that future studies should consider both aspects simultaneously.15 A deeper look at intradepartmental struggles is clearly in order. In the pages below, we begin an investigation along these lines by examining neoconservative labour market policy from a perspective that focuses on border regions, where the state meets society. It will investigate the increasingly coercive campaign against UI 'abuse'; and the attempt to reassert control over EIC workers as priorities shifted towards more market-friendly programs. This material does not engage the Pal-Cuneo debate directly, since they were concerned with the origins of UI in the 1930s and 1940s. The focus here will be on the 1970s and 1980s, when staff unions were admittedly much more powerful. This difference should not affect the theo-

External Pressures, Internal Needs

113

retical debate, since both authors claim that more fundamental issues are involved. If anything, the updated empirical base should reveal the extent to which federal labour market policy has now effectively transcended its origins. Neoconservative Labour Market Policy

The postwar settlement promised labour market stability and a rudimentary social wage. As fiscal crisis undermined the Keynesian legacy, and neoconservatism assaulted it, the programs housed in Employment and Immigration Canada began to feel the heat.16 Inside EIC, departmental managers tried to accommodate the shift to a more coercive (and business-friendly) labour market posture, while implementing among their own workforce some of the trendy management theories discussed above.17 Although difficult to reconcile, both tasks were urged on them by identifiably neoconservative forces. When EIC hit upon a consistent approach to internal and external labour policy, it briefly became a 'hegemonic factory,' exporting new management strategies to other workplaces. But this factory manufactured a second product line. Even as EIC built a new hegemony, its workers built solidarity - individually and collectively. This subterranean production process complicated policy-making, but investigating it will provide answers to the third and fourth questions posed in the Introduction. They ask, in effect, whether mundane resistance can be found at the departmental level and whether it is progressive in intent and potential. In Canada the term 'labour market policy' can refer to state activities in fields as diverse as job creation, training, education, placement, labour law, incomes policies, unemployment insurance, immigration, and regional development. State authority in related areas may also be ceded to 'labour market partners' like business and unions. Since policy here affects the demand for labour-power, as well as its supply and price, it strikes to the heart of the material conflict between workers and capitalists. Thus labour market policy has an important class content almost by definition. Persistent controversy over its form and origins make this quite clear in practice. While there has long been a consensus that the state should help workers and employers find each other, activity beyond this level has usually prompted objection on some front. For most of the postwar era, labour markets were manipulated indirectly through Keynesian macroeconomic policies. Unemployment insurance and other welfare state pro1 ft

114 Part 2: Border Disputes grams automatically injected money into the economy, as boom turned to bust, and kept workers (and their skills) available for the next recovery. Direct efforts at job-creation, while more ambitious than before or since, played a 'subsidiary' role here. While education expanded, workplace training was minimal, and immigration was usually a more important source of new skills for the market.19 It is important not to overstate the success of 'full-employment' Keynesianism in Canada. Even at the height of the postwar boom, unemployment in this country was high by international standards. As economic conditions deteriorated worldwide after 1970, average unemployment - rates spiked, and our international standing did not improve. McBride vividly charts this movement as a decline from 'medium' to 'high' rates after 1975 and a descent into 'mass' - over 9 per cent - unemployment after 1980. The Canadian state's commitment to full employment was never very strong, and it was easily shaken during the neoconservative ascendancy.20 The latter period saw a 'paradigm shift' in economic policy as monetarism took root around the world. Monetarist theory abandons full employment as a policy goal, and its growing influence helped to justify mass unemployment as a 'natural' market phenomenon. Critics on the left have called the results in Canada a 'high unemployment disaster,' but its costs have been distributed very unevenly.21 High unemployment is no disaster for capital as long as needed skills and prospective markets remain available — and the jobless are under control. These qualifiers tell us much about recent debates in labour market policy. Greg Albo has suggested that, while two options are normally posed in these debates, neither is very attractive, and both presume supply-side solutions and freer international trade. The dominant 'competitive austerity' model aims at reducing labour costs and freeing capital from state regulation and taxation. It has led, he says, to an 'unstable vicious circle' in which states help suppress domestic demand, dump surplus production externally, and perpetuate a 'global demand crisis.'22 Social democrats have offered 'progressive competitiveness' as an alternative to the neoconservative model. Here state and corporatist institutions attempt to give national firms a comparative advantage through access to a highly skilled workforce, rather than cheap labour. This implies that technological change will be encouraged and that 'supply, in this case the supply of skilled labour, will create its own demand.'23 But again, no comparative advantage is gained if other economies pursue similar goals, and meanwhile the consequences are 'profoundly inegali-

External Pressures, Internal Needs

115

tarian: the permanently displaced workers and unemployed suffer declining living standards; the re-trained multi-skilled worker often gains in greater job security and lower consumer costs; and the owners of capital, and their managers, take all increases in productivity and output.'24 Most analysts agree that labour market policy in Canada is characterized mainly by 'confused and overlapping goals' - reflecting since 1975 a diverse range of experiments at the federal and provincial levels. But overall, the evidence seems to display a decisive commitment to competitive austerity, with only a marginal or rhetorical use of the tools associated with progressive competitiveness.25 McBride suggests that the transition from Keynesianism to neoconservatism in this field has, as elsewhere, meant closer attention to business (that is, accumulation) needs. This has been accompanied by a move away from concrete forms of legitimation (such as full employment or the social wage) towards coercion (through unemployment and/or wage controls) and symbolic or 'ideological' legitimation. Much of the state's labour market activity falls into the latter category simply because the resources allocated are in no way adequate to the problem at hand. As McBride says, purveying an 'image of concerned activity' may be the major goal here. McBride and others have argued that, once full employment was formally sacrificed to the battle against inflation, new supply-side training initiatives were 'placebos' or 'attitude adjustment' efforts at best. In either case they could only ease the transition to competitive austerity, as 'human relations' techniques smooth over new innovations in scientific management.26 However, attitude adjustment in this area could not ignore the effect this transition was having on traditional gender roles. Jane Pulkingham observes that while 'dependency' is now universally disparaged, it was for most of the postwar period actively and universally encouraged among women. These attitudes were concretized in the benefit structures of UI and other welfare state programs, which reflected a male breadwinner model until the 1970s, and only in the 1990s began to deal seriously with multi-earner families. Reforms at that point incorporated women and 'non-standard' workers more fully as contributors to but not beneficiaries of the UI program.27 This is perhaps consistent with the obligation-based discourse of neoconservative citizenship, in which 'the new ideal of the common good rests on market-oriented values such as selfreliance, efficiency and competition. The new good citizen is one who embraces her obligation to work longer and harder to become more self-reliant.'28 More fundamentally, to the extent that full employment was achieved even at the height of the postwar boom, it was 'a gendered

116 Part 2: Border Disputes notion of full employment applying to men only, and, indeed, ... only achievable for men if large numbers of women left the labour force.' The means used to this latter end have included periodic campaigns against UI 'abuse' that have targetted occupations dominated by women.29 Recognizing the gender hierarchy at the heart of the postwar compromise also means recognizing that skills, credentials, and training have been distributed in acordance with the gendered division of labour. 'Non-standard' (part-time, temporary, or casual) jobs of the sort traditionally dominated by women are gradually becoming the new national standard. But a 'contingent' or 'just-in-time' workforce is unlikely to receive substantial training from employers because of the danger of 'poaching' from other firms. As John Shields notes, employers' demands for skills and flexibility are to some extent contradictory, but can be reconciled 'by weakening the hand of labour, attaching social entitlements to skills upgrading and job preparedness, and gener• • iSO atmg more wage competition. Self-reliance in this context means making workers desperate enough to fund their own training ('lifelong learning'). Given existing job ghettos, and the continual offloading of 'caring' responsibilities from the state to the household, this individualized, market-based approach to training is very unlikely to disturb existing patterns of gender-based inequality in the labour force. Supply-side strategies emphasizing training are often referred to as 'active' labour market policies. But Barbara Cameron concludes in her review of EIC efforts: 'Increasing women's access to training programs geared to meet the gendered demand of the labour market in the period between 1972 and 1995 meant channelling women into sex-typed occupations and industries. From the perspective of women's equality, such an approach is anything but active; it is essentially passive.' 2 While the egalitarian ambitions of the new training efforts may be limited, sights may be set higher with respect to attitude adjustment. After arguing that definitions of skill are always socially constructed in a context of class, gender, and racial power, Thomas Dunk notes that the 'skills' most sought by American employers were 'a good work ethic, punctuality and "accommodating attitudes towards customers."'33 Such yearnings, according to Dunk, evoke not only the economic crisis, but also an identity crisis related to the loss of 'the admittedly somewhat mythical role of the white male worker in the production process and in society as a whole.' The demand for new skills is in large measure an

External Pressures, Internal Needs 117 attempt to reconstruct among a diverse workforce the conservative worldview identified with white male workers in the postwar era. The new training discourse 'needs workers who are sober, punctual, and reliable, and it requires workers who grudgingly or not accept their fate and are willing to get on with things.'34 This analysis echoes the 'gender anxiety' approach of Kinsman et al. discussed in Chapter 1, sees neoconservativism in dimensions beyond the economic, and shows that it responds to identity crises outside the state as well as within it. If labour market policy is the product of an 'unstable equilibrium of compromises' among divergent interests, instability has also marked its administrative evolution. Two key federal programs - unemployment insurance (UI) and employment services (ES) - have been united and divided five times, under five different ministerial structures, since 1940. A sixth division is now under way, as employment services are being devolved to the provinces and the private sector.35 Something similar happened after the First World War. Ottawa had set up an employment service to administer the draft, but later handed it over to the provinces on a shared-cost basis. The Second World War prompted a new federal service, this time united with the nominally independent UI commission. Gradual encroachments led to the absorption of Employment Services by the Department of Labour in 1965. But in 1966 the new Department of Manpower and Immigration took employment services back from the Department of Labour, and six years later it assumed responsibility for the UIC as well. The last vestiges of UIC independence disappeared in 1977, as it merged with employment services and immigration into the new Commission and Department of Employment and Immigration (EIC). In 1993 EIC was swallowed up by the new super-ministry of Human Resources and Development (HRDC), along with labour, post-secondary education, and welfare and pension administration.36 Although UI and employment services are now tenuously linked to practically every federal program touching the labour market, fiscal attrition during the neoconservative era has sapped the strength of their decentralized delivery systems. Inside these structures, every move towards devolution or privatization brings further instability, and service delivery is being transformed along three broad lines. First, eligibility procedures have been made more intimidating as state dependents face increasing social stigma. Initially 'bureaucratic disentitlement' and 'quality control' strategies were used to force people off UI and into the labour market. But deflationary policies had exactly the opposite effect,

118 Part 2: Border Disputes and the neoconservative response has been to call for more coercion, in less subtle forms (benefit reductions or workfare, for instance). Second, labour market programs have been pressed to divert resources from legitimation to accumulation. Converting 'social expenses' (the price for social harmony) into 'social capital' (investments in cheaper or more productive labour) has meant shifting resources from income support to training programs, for example.3 Third, state workers like those in EIC have been driven harder, and towards new goals, with methods mixing coercion (wage freezes, budget cuts, and job insecurity) and symbolic legitimation (service-quality campaigns). But resistance by these employees has shaped both the means and ends of neoconservative policy, as will be seen below. The problem of UI inefficiency and abuse has concerned the auditor general's office (OAG) since it embraced comprehensive auditing in 1975. Not surprisingly, OAG analyses took a distinctly neoconservative bent, invoking actuarial ideology against both 'undeserving' claimants and 'lax' administrators. It consistently prescribed more coercive and intrusive measures for both groups in the name of cost efficiency. And, as Lipsky might have predicted, performance at EIC never reached levels which satisfied the auditor general.38 EIC's responses to OAG claims will reveal much about the continuing power of its front-line workers, but the broader importance of the latter is worth noting. Pal suggests that unemployment has become a state responsibility only to the extent that it is seen as a social problem beyond the control of the unemployed. The debate over UI, he says, reflects not only the conflicting interests of labour and capital, but also the incomplete victory of the modern concept of 'involuntary unemployment' over the nineteenth century notion of 'idleness.'39 Pal again understates the importance of class power. It is no coincidence that support for full employment and the social safety net remains strongest inside the labour movement. Conversely, neoconservative efforts to reinforce the 'work ethic' through attacks on the welfare state have been applauded (and well funded) by business. Nonetheless, Pal's distinction cuts to the heart of the UI debate. Alongside attempts to define poverty and unemployment out of existence, neoconservatives have made their greatest gains by simply extending public tolerance for market failure.40 Other problems (say, the deficit or inflation) have been portrayed as emergencies capable of resolution, but unemployment of historic proportions has been sidelined because it is taken to be inevitable or the fault of the unemployed them-

External Pressures, Internal Needs 119 selves. Meanwhile, the image of UI as a social program providing 'income security' for the sake of 'equity' has been overwhelmed by talk of 'insurance principles,' 'sound finance,' and 'efficiency.' Even in attempting to minimize UI expenses literally at all costs (with ever more vigilance, investigations, and monitoring) this position is, in a fundamental sense, mefficient. Deterring fraud by a few diverts millions of dollars from job-seekers and, in effect, allows 'a small minority of clients ... [to] exercise a totally disproportionate influence over the whole program.' But targeting the 'mythical scrounger' makes good political sense. As Loney notes, it reframes unemployment as a problem of idleness, legitimating welfare and UI cuts which 'price the poor back to work' in low-wage jobs.41 This is convenient not only for shabby employers. All firms rely to some degree on social support for workplace discipline, and most favour minimal UI benefits and premiums. Cyclical downturns squeeze marginal firms while boosting total UI spending. During such periods, business complaints about lax or inefficient program administration tend to increase. However, the neoconservative era has witnessed a much deeper assault on the structures of the welfare state. Jessop says this has laid the foundations for a 'Schumpeterian workfare state' (SWS), which promotes innovation, emphasizes supply-side measures, and 'subordinates] social policy to the demands of labour market flexibility and structural competitiveness.' Constructing the new regime displaces state powers 'upward, downward, and, to some extent, outward.'42 Trade arrangements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) shift power upward, and debate over downward shifts has dominated Canada's constitutional agenda since 1984. But Jessop also speaks of less formal devolutions to local states and private sector 'partnerships.' EIC followed this latter path, and Ottawa's broader view of business needs in the new world order seems consistent with Jessop's blueprint. But how can developments at such a macro-level be related to the activities of front-line state employees? A glimpse inside EIC shows how managers there tried to respond to changing labour markets, while dealing with ongoing labour problems of their own. External Pressures

Neoconservative labour market policy has combined a high-profile assault on the unemployed with a sustained effort to shift spending towards accumulation and to decentralize and privatize service delivery.

120 Part 2: Border Disputes EIC dealt with the internal ramifications of these policy shifts by deploying symbolic legitimation techniques very similar to those advocated in PS 2000. Once again such elaborate efforts reveal a sensitivity to frontline resistance - tremors in the scaffolding might disturb neoconservative restructuring of the state. The renovations proceeded under the banner of the Canadian Jobs Strategy (CJS) in 1985 and the Labour Force Development Strategy (LFDS) in 1989. The former consolidated the Liberals' ad hoc job creation programs and integrated them with existing training programs, along lines suggested by the Nielsen task force. The intent was to reemphasize private sector provision and focus expenditures on the most 'deserving' clients. CJS was accompanied by the same supply-side rhetoric that had heralded the creation of Manpower and Immigration in 1966. 'Passive' income support programs were once again passe, and 'active' measures would foresee and respond to future labour market needs.44 Charges that CJS was insensitive to local needs led to streamlined procedures and more flexibility for front-line managers. They were to attend to community needs articulated by multipartite local advisory councils (LACs). A House of Commons committee was unimpressed, and it called for stronger LACs, able to give 'real input' into CJS administration.45 Criticism along these lines added to the reservoir of discontent with EIC. Business dissatisfaction with employment services had been highlighted by the report of the Task Force on Labour Market Development (the Dodge Report) in 1981, and in 1983 the OAG demanded a national strategy to serve employers better. Two years later, the Nielsen task force went further, calling for better service, or privatization.46 Schemes to improve service inevitably prescribed greater business input, but they also grappled with the problems of federal-provincial coordination and labour integration. The Nielsen study suggested bipartite or tripartite bodies (like Germany's) to coordinate job creation and training efforts. The Commission of Inquiry on Unemployment Insurance (the Forget Commission) blamed problems here on the fact that 'government runs the show' and suggested UI and ES be 'returned' to their 'proprietors' - the employers and workers paying premiums (at a ratio of 1.4 to 1). Crown corporation status, it felt, would give the UIC's owners room to 'cooperate in adjusting certain elements of the program,' free from government influence. This bipartite semiprivatization would allow them to 're-establish [UI's] integrity ... as a social insurance program and make it more responsive to the needs of

External Pressures, Internal Needs 121 its clients.' The proposal attracted some interest from the Canadian Employment and Immigration Union (CEIU), as it promised escape from the Public Service Staff Relations Act (PSSRA), and possibly PSAC, into the less restrictive Canada Labour Code. But union support was undone by the harshness of Forget's other recommendations.47 In 1989 the bipartite Canadian Labour Market and Productivity Centre (CLMPC) proposed a similar plan for reforming UI and ES. Two bipartite agencies reporting directly to Parliament would be advised by a series of local labour market boards replacing the patronage-tainted local advisory councils. But EIC offices and employment centres often constitute the only federal presence (beyond mail delivery) outside large cities. EIC outreach programs act as an 'intelligence-gathering network' in the communities they serve, and local EIC offices convey and receive both economic and political intelligence. While Swedish-style corporatism might reduce political interference, handing a labour market empire over to representatives of monopoly sector capital and labour would be a hard sell to Cabinet, not to mention to EIC management.48 Such proposals would be especially ill-received while the latter faced provincial encroachments and territorial claims covering most of their department. In any case, corporatist models would be awkward transplants while Canada's 'peak' organizations, the Business Council on National Issues (BCNI) and the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), remain weak, and union density remains low. The CLC has neither the bargaining leverage nor a democratic mandate to represent Canadian workers effectively. Neither, of course, does the BCNI - whose elite membership also excludes many Canada Employment Centre (CEC) users (in small businesses) and Tory voters.49 The CLMPC's claim to power rested on a growing consensus, articulated as well by the De Grandpre Advisory Council on Adjustment, that free trade and globalization required political innovations and a much deeper commitment to training for a high-skill, high value-added economy. Funding and jurisdictional disputes remained problematic, but Ottawa tried to ride this wave with its 1989 Labour Force Development Strategy (LFDS) and related changes to UI financing (Bill C-21). Similar British efforts had taken advantage of temporary economic upturns 'to transfer back to the private sector the costs of training.'50 Officially, the LFDS had four major goals. One was to bring UI in line with Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but the rest sought to consolidate the new consensus around neoconservative priorities. They aimed for 'a substantial increase' in private sector training and labour

122 Part 2: Border Disputes market advice, 'a re-alignment' within UI towards 'active training and re-employment measures,' and 'a reduction of work disincentives in the UI program.'51 The last of these goals meant higher penalties for voluntary quits and fraud, shorter benefit periods, and more work to attain eligibility. These punitive measures reinforced EIC's new Claimant Reemployment Strategy (CRS), which embodied the second objective.52 But while the Labour Force Development Strategy sent UI reform off in stingier and meaner directions, it left the details to the private sector and tried to have the process, and the promise of better training, legitimate the erosion of UI. A broad consultation was begun under the auspices of the Labour Market and Productivity Centre. The CLMPC's bipartite task forces achieved consensus on the need to be both passive and active: passive income supports should be maintained, but more active training measures were needed to loosen the market for skilled labour. Business and labour were willing to create and help administer training policy, but they did not specify who should fund it: the government, business, or individual trainees. In the end the Tories chose 'none of the above,' and foisted the cost onto UI recipients.53 The government bolstered the shaky training consensus by diverting $775 million from the UI account to a training regime co-administered by a new, effectively bipartite, Canada Labour Force Development Board (CLFDB). The absence of new money was explained by deficit constraints, and a loophole allowing for the 'developmental' uses of UI funds facilitated the transfer. But this money became available only after Bill C-21 reduced UI benefits and eligibility and approved much larger government withdrawals (up to 15 per cent of the UI fund). The annual UI deficit was exacerbated by the first withdrawal and by the end of government deposits. This helped justify further cuts in benefits and eligibility, and by 1995 UI coverage had been cut in half.54 Later, as the economy improved, it became clear the cuts had gone too far - the UI fund produced embarrassingly large surpluses, which sparked calls for premium holidays and benefit restoration.55 Ottawa had promised that the new labour force development board would be 'much more than your run of the mill advisory board.' Although it relied on EIC resources, the employment minister was pledged to act upon the CLFDB's advice whenever it reached consensus. The board's advisory mandate was limited to UI developmental funds, but the government implied that a wider role was possible if it steered clear of macroeconomic policy. (As with other participation programs, management rights had to be respected.) One of the

External Pressures, Internal Needs 123 CLFDB's first acts was to convince Ottawa that the bipartite empire should be extended into a network of provincial and regional boards. Hopes for local sensitivity and intergovernmental coordination were focused on this level, and the local advisory councils were rendered obsolete.56 Consultation and the Training Consensus

The government's approach relied on a now-familiar tactical repertoire. A sense of crisis was created to instigate reform, but spending limits were presented as fixed and immutable (even while being manipulated).57 Affected interests were forced to play zero-sum games, where power inequities were reproduced or magnified. Victories by the strong, or relatively strong, were then embedded in the structures of the state, so as to better reflect the changing balance of social forces. The unsavoury origins of its funding were recognized and condemned by the CLFDB's new labour market partners (using 'insurance principles'). Yet they continued to offer detailed spending advice, while pressing for overall increases. Despite denials from the board, these actions effectively endorsed the pilfering of the UI account, even as union representatives found themselves attacking efforts to train the unemployed. This focus was encouraged by the reliance on UI funds, but union calls for more universal access to training pitted employed workers against the jobless. Nancy Riche, CLC vice-president and a member of the labour force development board, complained in 1994 that real training needs were being ignored while irrelevant training perpetuated UI dependency: 'Training is now tied to whether you are on unemployment rather than whether you need it.'58 However, as McBride points out, this use of UI funds effectively converts them from legitimation to accumulation expenses. He views UI premiums as a regressive tax to begin with, and UI expenses as legitimative only to the extent that they are funded by general government revenues. But UI spending will be more accumulation-friendly if it subsidizes training (and thus employers and private sector trainers) rather than the living expenses of the unemployed.59 This means that the LFDS/CLFDB regime sought to involve its 'labour market partners' in the construction of an increasingly regressive training apparatus. Moreover, sales of this particular package were encumbered by the marketing flaws of corporatism in general. The latter requires not only strong 'peak' organizations of business and labour,

124 Part 2: Border Disputes but also an 'ideology of social partnership' and state managers willing to cede power. The second requirement has proven especially troublesome in Canada. In Ontario the CLFDB's provincial equivalent, the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board (OTAB), spent most of its existence arguing about representation structures and trying 'to create a sense of buy-in' among its constituent groups.60 The CLFDB's need for bipartite agreement seemed likely to restrict progress to peripheral or motherhood issues given the 'minimal consensus between business and labour.' Because funds were scarce and insecure, the presence of other subordinate groups on the board could not fundamentally challenge traditional approaches to skills training, which have privileged white men.61 The unemployed were not represented on the board. In Ferguson's terms this was a strategy designed to curry favour with constituents at the expense of clients, and in Lipsky's terms it was one more example of the exclusion of clients as a reference group for policymakers. It also confirmed Cuneo's claim that UI policy tends to exacerbate working-class divisions in the interests of capital. In this case business was relieved of any enforceable responsibility for training expenses beyond its current minimal efforts, and employed workers were pitted against 'undeserving' workers on UI.62 Comparable British structures, namely, Margaret Thatcher's training and enterprise councils (TECs), were ceded billions of pounds worth of training funds and about 5,000 civil servants. The TECs were 'sold to employers as an opportunity to restructure the training system largely on their own terms.' But even a transfer on this scale gave business control over only 'a local branch of the civil service [and a] ... collection of discredited and largely ineffective "training" schemes.' Because these schemes were often job creation and 'warehousing' in disguise, they were integral to the political management of unemployment. Real reform efforts by the TECs would have been disruptive, and devolution remained 'superficial ... underpinned by the firm hand of centralised control.' As in Canada, the TECs resisted centralization, and fought for additional cash from other unemployment programs. Disillusioned TEC boards soon became 'a most powerful training lobby whose first action [was] to bite the hand which feeds it.'63 The need for such pseudo-corporatism, according to Jamie Peck, arises from the ideological constraints imposed by neoconservatism. Britain's 'skills crisis' is blamed on state intervention, which is to be rolled back so that 'market forces (read: employers)' can prevail. Thus

External Pressures, Internal Needs 125 institutional innovations must be accompanied by the pretense 'that the new institutions are not in fact state institutions at all.'64 This helps to explain the Tories' hesitant devolution of power to the CLFDB. After the labour market and productivity centre asked for full bipartite control of UI, employment services, and training, it got only an enriched advisory role on training, a chunk of UI, and a bipartite board (the CLFDB) with no statutory support. Moreover, the CLMPC's labour market ambitions continue to be overwhelmed by those of the provinces, who have used their authority over education to argue for control of training and related policy instruments.65 Such ownership disputes should not distract us from the centrality of class interests and divisions in labour market policy - strategies for managing these underlie both provincial aspirations, and seemingly autonomous agency philosophies like Pal's 'actuarial ideology.' Bipartite institutions only make the presence of class more transparent. However, as we saw above, fiscal crisis makes it difficult to arrange compromises that respect the minimal requirements of the state, capital, and labour. Thus it is not surprising that demands emerge for new, more politically sensitive decision centres. Given the balance of social forces, this means business gets another place to preach the gospel of globalization, organized labour is empowered to agree, other groups get token representation, and clients are largely excluded. Furthermore, because business has less to gain than other groups from representation on corporatist institutions (its power is already organized and expressed elsewhere), it has been more willing to walk away from them. In the case of the labour force development board, this was made easier as labour market programs were devolved to the provinces, and Ottawa demonstrated that it would reject even board advice based on consensus. In early 1999 business decamped and the CLFDB seemed close to collapse.66 For the state the CLFDB approach was consistent with its other projects, which mix coercion and symbolic legitimation to cover the 'legitimacy deficit' created by the shift to accumulation. For capital it offered a safe way to socialize a newly strategic cost of production and dampen a potentially serious unemployment crisis. To the extent that the 'skills crisis' was real and required major new expenditures, organized labour might make gains, but the link to UI funding would keep it on a tight leash. As the CLFDB deliberated, the drive to tighten up UI continued, and new initiatives merely undermined the existing social safety net ('passive' UI income supports).67 Training gains came at the expense of the unemployed and undercut

126 Part 2: Border Disputes future working-class bargaining power. Under these circumstances, the presence of organized labour simply sanctioned the demands for lower expectations on all fronts. This is particularly disheartening in light of the innovative work now being done around another approach to training reform - Prior Learning Assessment (PLA). As Kiel Miller has shown, taking seriously the rhetoric of 'lifelong learning' would entail a much wider process of democratization, for a 'social order based on the recognition and application of knowledge in production, consumption and daily life will require a profound redistribution of power.'68 Labour participants in training boards seem to have abandoned hope for anything approaching that kind of social transformation. Moreover, time and money devoted there are lost to mobilization and education. The constraints on those boards will, it seems, drain union resources as well as the UI account. It might be noted that Ontario's Training and Adjustment Board initially seemed to promise much more for labour. Rianne Mahon quotes 'informed sources' as indicating that 'some form of compulsory training tax [was] a concrete possibility.' Such a tax (on business) would have broken the funding logjam, paved the way for Swedish-style adjustment schemes, and prevented training initiatives from further eroding income support programs. However, it was soon stymied by business opposition. Labour participation became more problematic as the New Democratic Party used a transparent corporatist front to legitimate its 'social contract' cuts. OTAB itself was dissolved soon after the NDP was defeated, and the Mike Harris Tories clearly believe that workplace training is a private sector responsibility.69 Nevertheless, the 'consensus' on training and a progressive competitiveness strategy based on 'high value-added,' export-oriented manufacturing remains attractive to many union leaders, especially in light of the alternative (comparative austerity's 'race to the bottom' in wages, corporate taxes, deregulation, and the like). Part of the problem, of course, is that the debate remains polarized between these alternatives, despite the existence of other, more promising ones.70 Another part of the problem is that the prospects for progressive competitiveness may seem better in some industries (like steel or chemicals) than others. Unions there may be tempted into sectoral strategies which ignore training needs elsewhere. One OTAB participant suggested that the board was doomed by the presence of equity groups and the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL), rather than 'affiliated unions who

External Pressures, Internal Needs 127 had already demonstrated their interest in, and commitment to, the sectoral approach.'71 No doubt such temptations will persist, no matter how dim the prospects of a real business commitment to training. But union attitudes may also be rooted in some widely shared delusions about self-improvement and social change. As Kari Dehli observes, education and training in Ontario were expected both to boost competitiveness and investment (by raising skill levels) and to open up 'avenues towards equity' and job prospects.72 The consensus, then, is ultimately founded on the notion that corporate prosperity and social mobility are at some level compatible and that both can be advanced through a 'training culture' which allows 'lifelong learning,' and so forth. This is akin to saying that accumulation and legitimation are compatible state tasks or that capitalism provides equal opportunities for those with the right talent and skills. Such statements are true only in a very narrow sense, and they mask the perpetuation of huge social inequalities, and the 'beggar-thy-neighbour' pattern of growth, both nationally and internationally.73 What is more, expectations that a skilled workforce will reduce unemployment and encourage 'value-added' industry evade a central problem that Dunk identified: 'If once-rare capacities become widespread they are unlikely to continue to be perceived as high skills, and the logic of supply and demand will cause a reduction in their economic value. If skilled labour is in greater supply, its price will fall.'74 Managers know better. As Armine Yalnizyan notes, they regard training as more than a matter of imparting technical skills. Its recent appeal relates to the new popularity of symbolic legitimation and the importance of 'attitude adjustment' in diminishing expectations. Managers have now 'caught up with the jargon, realising how they can manipulate the language to serve their own needs, to mold people into the corporate culture, and use that as the key training tool.'76 In promising workers better jobs, the consensus also perpetuated what Ferguson called 'the illusion of the epoch.' Analysing career manuals aimed at women, she says that aspiring to individual upward mobility encourages deep-seated conformity to organizational goals and norms: 'The price of success within the system is that one abandon any thought of changing that system.' Even after acknowledging systemic, structural discrimination, these books argued that change was still possible through individual careerism.77 Like self-help books for career women, strategies based on training recognize structural barriers to social mobility (the 'skills crisis') and

128 Part 2: Border Disputes urge conformity to corporate needs, but their target audience is much wider, embracing individual workers, unions, and governments. Delhi's analysis of a central text in this area (Ontario's People and Skills in the New Global Economy) shows it to be not that far removed from the success manuals or even from the old Horatio Alger myths. First establishing an atmosphere of 'manageable crisis,' the authors recognize the drawbacks of restructuring, but they are unsympathetic to those who 'attempt to resist change - for example, workers who "cling" to the only jobs they can get, no matter how low paid.' Those who refuse to 'adjust' are dismissed in highly gendered language as 'timid and fearful, clinging to old ways and resisting change.' On the other hand, those who go with the flow are depicted as 'creative, assertive and flexible, accepting constant learning and change as a challenge.'78 The training thrust helps to rationalize social disruption, promising safety for those few (countries and workers) who can adapt -just as the career manuals promise success only to those women who 'improve' themselves and learn to play the bureaucratic game. It is a slender branch to grasp, but one with deep ideological roots - which perhaps explains why union leaders cling to it so tightly. Training and the challenge of globalization provide an overarching logic for favouring dynamic sectors of the economy and sacrificing workers and communities that rely on 'declining' industries (like the Newfoundland fisheries). But they are also intended to relieve some anticipated skill shortages that worry business.79 From capital's perspective, the ideal solution would be an oversupply of skilled workers (trained at someone else's expense), drawn from areas of chronic unemployment (to reduce UI costs), and moved to areas where labour market bottlenecks threaten to inflate wages. The broad social and economic implications of such a task help to explain a third step on the road to neoconservative consolidation: the 'superministry' of Human Resources and Development. When created by the Jean Chretien's Liberals, HRDC seemed to foreshadow a much more ambitious rationalization of all the major social programs under federal auspices. Linking all these programs and interests under one minister might have encouraged trade-offs and 'responsible' behaviour among client groups.80 In 1993, in response to an ultimatum from the BCNI, Ottawa created a National Education Council which might have set the stage for an even broader rationalization of federal and provincial efforts.81 In the event, however, much of this action was downloaded to the provincial and municipal levels 'in a policy vacuum.'82 A new transfer formula, the Can-

External Pressures, Internal Needs 129 ada Health and Social Transfer (CHST), accompanied by further cuts, allowed provinces to pit hospitals against universities and welfare recipients against schoolchildren. Restructuring would now go as far as provincial governments could force it. There was much talk of converting the social safety net to a 'trampoline' - that is, making legitimation expenses more selective, more coercive, and more market-friendly. A guaranteed annual income providing poverty-line benefits and 'incentives' to re-enter the labour market would fit the bill in this respect, but it is the more punitive 'workfare' approach that has gained popularity.83 Neither approach will have more than a minimal effect on the unemployment crisis, but both will further stigmatize state dependents and allow the pseudo-management presence of the state to intrude further into their lives. Public sector unions (and employers) have proven to be major obstacles to restructuring in the provinces, and so governments of all sorts have tried to reorder bargaining in schools and elsewhere. While the worst of these efforts (in Ontario and Alberta) have been cataclysmic and authoritarian, even the best have been fundamentally coercive. As British Columbia's Finance Minister Glen Clark articulated the latter variation, 'Explicitly, we can say to the parties: "If this group gets to have more, then you have to take less" ... It tries to force those kinds of tradeoffs.'84 This might be described as a strategy of containment, starvation, and division, and it echoes Ottawa's approach to UI reform. In the realm of collective bargaining, it privileges those groups with bargaining power (usually employers). In the realm of welfare reform it privileges constituents at the expense of clients. In both cases it sets in motion dynamics likely, but not certain, to support the neoconservative transition.85 The renewed and widespread assault on Canada's legitimation programs has purposely ignited struggles around and within the boundaries of the state. Most governments, while trying to lead the ensuing debates in neoconservative directions (largely by retaining centralized control over financing), have also accepted some degree of flexibility in the tactics and structures of reform in order to accommodate strategic social groups. In the field of labour market policy, this has meant accommodating business, and to a lesser extent organized labour, and trying to entice or force the provinces into the new consensus. State workers at all levels, but especially front-line federal and provincial employees, now operate in states of uncertainty and flux. This situation is both stressful for them and increasingly conducive to acts of individual and collective resistance, as will be seen below.

130 Part 2: Border Disputes EIC Management: Kroeger and 'Partnerships'

Senior bureaucrats at EIC have for some time enjoyed a reputation for being on the cutting edge of management innovation. The creation of the department in 1976-7 was itself considered revolutionary, in that EIC was the first federal department to adopt a highly decentralized management structure merging regional administration with 'functional' coordination from the centre. Parallel organizational forms emerged in other departments thereafter, and most of these were, like EIC, departments whose mandates involved the political management of subordinate social forces.86 One account describes the shift in 1977 as being one from 'the areal administration of a "national employment strategy" to a "community approach to job creation."' Subsequent reorganizations, like the establishment of a network of local advisory councils under the Canadian Jobs Strategy in 1985, reinforced this decentralizing tendency, at least rhetorically.87 Similarly, EIC inherited from the old UIC a unique, nominally tripartite 'Commission' at the apex of its management hierarchy.88 Reorganizations during the neoconservative era, and especially the establishment of the labour force development board, have tended to concretize this symbolic commitment to cooperation with capital and labour. So the 'downward displacement' tendencies characteristic of neoconservatism have partly fueled EIC management's reputation for innovation. But the department has also been host to a number of charismatic and/or reputable individuals who have been influential on management matters both within EIC and outside it. The efforts of two of these people Gaetan Lussier, who was a driving force behind the Committee on Governing Values (CGV), and Arthur Kroeger, who espoused 'partnership' first in EIC, then at Carleton University - will be discussed below. The impact of a third -John Edwards, who was an EIC assistant deputy minister (ADM) prior to taking charge of the PS 2000 exercise - has already been examined. Like many public administrators in the neoconservative era, EIC Deputy Minister Arthur Kroeger was sensitive to problems of 'demand overload.' In overseeing the creation of the CLFDB, Kroeger had a philosophy of demand management that echoed the approach discussed above. 'You are not likely to get very far,' he said, 'by simply asking a series of single interest groups, one at a time, to give you their views.' That process would produce a long list of contradictory demands. The solution

External Pressures, Internal Needs 131 was to arrange the consultation process so that 'the various single-interest groups must themselves come to grips with some of the trade-offs. When this is done, it tends to change the dynamics quite materially.'89 Clearly this was the rationale embedded in the CLFDB, and it is part of what came to be known as the 'partnership' approach. The viability of both, according to one commentator, depended on 'carefully selected' members disavowing 'the old confrontational approaches' and adopting 'new roles and modes of decision-making.'90 Seen in this light, the slogan obviously echoes many previous promises to reward 'responsible' labour behaviour with inclusion and respect. Kenneth Kernaghan portrays partnership as the next logical step in the evolution of management. Constant improvements in service quality are best achieved, he says, by 'empowering' both parties to the service transaction: 'Employees who are empowered are more likely to have the inclination and the authority to empower those whom they serve.' The 'internal dimension' of this project delegates more power to employees in hopes of securing greater 'organizational commitment,' but Kernaghan admits that similar efforts in the 1970s and 1980s were 'largely unsuccessful.' The 'external dimension' is a variation on citizen participation experiments in the 1970s, which were 'much discussed, but rarely implemented.'91 So partnership may simply combine two flawed techniques into a new package for the 1990s. However it has obvious attractions for EIC management, who have adopted the theme for their annual reports since 1990-1. They have, moreover, made explicit links between the external and internal collaboration: 'New partnerships with individuals and organizations outside of EIC call for changes within EIC - an even stronger commitment to providing quality service to our clients and to working cooperatively with those who have a stake in what we do. Equally important, this commitment requires a new partnership among our own employees, working toward an increasingly shared vision of EIC's mission.'92 Service-quality campaigns were described above as relatively cheap forms of symbolic legitimation, seen as particularly helpful in binding front-line employees to new organizational goals. Their extension beyond state boundaries through 'empowerment,' 'consultation,' and 'partnerships' shows that they can be used for external legitimation purposes as well. But given the context of fiscal crisis, such tactics will remain viable only so long as better service - discretionary effort - can be squeezed out of state workers at minimal cost and delivered to clients who have 'reasonable' expectations. Ideological manipulation of both

132 Part 2: Border Disputes groups is key to the success of the project, which might otherwise become a source of escalating claims on the legitimation budget. EIC is not, of course, unfamiliar with ideological manipulation. Inasmuch as its employment counsellors and UI agents engage in this practice daily (in advising clients on appropriate work attitudes and comportment), and EIC management tries to direct this activity to its own ends (through guidelines and staff training), the department has spent years developing the procedure to a fine art. It has, for example, sponsored counselling conferences which urged its 'professionals' to take pride in altering clients' personality traits 'for their own good.' This project built upon elaborate statistical psychotherapy techniques which try to measure and 'develop' personal values. Their goal is individual adaptation to a given external reality, in this case, the needs of the job market as defined (with notorious inaccuracy) by EIC. The process has been described as instilling a sense of 'problem ownership,' that is, convincing the unemployed that they are responsible for their condition. The focus on individual self-improvement, the reliance on psychotherapy, and the presumption that clients cannot be helped unless their attitudes change (towards conformity with business needs) result in clients being urged to own the problem of unemployment regardless of the i state ofr- the economy.QH This does not mean that clients accept such advice willingly or uncritically. When polled in 1993 about the 'quality of service pledge' posted prominently in Canada Employment Centres, most clients saw little of the commitment to service that was supposed to be contained in its slogans. Those who did reacted with 'a mixture of distrust and disbelief.' They were also quite hostile to wordings perceived as impolite or pushy. One slogan relating to the problem ownership drive ('Remember, it's really up to you.') was seen as a 'waiver of responsibility' for unemployment on the part of the government. Clients did not appreciate the thinly veiled attempt to deter 'abuse' contained in the sentence 'Together we will protect the funds entrusted to us.'94 Other officially sanctioned approaches defend EIC efforts to teach 'middle class values' to clients; study 'defective' attitudes or personality traits among them (because 'work is designed to be a good experience'); and stress the difference between 'realistic' and 'unrealistic'job expectations.95 Visitors from other departments put the matter even more bluntly, encouraging counsellors to see themselves as 'manager[s] of personality and of personal and vocational potential ... for the client is a project to be developed and made to show a profit.'96 EIC's attempts

External Pressures, Internal Needs 133 to encourage such entrepreneurial and professional attitudes in its own employees, and 'problem ownership' in its clients, have not been restricted to the occasional conference. Just after the Conservatives took power, EIC integrated these ideas into a new system for evaluating and training employment counsellors and began the gradual implementation of this 'competency-based' training scheme.97 Even alternative delivery systems for employment counselling, based on grassroots community groups, and funded through EIC's outreach program, have been subject to similar pressures. In a fascinating case study of one employment agency serving immigrant women in Toronto, Roxana Ng shows how an egalitarian, advocacy-oriented group of political activists was gradually transformed into a hierarchical and fairly conservative service organization firmly focused on the 'production of QR immigrant women as "commodities" for employers. Ng attributes this transformation not only to the power of employers in the local labour market, but also to EIC practices with respect to the granting of funds. Uncertain grant renewals - which required documentation, hierarchy, and measurable results - subjected these community activists to the same sort of pressure as EIC's own front-line workers. Their nobler altruistic impulses were tapped, and the energy of those who had been committed volunteers was turned towards sustaining, rather than chalQQ lenging, the private sector labour market. Service to Business It must be stressed at this point that providing private sector employers with better service, and employees who fit their needs, means perpetuating inequalities based on class, race, and gender, and disorganizing those who might be in a position to resist. Ng, who worked in the outreach agency, found herself referring clients to an employer in the specific ethnic groupings he had requested, for fear of losing scarce jobs and measured 'placements.' Private sector employment agencies, the putative models of efficiency for EIC, have a disgraceful record of catering to blatantly racist requests, presumably under pressure from 'market forces.'100 The typical business criticism of EIC employment services - that CECs do not filter job applicants carefully or quickly enough - has to be seen in this light. Business representatives at one counselling conference 'chided counsellors for not understanding their employment requirements and invited them to go to employers to find out their needs

134 Part 2: Border Disputes before referring clients.' After repeatedly describing the job expectations of young people as 'totally unrealistic,' these businessmen blamed ETC workers, saying, 'Counsellors aren't giving these students a realistic picture of what to expect from a job and don't understand employers' needs.'101 EIC policy with respect to counselling activities remains firmly fixed on perpetuating the status quo. According to one directive, every interview is to 'mov[e] a client towards labour market integration,' and counselling 'must always be offered in the context of placement; counseling not aimed at this objective (short, medium, or long term) must not be given by CEIC staff.'102 In this EIC policy is faithful to the second principle of public sector management (non-interference with market forces), even to the point of modifying individual clients' attitudes so that they are more deferential to management authority. At the same time, unremitting business criticism on this score (which is related, obviously, to the broader assault on public education) suggests that the actions of front-line workers in the employment centres are not quite so tightly controlled as official EIC policy claims. Some counsellors are able to go significantly beyond their allotted role by interpreting the 'short, medium or long term' loophole quite loosely and by playing on EIC's formal commitment to client service. One New Brunswick counsellor came perilously close to an advocacy role in organizing self-help groups among the unemployed, but used the official discourse of 'supporting reintegration' to justify his work.103 Such efforts are publicly sanctioned by EIC management and highlighted in service-quality campaigns that recognize (in non-material ways) extraordinary employee efforts. However, management tries at every possible juncture to link exemplary behaviour to 'teamwork' and better business service. For example, delegates to an EIC conference in Quebec were relieved to hear a Bombardier executive praise the service he had received. He was pleased to find that the 'idea of a quality of service partnership, based on the greatest resource of an enterprise - its people - is not exclusive to the private sector.'104 Like other quality-service campaigners, EIC was drawn to the approach partly because altruism sells - among employees as well as clients. This was confirmed by outside consultants in 1989. Employee focus groups had uncovered low morale, widespread cynicism about slogans, and alienation from senior management. EIC was seen as 'overwhelmingly bureaucratic' - a 'dark, monolithic empire,' in the words of one participant. Another complained about confused goals: 'We don't know

External Pressures, Internal Needs 135 where we're headed and the messages change. Sometimes we think we're going this way and somebody says: "No, go that way."' A later EIC survey revealed particular concern with constraints on employees' discretionary power - things like 'heavy workloads, privacy for clients and space in the working environment, and [the need for] more and better ,if)K training. Despite all this, the earlier study demonstrated a continuing receptivity to calls for public service altruism. Staff remained attached to EIC's mandate and 'appeared dedicated to the concepts of compassion, caring and assistance.' The consultants noted that positive attitudes 'were all "outward-directed" ... focus[ing] on the kinds of services and opportunities [EIC] offers to its clientele.' Employees felt an ideal EIC should be 'philanthropic and able to help the truly needy,' and be guided by 'clear leadership and policies' which were fairly enforced.106 The difficulty for EIC managers, aside from their own image problem, lay in reconciling these noble aspirations with some of the more crass business demands (for racist or sexist referrals or for strike breakers, say) which EIC employees frequently receive. How could quality service be delivered to such employers as well as to job applicants? At a very basic level, the capitalist employment contract forces labour and capital into a contradictory relationship of mutual dependence. In this context EIC was usually portrayed as a benign matchmaker: linking employers needing skills with skilled workers needing jobs. The partnership thrust and the more explicit bipartite training initiatives followed naturally from this role: here EIC was the honest broker arranging constructive cooperation between organized labour and capital. Another part of the answer can be found in EIC's studied imprecision about the meaning of 'service' and 'client.' Ambiguity in this regard was essential for any department-wide campaign because EIC offered coercion and legitimation in many different mixtures. The EIC staff magazine Panorama cited Amy Vanderbilt on telephone etiquette, and 'the duty of the employee to protect the boss from any possible criticism or misinterpretation of his or her whereabouts.' UI investigators were told that 'deterrence ... is really a service initiative ... A person deterred from abusing the program has no overpayment, receives no penalty and has no negative dealings with EIC.' Senior management in immigration gave service an equally rigorous tone. 'We must remind ourselves,' it noted, 'that quality service doesn't mean that clients necessarily get what they desire, but what they are entitled to under the law.'107 A report by one of EIC's Access to Information and Privacy Act

136 Part 2: Border Disputes administrators advanced a very different notion of public service. It stressed the importance of 'secure systems'; that privacy 'must have precedence over administrative convenience'; that staff must distinguish 'between "who needs to know" and "who wants to know"'; and that 'the public interests cannot be equated with the interests of the system.'108 Tensions between legitimative and coercive apparatuses, and between the 'organizational cultures' necessary to sustain both, are typical of intrabureaucratic politics. In EIC, however, at least three categories of front-line workers were asked to manage these contradictions on a daily basis (and all will be discussed below). Immigration officers have been quite militant in resisting government attempts to reduce refugee backlogs by intensifying work and restricting their autonomy. In doing so they have framed their public appeals around the rights of their clients to fair hearings and due process, and they have initiated coalitions with lawyers and community groups to this end. Governments have responded with efforts to bypass them entirely: a mail-in system replaced most face-to-face interviews, claims processing was centralized in Vegreville (a minister's home riding), and bordercontrol functions were briefly removed from EIC.109 UI agents have been able to exercise some autonomy with respect to the 'quality' of their entitlement decisions, but they have also lost some ground to automation and legislative changes. Under OAG pressure, the service-quality campaigns in their domain have targeted 'errors of liberality,' while trying to bolster an enforcement mentality which sees deterrence as service. Employment counsellors were implicated in both the shift to accumulation via training and in UI's coercive thrust. They were seen as pivotal players because, as the auditor general observed, counselling was the 'screen or gateway to other CEIC programs.'110 Employment Counselling and Neoconservatism Since the late 1970s EIC had been trying to consolidate all its labour market programs into employment centres organized as 'storefront' offices to make 'one-stop shopping' possible. This led to more frequent experiments with automation: local and national job listings are now accessible through interactive computers placed in CECs, shopping centres, and other locations. Automation showed some promise in speeding up job placements, and allowing round-the-clock job searches. At the time of this study, most CECs still used job boards and paper notices and relied on employment counsellors to screen applicants. This latter

External Pressures, Internal Needs 137 function will continue to be necessary so long as business wants quality control on job referrals and attitude adjustment in the process. The OAG - along with most business organizations - has been consistently critical of counsellor productivity, claiming that certain exceptional cases or 'engineered standards' proved counsellors could safely double their caseloads. Inadequate productivity in this respect leads to delays in UI payments, delays in clients finding jobs and getting off UI, delays in employers filling positions, and delays in clients getting access to other programs (like training or language instruction) that would make them more 'job-ready.'111 Of course, productivity problems in CECs cannot all be attributed to the discretionary effort of employment counsellors. The effects of cutbacks, EIC's notoriously bad staffing (marked by sudden and wrenching internal transfers), and the sheer volume of human misery created by high unemployment, must be considered as well. But the logic of the neoconservative project means that labour productivity is the only variable figure in this equation. Ottawa's attempt to consolidate and rationalize the delivery of labour market programs made employment counsellors central to a number of productivity-boosting efforts. The training initiative - expressed in the Canadian Jobs Strategy, the Labour Force Development Strategy, and the Canadian Labour Force Development Board - made eligibility for training programs a key and controversial issue, and employment counsellors controlled access to the programs. In the course of a very brief 'service needs determination' (SND) interview, counsellors referred most clients to self-service job listings, and a smaller number (about 20 per cent, according to the OAG) to a longer counselling session. Only those clients who received counselling (many missed interviews or had them delayed for months because of backlogs) were likely to hear about training programs, and only about a third of those counselled were actually referred to them.112 The street-level decisions of employment counsellors determined who would benefit from new training initiatives, and this discretionary power had larger political implications.113 Counsellors also played a role in the attack on UI recipients. For the latter group, failure to report to counselling or job interviews constitutes a form of UI 'abuse,' as does failure to conduct an adequate job search, and both are subject to administrative penalties. But if any penalties are to be imposed, employment services staff must discover the 'abuse' and report it to their colleagues in the Insurance section. This takes time, and discretionary effort on the part of ES personnel, and historically it has not happened enough to please the auditor general, who

138 Part 2: Border Disputes has insisted that counsellors should turn in their clients 'in order to preserve the integrity of the UI Program.' In fact, the OAG believed that EIC was created largely to 'improve coordination and harmonization of the services offered to unemployment insurance beneficiaries' by the UIC and employment services.114 'Harmonization of services' in this context is a polite way of saying that some of the UI program's key eligibility criteria depend on ES for their enforcement. Thus 'insurance principles,' and the program's accumulative content, are weakened to the extent that coordination fails to minimize payments, and maximize labour discipline. A 1988 audit by the OAG asserted that problems in this regard were continuing and underlined the strategic role played by employment counsellors: 'Insufficient co-ordination between Insurance and Employment Services concerning referral and registration of UI claimants prevents the Commission from realizing potential savings in unemployment insurance payments. In addition, weaknesses noted in the communication of claimant information ... are significantly affecting the efficiency and effectiveness of the mechanisms set up by the Commission to control the eligibility of UI recipients.'115 The same OAG report went on to note that CECs did not monitor or specifically encourage the 'prompt re-employment' of UI recipients, and it estimated that $1.3 million could be saved every week in UI payments if placements for this group rose just 1 per cent. Similarly, it faulted employment services for failing to monitor and report inadequate job searches to insurance and failing to implement interview programs designed by Insurance for such purposes. The OAG recommended further interviews and harassment of UI recipients, especially those with high-demand skills — a classic method of 'bureaucratic disentitlement.' These criticisms seem to have been taken to heart by EIC, for when the training 'partnership' contained in the LFDS was unveiled, it was accompanied by a 'claimant re-employment strategy' (CRS) which committed the commission to the program of coercive coordination recommended by the auditor general. An internal public relations campaign and a series of conferences were set in motion stressing the benefits of better communication, teamwork, and links between the 'two cultures' of UI and ES.117 This campaign, whose ultimate point was to save money and make enforcement more stringent, was portrayed as a decentralized and flexible service initiative allowing redeployment of scarce funds. Service's altruistic connotations were mangled and entwined with support for the 1 1 fi

External Pressures, Internal Needs 139 existing labour market: 'under the CRS, we hope to place a renewed emphasis on the claimant's earlier return to work. Quality of service remains a strong commitment for the organization.'118 Testing of reemployment strategy techniques revealed that not all UI recipients were grateful for this enhanced 'service.' Despite the development of 'varied and creative ways of helping claimants,' one report noted that 'client reaction to the CRS thrusts has been mixed ... some claimants look on UI benefits as their right, and resent being obliged to look for work. But the clients sincerely intent on finding jobs were impressed.'119 If employees were worried about the impact of the CRS on clients, they could be assured that deserving clients would appreciate their efforts, even if the 'idle' did not. CRS also helped to smooth over tensions in the workplace. One CEC manager acknowledged that UI and ES personnel in his office had 'felt somewhat isolated from each other in the past,' but now 'we all suddenly find ourselves with the same objective ... and that is to get people back to work.'120 Such testimonials were buttressed by an ElC-sponsored academic analysis. Surveys conducted in Alberta CECs by a professor of counselling psychology found the 'two-culture phenomenon' thriving in larger 'under-resourced' offices. R.V. Peavy's report cited examples of the stereotypical views held by one section of the other. One employment counsellor felt that 'some UI staff think that counseling is just sitting down and being nice to people. They don't understand what we do and there is very little communication back and forth.'121 A UI agent expressed comparable worries: 'I don't know how we ... are ever going to get together. Our hands are tied because of our production quotas and backlogs and I think their hands are tied too because they have to follow rules in giving employment services and they have to deal with employers too and training programs.'122 The author of the report nevertheless saw a 'potential core of goodwill' in the staffs desire for 'better co-ordination in order to improve quality of service.' If EIC management paid attention to 'the human factor,' said Peavy, the coordination promised in LFDS and CRS could still be achieved.123 Other EIC publicity efforts described the crucial role that employment counsellors were to play in facilitating both coercive coordination and the training thrust. In particular the initial service needs determination interviews they conducted were to be more carefully controlled through a new training program, 'with a focus on the early identification of client's needs.' Echoing the OAG's description of SND interviews as the 'gateway to employment,' one official noted that 'just one

140 Part 2: Border Disputes mistake at this level can cause a lot of frustration and a waste of our resources. »124 Department-wide management initiatives in EIC stressed partnership, service-quality, teamwork, and cooperation for reasons that are explicable with reference to both their external and internal audiences. Neoconservative labour market policy demanded a more coercive UI system and (initially) a co-optive training regime which fed on the unemployed. In this context partnership helped to convey a false sense of equality to organized labour, to desanction those not considered partners (the unemployed), and to make labour market needs a little more predictable for the state. It also had beneficial effects within EIC, where it responded to organizational divisions impeding the policy thrust, a militant union, and employee misgivings about the whole project. Qualms among the staff were to be allayed not only with boosterism stressing teamwork and cooperation, but also with a service-quality thrust that tapped into the tradition of distorted altruism. This, in turn, paralleled 'state-of-the-art' private sector practices and responded to business dissatisfaction with EIC's 'products.' The strategic package deployed here seemed sufficiently promising that EIC's Deputy Minister Arthur Kroeger recommended its use in legitimating the next phase of neoconservative restructuring. His Public Policy Forum advised prime minister designate Kim Campbell to undertake more 'real' public consultation, reform Parliament, and develop more tripartite partnerships: 'so that Ottawa can assume more of a leadership role on national problems than an "ownership" role.'125 Kroeger's faith may be misplaced, however, and a brief analysis of previous EIC efforts suggests that management's holy grail will remain undiscovered. Lussier's 'Philosophy' Kroeger's partnership approach built upon a sustained attempt by his predecessor, Gaetan Lussier, to transform EIC's organizational culture along the lines laid out in In Search of Excellence. Lussier was clearly influenced by the book's prescriptions, and on occasion he quoted directly from it when speaking to departmental conferences.126 Lussier, like Kroeger, became deputy minister at a time when militancy among federal workers was on the rise, and wage controls were imminent. Lussier's predecessor had been an honoured guest at the founding convention of the Canada Employment and Immigration Union in 1978, and J.L. Manion had praised the union as a 'creative and construe-

External Pressures, Internal Needs 141 tive ally.' By 1981, in contrast, the CEIU had replaced its old-guard leadership and sent an apparently militant member (Pierre Samson) to the PSAC presidency. EIC's annual report recognized the union's 'new more aggressive national executive' and described increased consultation, and better labour relations training for management, as responses to this transformation.128 Lussier also faced, like Kroeger, problems related to the coordination of EIC's employment and insurance branches, in this case magnified by proximity to the 1977 merger. One manager described staff morale in this period as 'awful.' The military retirees who dominated UI found it hard to work with the counsellors and social workers in employment, and EIC workplaces would typically have separate staff lounges for each branch.129 Finally, like Kroeger, Lussier oversaw a sharp turn towards neoconservative labour market policy. For Lussier this involved the 'revitalization' of employment services, and the CJS's tilt from job creation to training. Both of these involved major dislocation for EIC employees, and, like LFDS, were accompanied by a morale-boosting internal public relations campaign. Lussier first reworked the staid and separate statements of purpose for employment, insurance, and immigration into a unified and clarified set of goals capped by a snappy 'mission statement.' Next he initiated a 'values search' that was to culminate in a 'philosophy of management' to which managers could be held accountable. Over three years senior executives contemplated the problem and then solicited the input of about 1,000 managers to produce a document entitled Our Philosophy of Management - first made public in 1985 and given wide distribution thereafter.130 The document reads very much like the prototype that would be developed in Governing Values, and its crucial section goes as follows: 'Our Philosophy of Management is to work together to provide the best service we can for our clients and the community.' From this philosophy, there flows a number of principles. These guide us in our day to day work and help us to achieve our mission. Our clients are why we exist. Our employees are our most valuable resource. Our managers, in partnership with employees, are responsible for achieving our mission.

142 Part 2: Border Disputes Our communications and systems must support our managers and employees in the delivery of service to our clients.131

The emphasis on client service had been enthusiastically endorsed by Lussier and used to reinterpret much of what the department did. EIC's employment equity responsibilities were portrayed as part of the 'search for excellence,' since they constituted an 'environmental linkage' enabling EIC to adapt to social change. But Lussier went further, aiming to 'establish a comprehensive network for enhancing contact with all our clients.' In words that Governing Values would repeat almost verbatim, Lussier noted that 'it is the thousand informal and daily linkages between our staff and the general public that will provide for constant 1 ^9 renewal and awareness in the Commission.' EIC management promised to rethink performance standards in light of this new focus. The official in charge of 'revitalization' pledged to downplay placement and other volume-based measures of program effectiveness, so as to empower local offices. Instead, she said, 'The message we're trying to get across ... is "making a difference" - making something happen that would not have happened without our intervention.'133 Such a message would obviously contribute to the unity of purpose Lussier was trying to build among EIC workers, but it might also enable EIC to defend itself against privatization or devolution. Conversely, the new measurements could help pinpoint targets for privatization or justify tactical withdrawals (like the retreat from direct job creation). Our Philosophy's commitment to employees was far less substantial, and here the tools of symbolic legitimation were deployed once again. Lussier promised that managers would be trained to treat employees better and that rigid hierarchies would be dissolved. Citing private sector 'success' stories like Chrysler, Lussier linked service quality to praise and recognition by managers. EIC then embarked on a departmentwide program to recognize good service and reward suggestions for improving it. Such programs are thought to be cheap ways of encouraging harder work, nourishing the myth of altruism, and tapping workers' knowledge and discretionary effort. And, of course, 'managers cannot be expected to recognize and reward if they are not themselves recognized for recognizing and rewarding.'1 4 Managers had written the philosophy and now they were promised extra incentives to follow it. Employees had not been part of the process, and their input was only solicited three years later, and in token

External Pressures, Internal Needs 143 ways. Besides the recognition program, workers were promised that the staff magazine Panorama would reflect a 'greater openness' in EIC. Its board would reflect a better regional balance, and some allowance would be made for the 'legitimate diversity of views' within the department. Perhaps this was a response to the union's counter-paper Paranoia, but in any case it produced no noticeable change in EIC's official press. More patronizing still was the slogan contest which management offered as an 'opportunity to decide how to present the national organization to both the Canadian public and itself.' The intent was to encourage unity within EIC and consistency between internal and external public relation efforts. Personnel officials within EIC insisted that the Our Philosophy constituted a substantial concession, because 'people are now grieving on the basis of the management philosophy expressed in it.' But one of these officials laid bare the strategy of symbolic legitimation, as well as some of its mystical overtones, in emphasizing the importance of non-material rewards. Quoting a French philosopher to the effect that people live 'essentially in transcendentals,' Jerome Cyr explained that these were 'things you can't touch - like beauty, unity, goodness, virtue. Recognition of you as a person, of the quality of the work you are performing, is one of those things.'136 The influence of In Search of Excellence, and its tendency to take managers into the unexplored world beyond reason, is apparent here. However, what is truly striking is the similarity between sentiments such as these and the myth of the paternal manager which Glassco used to deflect serious challenges to management authority. This ideological construct seems to be invoked whenever militancy is on the rise. It is, however, a feeble defence if frequently contradicted by experience, and this is apparently what happened to Our Philosophy. Lussier was quite optimistic about the approach in mid-1988. He congratulated the government for adopting EIC's methods in its new Increased Ministerial Authority and Accountability (IMAA) initiative, was planning to train all 7,600 front-line EIC staff in public relations, and proclaimed that the philosophy was now unstoppable. But within a few months he was punished for his hubris. After intense questioning by the House of Commons Labour, Employment, and Immigration Committee on the firirig of an immigration officer who had appeared before it, Lussier was forced to resign and take a job in the private sector.13 (He was neither the first nor the last senior EIC manager to be brought down by rebellious front-line workers.) His successors continued to 1 ^f^

144 Part 2: Border Disputes emphasize the continuity between their efforts and the Our Philosophy, but it is clearly being superseded by new catchwords and new initiatives. A post mortem delivered by one of Lussier's colleagues provides a lesson in the limitations of charismatic management. According to Joan Andrew, Lussier's charisma infected those close to him, but its strength faded beyond the inner circle. Some found his devotion to ISOE reminiscent of Jimmy Swaggart and other televangelists. There was widespread cynicism about EIC's commitment to its 'greatest resource' when it accepted layoffs, budget cuts, and wage freezes dictated by the Department of Finance. Lussier's enthusiasm rang hollow in workplaces suffering the trauma of layoffs, and Andrew thinks his legacy was a 'values transformation' affecting only the top echelons of the department. Elsewhere it may simply have been a general cynicism about slogans.138 Yet Lussier's efforts are instructive for our purposes, as they underline EIC's efforts to unify its internal and external management strategies. As we have seen, these have affected the shape of labour market policy initiatives, at least at the level of public relations and ideology. But neoconservatism's recycled management theories have not been able to overcome some basic problems at EIC. The irreducible discretionary power exercised by key front-line workers (like employment counsellors, who need to see clients if business is to get the service quality it demands) forces EIC to rely more on tactics of persuasion than it might otherwise. This, along with the politically charged content of the department's daily activities, and the nature of the clients it serves, encourages attempts to perfect the art of ideological manipulation. But management is not the only organized force attempting to shape the consciousness of those who define policy in practice. Perhaps the most important counterweight to management's influence in EIC is the local union the Canadian Employment and Immigration Union.

5 Bargaining and Beyond

The power of the Canadian Employment and Immigration Union was not expressed primarily through the traditional channels of collective bargaining. Militancy in this domain facilitated militancy elsewhere and contributed to the atmosphere that made mundane resistance possible. But the CEIU was structurally and strategically disconnected from the bargaining table. Structurally, the CEIU represented only parts of bargaining units (those parts in Employment and Immigration Canada) and thus had only partial influence on collective agreements negotiated by the Public Service Alliance of Canada's central offices. PSAC was an unwieldy instrument to begin with, and during the period in question its bargaining leverage was limited by new legal constraints and old bureaucratic attitudes. Frustration with their parent union was one factor that led CEIU officials to "decentre" collective bargaining in their strategies. But this choice was also affected by an increasingly hostile political climate. The CEIU's approach was forged while the postwar compromise dissolved and PSAC struggled to become something more than a conservative staff association. Some key moments in both journeys are described briefly below. Free Markets and Unfree Bargaining

Reforms won by workers in dramatic confrontations are often eroded by the more enduring organizational power of business and the state. It has been argued, for example, that the basic union rights won for some private sector workers just after the Second World War were undermined by a relatively subtle process that co-opted union leaders into a

146 Part 2: Border Disputes conservative, legalistic mind-set.1 In the case of state workers, however, employers have usually been less tolerant and less patient. Federal public servants won limited strike rights only in 1967, and within a few years their bargaining power was subjected to intense assault - first by overarching legislation and later by more targetted measures. In 1975 they were hit by nation-wide wage controls imposed through the Anti-Inflation Program (AIP). These would prove to be only the first salvo in a longer campaign conducted primarily through the Bank of Canada's new tight money policy. As controls were removed in 1978, Ottawa tried, but failed, to end its own wage negotiations permanently. Following advice offered by the Fraser Institute, it introduced amendments to the Public Service Staff Relations Act (PSSRA) which would have tied arbitration decisions to those of "comparable" private employers.2 Comparability in general is used with remarkable hypocrisy by state and business officials. As a slogan it has been notably absent whenever private sector wage settlements outpaced public sector ones, but present when the situation is reversed. It is, however, frequently invoked by state managers when their salaries fall too far behind those of corporate CEOs. Comparability on these terms applies market discipline selectively inside the state, while further insulating the private sector from egalitarian projects. The Average Comparability of Total Compensation (ACTC) scheme advocated in 1978 was undone by union opposition and an approaching election, but probably also by second thoughts in the Department of Finance. Had federal wage decisions been left to formulaic arbitration, Ottawa would have lost the ability even to set an example for the provinces, and the public sector wages that really mattered would have been totally beyond its reach. Nonetheless, the evidence since 1980 suggests that successive federal and provincial governments have secured comparability through other means.3 In attempting to recoup bargaining losses through legislation, the AIP and ACTC initiatives highlight what has become common practice among public employers in Canada. As Panitch and Swartz show, governments at all levels have imposed back-to-work laws and bargaining restrictions with alarming frequency since 1975.4 This turn to 'permanent exceptionalism' has cohmplemented the shift to 'permanent restraint' by suppressing wage gains and singling out state workers for exemplary legislative assault. It also testifies to the enduring power and political significance of those workers. The mass unionization of Canada's public sector after 1960 repre-

Bargaining and Beyond 147 sented organized labour's last major victory under the old Keynesian rules, and it is one of the major reasons they were abandoned after 1975. Indeed one study suggests that AIP controls over the whole economy were introduced primarily to stifle gains by state unions.5 Because this mechanism imposed the same wage limits on all large employers, it also assured a kind of comparability between the public and private sectors. But it trespassed on management rights. Control over wages (along with the threat of unemployment) is perhaps the most important tool managers have to keep workers productive and compliant. Collective bargaining moderates this power to some extent, but in Canada, the state usually does not. Legislated wage controls reduce firms' strategic flexibility, and allow the state to go far beyond capital's normal margins of tolerance. The ACTC solution was similarly intrusive with respect to the prerogatives of state managers - and this helps to explain its defeat. Both options violated what had been the established boundaries of labour's influence, but in each case this was intentional, since the broader imperative was to reduce union power. PSAC found itself calling for a return to 'free collective bargaining' under the PSSRA, a labour code whose restrictions it had consistently criticized. It continued to advance traditional economic demands, while government and business insisted on rollbacks and concessions.6 If the 1975-8 controls were a Keynesian excess, the ACTC approach was decidedly neoconservative. It sought to make state spending more predictable, while containing the impact of the state's internal struggles. If it weakened the federal government in the process, creating a leadership vacuum for some of the more reactionary provinces to fill, Canadian neoconservatives would not have been unduly alarmed. The PSSRA amendments died on the order paper, and Joe Clark's Conservatives were defeated before they could leave their own mark on the issue. Neoconservatives were momentarily bereft of both a plan and a reliable government to implement it. Yet inflation had not been defeated. Living costs and government deficits continued to rise as the economy absorbed another price hike by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Federal workers at the lower end of the pay scale were hit hard. It was this group that first drew a line in the sand. The Revolt of the Clerks

On 29 September 1980, 50,000 members of PSAC's clerical and regulatory (CR) bargaining unit struck for the first time, taking part in what

148 Part 2: Border Disputes was, until 1991, easily the largest walkout in PSAC's history. CR wages had lost ground to inflation under controls, and by 1980, with inflation nearing 10 per cent, they had been a year without a contract, and two years without a wage increase. Overwhelmingly female, the clerks' average salary was just slightly above the poverty line.7 In these circumstances it is not surprising that the CR's key concerns were to speed up negotiations and build inflation protection into their salaries. Members could (and did) point to the success in this regard of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW). Treasury Board initially offered only half the inflation rate over two years (5 per cent and 5 per cent) and rejected a conciliation board report that split the difference. By the end of the strike it had moved to full - but temporary inflation protection (10 per cent and 9 per cent).8 These statistics say very little about the tone of the strike, and give no real sense of the impact it had. On the one hand, clerks were able to organize an effective, nation-wide walkout that forced government negotiators to move on key points. On the other hand, they encountered obstacles inside their own union that would ultimately lead to farreaching changes within PSAC itself. Bargaining under the PSSRA is cumbersome - unions must declare in advance whether the final resolution will be arbitration or conciliation and a strike. Thus the employer has more time to prepare for the latter and can stretch out the intervening steps (for example, conciliation or designation of essential personnel), if necessary. But in 1980 the employer's delaying tactics were compounded by PSAC's own drawn-out and centralized decision-making process. The union's negotiators seem to have pinned their hopes on the conciliation report and asked their members to approve it in a national vote. This delayed organizing a strike vote, which had not yet been held, and, in PSAC, required a mail-in ballot. Treasury Board was silent for a week while PSAC organized the first vote, then told clerks they were considering a 'package [that] does not exist.' The government rejected it, citing public demands for restraint.9 Such petty manipulation characterizes many negotiations, but unions are more vulnerable to it if they are excessively legalistic and bureaucratic. Here PSAC seemed willing to play by the rules, no matter what the cost. Later in the strike, one of the negotiators could still say: 'We were asked to go back in, if we were going to bargain in good faith and try to get anything accomplished at the same time while you're meeting with Don Johnston, president of the Treasury Board, you're not going to precipitate a close off of those (talks) by also building up the militancy on the outside.'10

Bargaining and Beyond 149 The PSAC executive never lost patience with the government, but the clerks finally lost patience with PSAC. Soon after the conciliation board fiasco, they began walking out across Ontario and Quebec. The timing made these actions legal, but they were not authorized by PSAC, and some were actively discouraged. Plans for a mail strike ballot were now complicated by the fact that PSAC's postal unit (and other postal unions) had shut down most mail processing. PSAC's executive was forced to set the rules aside, order an expedited strike vote, and undo its support of the conciliation board report.11 When clerks finally voted (in record numbers), about 75 per cent agreed to a strike mandate. But the executive never supported the wildcats, and began an 'official' strike about a week later. One PSAC leader attacked the early pickets for disrupting 'a strike action that would be massive, coordinated, and most of all effective.' Bill Doherty argued that members' democratic rights had to be 'set aside' during strikes: 'In times of militant action ... some of our democratic practices must be put on hold. In the midst of what must be a carefully controlled and co-ordinated strike action there is no time and no way for groups to question, contradict or flout the decisions of the National Strike Co-ordinating Committee.'12 It was not hard for strikers to interpret such talk as patronizing and authoritarian. This impression was confirmed by a clerk in Hamilton who had called PSAC's national office about strike preparations some months before. 'We were told, in effect,' she says, "There, there dears, don't worry your pretty little heads over it, you're never going to strike anyway." Before the official strike had even begun, clerks were occupying government offices, working to rule, and annoying managers. A Chatham clerk recalled that 'there was a lot of cattiness amongst the members in trying to slip management up and it was good that way, it really made them feel full of power.'14 A Toronto union representative extended this analogy, comparing clerks to a 'sleeping giant' and a 'time bomb.' Anne Swarbrick told the Globe and Mail: 'All government services depend on having clerks ... Women have enormous power. Clerks have enormous power in this country because no federal service can operate without them ... They've been traditionally passive, but now they're awakening to the power they've got.'15 Younger participants in the 1980 strike expressed surprise both at the conservatism of older women clerks and the degree to which they embraced the new militancy. In Elliot Lake, a new clerk asked a veteran: '"Is this all they offer us?" and she said: "Yes. We always accept it ... Ottawa decides basically and it's no sense in even voicing anything 1 ^

150 Part 2: Border Disputes because we're too small." And I thought and I said: "No, no, no!"'16 Elsewhere, real transformations were observed among older strikers: 'They were always quiet and diffident and they're still quiet and diffident except that now they'll tell people when to stop, when they've gone too far, and they'll stand up for their rights.'17 The strike eventually faltered when government threats stifled its escalation. About 7,000 out of 50,000 clerks were designated 'essential,' and members in other units were not on the same bargaining track. Both groups were legally obliged to cross their own union's picket lines, and the government threatened to enforce this obligation with injunctions and harsh penalties. A militant and mobilized union can overcome restrictions such as these, as nurses, teachers, and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) have shown, but PSAC as a whole was not such a union in 1980.18 PSAC's position was made worse by its weakness among non-clerks in strategic locations like Ottawa. Across the country, many people who worked with clerks honoured their picket lines, despite the risk of fines and dismissal. But Ottawa's federal offices tend to be large, impersonal and distant from the front line. While clerks there organized some 'spectacular' mass pickets, they were unable to shut down many government operations. Casual workers were bullied into crossing the lines, but clerks found too many others willing to cross voluntarily. CRs in Ottawa eventually gave massive approval to a tentative agreement that other regions rejected.19 They may have had little choice. That agreement was made public, and the strike ended, before the clerks had seen or approved its provisions. By this means PSAC negotiators secured peace with their employer, but not with their own membership. Resentment over the final settlement helped convince the incumbent president to retire, and Bill Doherty was defeated in a bid made to succeed him.20 More importantly, PSAC locals across the country were transformed as female clerks shattered the tradition of electing union executives that mirrored the occupational hierarchy at work. Strike experience had suddenly become an "organizational asset": 'It was very much a prestige thing for them. Because nobody else - the PM group who were supposedly superior as professionals - had ever been on strike ... So I think it made people feel just really good to be part of that.'21 One observer says that, through the 1980 strike, the clerks came to be regarded 'as one of the lead bargaining groups and by many as the backbone of the PSAC.'22 The transition was heady stuff for some. Judy

Bargaining and Beyond 151 Renaud says striking 'gave you a feeling of power. You don't feel powerful, especially as a CR. Usually you feel like the work you do is sort of drudge work, which is not right but lots of people feel that way, and it gave you the feeling of "I can make a difference" and I think lots of women grew from that and were involved and are involved in the union now. ,9S Women's involvement was reflected in, and facilitated by, several structural changes that came in the wake of the clerks' revolt. The awkward strike vote procedure was decentralized to locals, who were now considered 'trustworthy enough ... to be able to count ballots.'24 Separate representation for women was secured in PSAC and its components throughout the 1980s. In the CEIU solidarity between clerks and non-clerks had been high during the strike (90 per cent of those suspended for refusing to cross picket lines were CEIU members), and this was reflected in the speed of change afterward. CEIU Ontario created a women's committee in 1983. A few months later a women's conference was held at the national level, and in 1984 the CEIU convention set aside three executive positions for women - a first, it claimed, for a national union in Canada. One of those positions was filled by a veteran of the clerks' strike. The same convention approved a special dues increase to fund these positions and the , . OF; women s committee. CEIU women were also active in the component's efforts to radicalize PSAC's national leadership. These efforts achieved early success just after the clerks' strike, when CEIU leader (and apparent militant) Pierre Samson was able to defeat Doherty for the PSAC presidency. In 1985 CEIU managed to break the official slate and elect two of its members onto the PSAC executive. One of them was Susan Giampietri, a Toronto immigration officer. In 1991 she was joined by a second CEIU woman, Nycole Turmel, who was expected to bring 'strongly feminist views' to the alliance. Turmel had run unsuccessfully for CEIU's presidency the year before, arguing that 'it's time a woman ran the component, and I am ready.' The CEIU was not ready for her in 1991, but nine years later PSAC was, and Turmel became the alliance's first female president. Turmel was a former clerk (an employment counsellor assistant) who was closely associated with the spectacular pay equity victory PSAC had won only a few months before. PSAC itself created a women's committee as early as 1976, but much more elaborate and influential structures were developed after the clerks' strike. An educational conference was held in 1985. Three years

152 Part 2: Border Disputes later the union had institutionalized not only a national conference and a network of advisory committees, but also a set of independent regional committees that 'cut across the cumbersome component structure of the union.' PSAC women now had the capacity to develop policy at all levels of the organization and - through the national women's conference - the unique ability to send resolutions directly to PSAC conventions. They have generally not been successful in getting these resolutions passed, but Julie White claims that small, seemingly innocuous victories inside PSAC have often been leveraged into larger ones by women activists.2 White's survey of unions and union centrals suggests that women's progress inside PSAC, as measured by positions held, has been about average despite these early gains. In 1989, 47 per cent of the union's membership were women (and most of these were clerks). Yet at that point PSAC had never elected a women to its presidency, and women comprised only 26 per cent of its convention delegates and executives. Among local presidents and central union staff the figures were better 34 per cent and 35 per cent respectively - but still not proportional. Moreover, in the crucial staff sections concerned with bargaining, women's presence was much smaller.28 The patterns here are similar to those found wherever women have become active in male-dominated organizations and point again to the importance of informal as well as formal power structures. Yet the example of the clerks' strike, and its later ramifications inside PSAC, demonstrate that those structures are not impermeable and can be transformed and democratized - albeit slowly. In the case of PSAC, it is crucial to note that the 'change agents' were those previously considered to be the weakest members of the organization - women at the bottom of wage, job, and union hierarchies. They became powerful by using tools and developing skills that union bureaucrats had neglected, not by playing the game by the old rules. Moreover, their efforts had larger consequences. The CR strike is often placed alongside the Fleck strike in lists of significant struggles accompanying the rise of union feminism in Canada, and it certainly helped to raise consciousness among clerks and co-workers, within their unions and beyond. 29 Of course, these sorts of struggles do not produce final victories, and if they are significant, they are likely to be resisted by those with a stake in the status quo. By this measure, some struggles linked to the clerks' strike were exceptionally significant, as will be seen in the next section. But the possibility that present gains will unravel later should

Bargaining and Beyond 153 not lead us to understate the courage of those who first won them or overstate the need for bureaucracy to sustain them. The problem of balancing bureaucracy and democracy, of gaining access to collective power while preserving smaller identities, will be raised again in Chapter 8. For now it is important only to note that 1980 marked a high point in the political confidence of federal workers. Macho management produced a backlash almost as soon as it was employed, unleashing a wave of resistance shaped by thousands of 'hidden transcripts.' This new atmosphere suffused state workplaces and made other expressions of power more conceivable - to workers, to their unions, and to their employers. PSAC was again drawn into battles inside the 'proper channels.' But the CEIU, in part because it sensed a growing capacity for mundane resistance on the front line, sought to play a new game, by different rules. Restoring Discipline

The clerks enjoyed mixed fortunes after 1980. They won maternity benefits and substantial wage gains in the next round of bargaining, but many of these were rolled back under the '6&5' restraint program, which was in effect from 1982 to 1984. Like the 1975-8 controls, the legislated limits of '6&5' per cent were aimed specifically at wages, but unlike them left private wage deals in private hands. The latter were made, however, in the context of Ottawa's restraint program and a 'managed' recession. Comparability in its monetarist guise meant that state wages would follow private sector wages down; they would not be linked to rise together or to redress inequality. The point was to liberate employers from 'normal standards of equity,' according to one official. A cabinet member said '6&5' had been introduced 'at the request of businessmen who said they could not drive down wages in the private sector unless the government led the way.'30 Throughout the 1980s Liberal and Conservative governments in Ottawa used direct controls and economic uncertainty to drive their wage bill steadily downward. The '6&5' model extended existing contracts - effectively banning bargaining and strikes - and left unions with little room to quibble about implementation, as they had under the Anti-Inflation Board. By this means some $800 million in projected wages, and billions more in pension payments, were taken from federal employees. Similar methods were used some ten years later by the Conservatives. At that point the comptroller general felt that permanent

154 Part 2: Border Disputes restraint could keep settlements below inflation so 'there will never be any "catch up."'31 The erosion of real wages was masked initially by nominal increases, but every victory against inflation gave the government less room to manoeuvre.32 In 1991 projected inflation rates were so low that the government demanded 0 per cent settlements, and the legitimating effect of nominal increases was lost entirely. The strike that ensued - PSAC's first 'general' strike - again found the clerks, and the plight of poorlypaid women, playing a prominent role. Pay equity became an evocative rallying cry, but progress on this front was stalled by a back-to-work order. That law imposed wage controls in another form, one the Chretien government would later emulate. Bargaining would not resume, and apparent progress on pay equity would not be made, until just before the 1997 election.33 By this point PSAC was well into a long struggle to 'catch up' through other means. Ottawa made pay equity mandatory in the late 1970s, but it did not actually apply the principle to its own workforce until the next millennium. PSAC filed a pay equity complaint in 1984, and for fifteen years successive governments fought its definition of 'comparability' at the bargaining table, at the Human Rights Commission, and in the courts. PSAC finally won a decisive victory in the Federal Court in the fall of 1999, and in the spring of the following year cheques totaling some $3.5 billion were distributed to 200,000 current and former employees. Many of the latter had died before seeing any of this money.34 The union was ultimately able to defeat Ottawa's persistent court challenges, but the government's delaying tactics succeeded as well. Pay equity was postponed for twenty years, and paid out in times of surplus, rather than deficits. Past practice suggests that, when cornered, governments may scrap labour laws rather than obey them. Ottawa has chosen a more circuitous route, attempting a $30 billion pension grab in 1999, but so far resisting the temptation to repeal pay equity. The business press is still pushing for that move, but Ottawa might also follow the example of Bell Canada. Facing a very similar ruling with respect to its operators, Bell chose to contract out most of their work to a cut-rate call centre in Arizona.35 Both options simply underline the fact that PSAC's pay equity victory was, in many respects, an economic victory secured by traditional legalistic means. One might dispute whether it was even an economic victory, given the losses previously imposed by wage controls, and the depletion

Bargaining and Beyond 155 of union resources over a decade and a half. It was important symbolically and asserted rights to dignity and respect that resonate deeply. But, at least in the short term, it did little to alter work conditions for women in the public service or make their jobs more secure. PSAC has a tendency to play by the rules for far too long, and there remains a danger that they may be left claiming moral victory as their gains in court are undone politically. If pay equity is integrated into PSAC's bargaining agenda, then the union may soon face some tough questions about the gendered definition of 'skills,' and about job ghettos and wage hierarchies that pay equity does not normally address.36 It is important to note the progression here. Clerical militancy burst forth in 1980; transformed PSAC, was contained and channelled elsewhere through the 1980s, broke through again in 1991, was contained and channeled elsewhere in the 1990s, and was finally recognized officially in the Turmel - pay equity victories. By that time, however, there were indications that the locus of militancy was moving elsewhere. PSAC's blue-collar units struck in early 1999. Federal jail guards would have done the same had they not been legislated back to work before they walked out. A year later those guards left PSAC in a raid by the separatist Quebec central, the Confederation des syndicats nationaux (CSN). Managing discontent became trickier as the millennium turned. We should remember that inducements to 'responsible' behaviour were escalated dramatically after the clerks' strike. In 1982 Ottawa secured Supreme Court confirmation of its unrestricted and unilateral right to designate positions 'essential.' This meant, in effect, that the employer could choose which of its employees would be deprived of their right to strike. For the rest of the decade it used this power to undermine PSAC's ability to mobilize, commonly designating entire bargaining units, or major parts thereof. The net was cast so widely that vacant positions were often designated 'essential.'37 Designations were not a final solution to the problem of state worker militancy, despite some dire predictions to that effect. In the 1988-9 bargaining round, a technical foul-up prevented the government from designating any positions at all. PSAC finally had a strike mandate from most of its bargaining units, and it was suddenly given the power to pull every one of those members off the job. This situation seemed to frighten negotiators on both sides of the table, and PSAC settled for minimal gains and a quick deal. The 1990-91 round resulted, for the first time, in a walkout involving most PSAC members. Here the width of mobilization compensated for OO

156 Part 2: Border Disputes its lack of depth. Designation levels remained high in each bargaining unit, but negotiating schedules were synchronized so that nearly all PSAC units could strike simultaneously. Picketers still had to watch managers, contract workers, and other unions' members go through their lines. But the use of designated workers as in-house strikebreakers had been partly neutralized, and their wages helped sustain union revenues. Towards the end of the 1991 strike, some of them had even begun illegal walkouts. Regardless of their practical impact, designations remain ideologically important. During strikes, the media tend to accept government definitions of essential work uncritically and play up the damage done to clients when it is withdrawn. The Ottawa Citizen is particularly hysterical in leaping on the slightest hint of illegality or violence, and PSAC members and leaders are constantly reminded that they are trifling with 'the law' when they strike. This ongoing campaign of intimidation helps to justify employer injunctions and back-to-work laws, and the threat of these has made walkouts by those designated (no matter how arbitrarily) a last resort.39 The 1991 strike did not produce a decisive victory for either side. Early threats of legislation and mass layoffs did not cow PSAC President Daryl Bean, who made an unprecedented declaration that he would disobey any back-to-work law.40 When a legislated settlement denied PSAC major wage gains and forced its members back to work, it was accompanied by apparent concessions on job security and contract length. The union leadership also made adroit moves to deflect blame for service reductions during the strike, and one poll indicated that it had won the public relations war.41 The 1991 strike also proved that PSAC could mobilize the majority of its membership - even when about a third of them (45,000) were designated 'essential,' and even after the strike had been temporarily suspended. Significantly, membership anger was not dissipated in the course of the 1991 strike - if anything it grew, fueled by reports of fat executive bonuses and by the Treasury Board's bad-faith bargaining. As Parliament passed back-to-work legislation, designated workers were staging illegal walkouts, 20,000 people had marched on Parliament Hill, occupations of Cabinet offices had begun, and 'random acts of defiance' were increasing. PSAC members returned to work angry, amid talk of a 'work freeze for a wage freeze,' vowing to punish both the government and their non-designated colleagues who had worked through the strike.42

Bargaining and Beyond 157 PSAC tried to channel this anger into an anti-Tory campaign in the 1993 election (the first in which federal workers had full political rights). Their efforts may have contributed to the Tories' annihilation, but they seem to have had very little effect on the government's bargaining stance, which remained committed to the Tory wage freeze. Experiences like this are becoming increasingly common at all levels of government, so electoralism seems unlikely to relieve membership pressure for more direct action. Politicians continue to convey the impression that the rights of state workers are in fact highly conditional privileges. In 1982 Donald Johnston explained nonchalantly that bargaining had to go because workers might use it to resist wage limits. Allan MacEachen later offered a more subtle (and popular) rationale echoing the legal arguments surrounding the AIP. He claimed that inflation was a national crisis, requiring a common national effort and shared sacrifice. He promised that savings on public wages would be reallocated 'to help the unemployed and troubled sectors of the economy.'43 But the neoconservative stance required an increasingly explicit assault on precisely those groups. Business and the state soon dropped even the pretense that they were meeting labour's needs and instead tried to push unions out of the political sphere. State workers were vilified as the most special of special interests and singled out for special treatment. Symbolic leadership of this sort was relatively costless - an important consideration in times of fiscal crisis - and would help keep public and private sector unions divided. The obligations of patriotism would rest most heavily on state workers, even as their superiors directed public antipathy towards them. The task of increasing productivity among this select group was left to state managers, but 'doing more with less' meant less reliance on bribery, and more innovative use of fear and fantasy to motivate the public workforce. The Legacy of Restraint

Glaus Offe argues that all unions must make trade-offs between bureaucratic and democratic power. The former is built through the trappings of formal organization (staff, structure, strike funds, lawyers, and so forth), but it is in many respects antithetical to the latter. Democratic power is measured by the degree to which members feel the union is 'theirs' and by their willingness to act (especially to strike) on its behalf. A powerful bureaucracy that serves its members is not democratic,

158 Part 2: Border Disputes according to Offe, unless it mobilizes them as well. For unions, bureaucratic power is not secure unless democratic power is cultivated, for the former is ultimately founded on the capacity to strike or to credibly threaten strikes.44 After 1980 both PSAC and the CEIU were propelled by the clerks towards a greater focus on democracy and mobilization. However, CEIU leaders found PSAC too slow, too fearful, and still too reliant on dealmaking and bureaucratic power. Clearly governments encouraged these latter tendencies, for understandable reasons. But PSAC's record also gave pause for thought. Like many unions, PSAC initially responded to the neoconservative assault in defensive and contradictory ways. Insisting, in effect, that its members were only following orders, alliance leaders attempted to shift the blame to management for 'waste' and 'inefficiency.' However, this forced them to claim that they could remain loyal to the public interest even as they obeyed managers who were betraying it. The dilemmas of loyalty were typically resolved by issuing timid threats. In 1981 PSAC warned that government attacks 'could ultimately lead to mass confrontation - a state of affairs which no thinking person could want.'40 This reasoning reflected PSAC's defensive war of position in the realm of collective bargaining. Until the early 1980s, PSAC leaders responded to attacks on state power by denying that their members wielded any and by trying to keep a low profile until neoconservativism exhausted itself. In 1976, for example, they refused to join the one-day strike by the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) against wage controls because they could not bring themselves to violate collective agreements the government had already overridden. Nor were PSAC leaders 'empowered' when Ottawa imposed controls over the whole economy to restrain public sector wages. Hesitating even when provoked, PSAC was called 'the biggest company union in Canada.'46 Like many unions, PSAC had a reputation for being easily distracted by the promise of rewards for good behaviour. This reputation was enhanced by the government's propensity to offer secret deals whenever it froze the bargaining process or legislated strikers back to work.47 Yet two PSAC leaders lost their jobs after going along with this sort of activity, and a third, Daryl Bean, was censured so heavily for it that he was, to all appearances, transformed into a genuine militant. The advent of 'permanent exceptionalism' has made 'free' collective bargaining rare at the federal level since 1975. In fact, bargaining has been 'unfree' for most of that time.48 However, this coercive shift ulti-

Bargaining and Beyond 159 mately failed to suppress militancy inside PSAC, perhaps because it closed a safety valve which might otherwise channel and dissipate the daily frustrations of state workers. Rank-and-file pressure has instead been focused on local managers and union leaders, and the latter are now more willing to contemplate confrontation and strikes. CEIU and the Limits of Bargaining

Given the success of the clerks' strike, it is not surprising that the CEIU first tried to mobilize around issues related to collective bargaining. But so long as PSAC was unable or unwilling to strike, this was an inherently limited approach. PSAC components like the CEIU reflect departmental boundaries. Bargaining units, on the other hand, are based on government-wide occupational categories. Negotiating committees follow the shape of the unit, not the component, and PSAC central remains the official bargaining agent. Thus while the CEIU represents over 20,000 members - nearly all of them concentrated in two units - it does not actually control bargaining in any category. In 1986 a marginally successful campaign to mobilize CEIU members in the CR and programme administration (PM) units against their PSAC-negotiated contracts failed to overcome support from CRs and PMs in other components. The vast majority of CEIU members come from one of these bargaining units, but nationally they comprise only about 40 per cent of all PSAC PMs and 20 per cent of all CRs.49 In a strategic review called 'The Fight Continues,' CEIU leaders concluded that the numbers would always be against them: One thing is certain: We would have needed 80% of the CEIU PM members and more than 100% of the CEIU CR members to obtain a no majority. We cannot avoid facing reality. One of our major problems is that, as an organization, our control and main influence ends at the level of the members. It therefore becomes extremely difficult to gain major victories without being able to convince members of other components to support our positions ... unless we organize our battles and pressure tactics in such a way that this support is no longer needed.50

In an introduction to the document, President Renaud Paquet underlined a basic problem for all PSAC components: 'Our greatest stumbling block is that we are not the bargaining agent and do not control negotiations; therefore our 'eggs' should not all be put into the same

160 Part 2: Border Disputes basket as it is inconceivable that we can hope to change collective bargaining by 1987.'51 Similarly, while acknowledging their minority status within PSAC and the imminent departure (to CUPW) of allies in PSAC's postal component, the CEIU leadership resigned itself to remaining there.52 The first draft of 'The Fight Continues' says that 'we will have to continue to live within the Alliance and to get as much out of it as we can, or we can get out of it.' But the draft that was submitted to the membership added the phrase 'which is still legally impossible' to the end of this sentence.53 A second version of the document promised less acrimony with other components. They saw CEIU as 'an organization of agitators who does not listen to its members and who does not want to accept compromises.' This version vowed to aim future criticisms 'at ideas and not individuals' in order to get CEIU's message across.54 There is evidence as well of a deeper unease with collective bargaining in the union. Members expressed an understandable scepticism about the likelihood of achieving significant material gains by striking: 'the experiences with the CR strike and Bill C-124 ['6 & 5'] were constantly at the back of members' minds. They feel the Alliance does not have the necessary 'talent' to conduct a strike properly. In any event, if it did succeed, the employer would take away whatever we gained by means of special legislation later on.'55 Retiring CEIU Ontario staffer Bill Fisher tried to put a progressive slant on such arguments, and on legal setbacks to the right to strike, in a 1988 Paranoia article. After shrugging off unfavourable Supreme Court decisions as predictable, and chiding unions for their reliance on expensive and demobilizing legal challenges, Fisher described the North American industrial relations tradition as one which 'permits strikes, under certain conditions, after certain processes, subject to certain limits, all subject to legislative intervention in the event that it becomes politically necessary or expedient to call-off the strike. So now strikes are highly predictable, often provoked, and highly stylized.'56 Fisher suggested that union activists already recognized the 'severe limits' of'highly stylized, predictable legal actions,' and encouraged them to use the opportunity offered by legal defeats to explore new strategic options: 'Unions have been drawn into highly structured legal and legislative processes and away from direct action. But it was direct action which gained unions their power and legitimacy in the first place. Unions should seriously review the extent to which they participate in institutionalized systems ... [perhaps] ... some fundamental revisions need to be made and some creative thinking on "action tactics" undertaken.'57

Bargaining and Beyond 161 As will be seen in the next chapter, CEIU strategists took this message to heart and crafted a new approach more in keeping with the demands of their situation. They turned away from collective bargaining to find better venues for mobilizing and direct action, better ways to connect with the membership and their communities, and better means of accessing hidden transcripts and mundane resistance. While they did not boycott bargaining entirely, or neglect links to PSAC and its campaigns, their emphasis and enthusiasm were clearly directed elsewhere. Those seeking to build a more democratic and egalitarian society are likely to face continual frustration if collective bargaining is their chosen route. Bargaining has long been criticized for 'negotiating the terms of subordination, not subordination itself,' and for its inherent exclusivity. Not only do members have little presence in the process, unions themselves usually have a relatively small presence in the community. This makes it difficult to develop - much less implement - broader visions of solidarity through collective bargaining. It may be possible to expand and enrich bargaining demands if unions are able to reach beyond their membership. The CEIU has done this, and proposals to solidify these connections are outlined in Chapter 8. Unless bargaining is enveloped in a larger movement for self-management, it will remain limited and frustrating. However, the CEIU's experience has much to tell us about building such a movement, and it is to that we now turn.

6

Clients and Consciousness1

Didn't they realize there are union people in here, too? Besieged employment centre worker, 19942

Continuing academic neglect of state workers and their unions has led to the perpetuation of some increasingly dubious assumptions about the state itself. Whether the state is seen as the embodiment of some public good (as in mainstream public administration) or of class rule (as in neo-Marxist state theory), the bureaucracy's strength is portrayed as essentially undiminished by mass unionization. This same impression is often conveyed by public sector union leaders. When they speak of being scapegoated, or blame managers for waste and inefficiency, they effectively deny that state workers wield any politically-relevant power. From this perspective it is very difficult to understand the neoconservative obsession with state unions and with the productivity of state workers. It seems more fruitful to assume that the latter actually do possess significant powers and that neoconservatives are right to view them as potential obstacles to their designs. What are these powers, and how might they be used in 'progressive' ways? This chapter will argue that answers to these questions can be found in the workplace dynamics of the state's human service agencies. Here front-line workers enter into relationships with a unique sort of clientele. These relationships, whether individually or collectively arranged, can undermine the integrity of the bureaucratic hierarchy and foster progressive forms of resistance. More particularly, they can heighten class consciousness in a strategically placed group of workers and spark coalitions that prefigure deeper forms of democracy. The chapter proceeds

Clients and Consciousness 163 from a theoretical consideration of the place of front-line workers, through discussions of relations with the unemployed, the legitimacy of resistance, locally based action strategies, and relations with refugees. The concluding section examines the strategic implications of front-line work in a neoconservative age. Service and the Capitalist State

Front-line workers spend their days inside organizations nominally devoted to 'serving the public.' But the state as a whole does not 'serve' the majority of the population, as neo-Marxists have made clear. Service always comes with an element of control, and for many (usually workingclass) recipients control is pre-eminent. Nevertheless, the precise blend of service and control which clients experience is variable over time. Neoconservatism, broadly conceived, seeks to reshape the Keynesian welfare state - enhancing business services and business opportunities, while introducing new, cheaper, strategies of social control. These latter tend to replace cash and services with promises and threats. What the state does, and what state workers do, is changed, but the impact is quite uneven. Many jobs and budgets are cut, but a few grow, at least in relative terms. Most workers face changing management expectations: zealous performance is encouraged among welfare inspectors, for example, while it is discouraged or made impossible among health and safety inspectors. State workplaces were permeated by contradictions even at the height of Keynesian welfarism, but during the neoconservative ascendancy these have become particularly acute. As governments attempt to dilute the service component of human services, they also take front-line work further and further from its nominal goals and undermine the traditional means by which managers have controlled and motivated state workers - by linking altruism and obedience in the ethos of 'public service.' The growing contradiction between their nominal and their actual functions places front-line workers in a very awkward position: trained to serve and perhaps change society, they often find themselves simply policing the status quo, and are soon plunged into identity crises of one form or another.3 Most analysts assume that the eventual outcome of such dilemmas will be 'functional' behaviour: individuals will conform or burn out and leave. However, there is a minority tradition which sees other possibilities. Lipsky, as we have seen, suggests that tactics like rationing help work-

164 Part 2: Border Disputes ers cope, allowing them to deliver decent service to at least some clients. Because front-line workers radon according to their own criteria, their political consciousness can have a direct bearing on the way clients experience policy. Poulantzas highlights ideological struggles inside the state and the weakening of the "internal cement" binding state workers to their nominal superiors. O'Connor urges state unions to seize the opportunities presented by this situation and forge coalitions with state clients' movements to resist the construction of a 'social-industrial complex.' But there have been few attempts to analyse such strategies in practice, and O'Connor admitts that it would not be easy to bridge the gap between employed, economically secure front-line workers and their dispossessed clientele.4 Other analysts have been more pessimistic about social unionism and social movements in general. Bryan Palmer sees the former as little more than a promotional strategy for one group of union bureaucrats and warns that coalitions with social movements cannot be allowed to detract from the centrality of production and class relations. But one can grant these two points and still argue that coalitions are essential if workers' power is to be used wisely and if fragmentation and sectionalism are to be avoided. This chapter will show how one union was led to seek common ground with state clients and how a leadership committed to self-organization, mobilization, and social change used the encounter for both defensive and transformative purposes. The object of study here is the Canada Employment and Immigration Union (CEIU), one of the largest components of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC). Until 1993 CEIU represented nearly all workers in Employment and Immigration Canada (EIC), many of whom were employment counsellors, unemployment insurance agents, and immigration officers.6 All of these are front-line workers - that is, non-management, public sector employees in human service agencies, who exercise some autonomous discretionary power. All have significant contact with a clientele drawn mostly from subordinate groups whose attachment to the labour force is tenuous, marginal, or under negotiation. Political consciousness among the latter may be similarly transitional, and awareness of class, gender, and racial inequities might be particularly high. Not all front-line workers have been equally receptive to the lessons clients can teach them. Some workers have indeed reinterpreted, and enriched, their nominal service function even as neoconservative managers attempt to buttress a narrower 'enforcement' culture. Others have adopted the enforcement

Clients and Consciousness

165

line and have blamed clients, rather than management, for escalating pressures to produce. Since the early 1980s CEIU leaders have been encouraging members to develop alternative notions of 'service' which are more responsive to client needs than those offered by departmental management. The latter have used various sorts of service-quality campaigns quite cynically to evoke harder work from their front-line personnel, even as they deliver social programs which are stingier and harder to access.7 Management's approach usually portrays good service in quantitative terms: speedy processing of unemployment insurance (UI) claims rather than provision of adequate support, for example. Workers have also been told that cracking down on UI 'abusers' serves taxpayers, 'the public interest,' or some other abstraction not physically present in their workplace. The needs of these invisible enddes are determined by senior bureaucrats, who jealously guard their intermediary role in a chain of command which claims (falsely) to be democratically accountable. As will be shown below, in some areas CEIU members were able to move towards a more progressive definition of service which focused on concrete benefits, not just processing speed, and on real human beings rather than abstractions. In doing so they also created new, more vibrant, mechanisms of public accountability and a heightened understanding of the sources and dynamics of social power. Success in this regard was particularly common among employment counsellors and UI agents. In other areas CEIU members proved harder to reach, even when comparable tactics were used. Initial advances among immigration officers seem to have been largely undone by a potent combination of racism and political opportunism. Work on the front lines of the state remains a politically charged process of daily mediation between human needs and bureaucratic limitations. When individual front-line workers defy or evade management directives, their actions are loaded with political import - especially in the current conjuncture. This mundane resistance has, in fact, both motivated and complicated neoconservative attempts to restructure the state. When collectivized, and linked through new democratic channels to the interests of client groups, it can lay the groundwork for what Leo Panitch has called 'a different kind of state.'8 EIC Workers and the Unemployed

CEIU's efforts to reach the grassroots have clearly been developmental

166 Part 2: Border Disputes - aiming to tie members' concerns for their own jobs to a broader political consciousness. As the neoconservative project began to take shape in the early 1980s, the union organized gatherings of employment counsellors to discuss the changing demands of their jobs. At one such meeting in 1983, counsellors expressed concern about the growing emphasis on quantitative measurements of their productivity. Job placements were being given priority at the expense of counselling. But according to these counsellors, 'the use of statistics is inconsistent with the major focus of CEC [Canada Employment Centre] in the Community,' and such data was compiled only to serve capricious, politically motivated production targets.9 Later this group would note that these changes - part of EIC's 'revitalization' of employment services - also tacitly encouraged discrimination, despite the department's commitment to affirmative action. Employment agencies often receive (illegal) requests from employers for applicants of a particular race and/or gender, and private agencies are notorious for granting such requests. EIC counsellors were increasingly put 'into a position where they must decide between what they know is right and what will gain them points. It is easy to fill a discriminatory order. After all who better than a Counsellor knows how to manipulate the wording of an order and how to make a referral to placements ratio look good.'10 Initially, however, the major concern seemed to be with the changing role of EIC as a whole. The group wondered whether EIC would intervene in the community as a 'social agency' or as a 'placement agency to compete with other agencies.'11 But the counsellors had already answered their own question: 'The shift of orientation is to stress the economic goals not the social goals of the job. There is more emphasis [on] placement and training of skills than concern for clients, diagnostic services, special needs. These latter activities cannot measure success in units.'12 At the street level, counsellors who had formerly worked with both employer and employee clients were now forced to specialize, serving only one sort of clientele. This shift enabled later Tory governments to target employer services more precisely, and, over the years, to redirect resources to this area.13 On the client side, efficiency concerns were being used to justify the automation and depersonalization of service delivery. Whatever personal contact did occur between counsellors and clients was supposed to be governed by new professional norms stressing control (of worker clients and of expenditures) over helping. The talk of instilling 'problem

Clients and Consciousness 167 ownership' in clients was instrumental here and was seen by some counsellors as a classic 'blame the victim' strategy.14 Counsellors did have access to various surreptitious means of frustrating the intent of revitalization. But steadily increasing caseloads meant that time and energy used in the pursuit of quality service to individuals came at the expense of other clients or of co-workers trying to meet their own quotas.15 Paranoia, CEIU's semi-official newsletter, covered another meeting of employment centre personnel in Scarborough, where all present wanted to provide more services to clients: 'But [they] were unable to because of time constraints from supervisors and coworkers. They all agreed it was unfair to expect co-workers to take on more interviews when someone spent extra time with a client who was unable to find a suitable job order. One ... felt guilty about making extra work for her friends and not meeting up to the expectations of her supervisor, also under pressure from management. Another said: "Let's face it - it's a numbers game. Get them in and get them out. I don't like it but that's the way it is."'16 Here, as elsewhere, productivity pressures were being used to help control the extent and nature of interactions between front-line workers and their clients. But the conversion of their union to an explicitly client-oriented political stance has acted to some degree as an antidote to this tendency, undermining both management control and the 'enforcement culture' that sustains it. During the 1981-2 recession, EIC had hired scores of community organizers to initiate job creation projects through its employment development branch. The experience and contacts of these activists seemed tailor-made for a government seeking a quick and dramatic response to the unemployment crisis. Many of the post-1980 generation of militant CEIU leaders came from this branch, and their 'extraordinary' organizing skills pushed the union towards more radical positions on a variety of fronts, particularly in Ontario and Quebec. When Conservative restructuring dispersed these employees across EIC, the seeds of a militant, socially conscious posture were planted elsewhere. These seeds were nourished by the harsh impact that neoconservative policies had on both sides of the front line, as well as by CEIU activists.17 Early evidence of a leap to client advocacy can be found in the pages * of Paranoia. In mid-1983 the magazine published a proposal to organize the unemployed and demand jobs from employers using direct action tactics. An interesting variation on EIC's official function (matching jobseekers with job openings), this approach reflected union disillusionment with state-centred pressure tactics. Instead of inducing despair in

168 Part 2: Border Disputes the face of unresponsive governments a 'general social understanding would be reached that society must directly confront the economic structure of our society to achieve full employment ... [rather than being] massed and directed with little sense of contributing to any action other than their presence ... the unemployed would be able to perceive the immediate reaction to their efforts and in the event of success could rightly claim that it came about by their own efforts.'18 This proposal tried to respect the need for self-organization among the unemployed, while encouraging direct collective action and exposing the membership to the dynamics of social power. The spirit behind it seems to have shaped CEIU's relationship with groups of unemployed workers after the recession of the early 1980s. In 1984 another issue of Paranoia encouraged CEIU members to recognize their real allies in the struggle to defend the welfare state. According to Paranoia, these were neither managers nor politicians, but 'the people staring at us from the opposite sides of our desks ... the ones who will suffer along with us if services are slashed ... the ones who can organize demonstrations, badger politicians and generally raise a stink when the time comes. Our natural allies then are the people we are paid to serve.'19 It was clear that coalitions of this sort, which helped to organize the unemployed as well as assisting individuals, first had to transform the management-identified enforcement mentalities of some employees. This would require a 'dramatic shift' for those members who saw the EIC 'as a sort of Fort Apache besieged by hostile hordes of the great unwashed' and themselves as 'front line soldiers in the army of General Roberts.' In the meantime, CEIU activists were urged to volunteer aid after hours 'not just for reasons of economic self-interest but because it's the decent thing to do.'20 By early 1984 informal contacts between CEIU and the Toronto Union of Unemployed Workers (TUUW) had solidified to the point that their coalition was able to block a threatened closure of two Toronto employment centres and 450 potential layoffs. EIC was pursuing a classic strategy of 'bureaucratic disentitlement,' attempting to limit service costs by making access more awkward for those who needed it most. But CEIU and TUUW members hounded then-Minister John Roberts and rallied the Metro Toronto community against the cuts. The breadth of local opposition - it included a unanimous resolution from Toronto City Council - soon forced the government to back down, cancelling the closures and reducing the layoffs by more than half.21 Paranoia editor John Andersen, while acknowledging that such victo-

Clients and Consciousness 169 ries were rare, and that this one had been facilitated by Roberts's leadership ambitions, nevertheless saw the CEIU-TUUW effort as a vindication of the coalition-building approach. To him it indicated as well that 'at least some public sector workers are beginning to identify with the people they serve rather than with the government employers.'22 Andersen attributed this shift in consciousness to the daily lessons given to employment counsellors in the workplace: CEIU members deal every day with large numbers of worried, unhappy people who have been caught in the gears of a malfunctioning system. An employment counsellor with a caseload of over 1,000 clients, which is the rule rather than the exception, knows something is wrong. So do UI workers facing enormous backlogs of UI claims. And so do the CEIU members being asked to work overtime in preparation for their own layoffs. There is no need to be told society has problems when the 'problems' are walking through the door at the rate of two or three per minute.23

Social awareness was not always gained in ways very conducive to coalition-building. On the same page that Paranoia reported the CEIUTUUW victory, another headline read, 'CEIU Member Held Captive by Knife-Wielding Client.'24 Such incidents occur more frequently as the economy deteriorates, and potential physical danger from 'irates' seems to pull CEIU members in more conservative directions. Nevertheless, at least at the level of official policy, CEIU seems to have been moved towards client solidarity by its experience with the TUUW. When called upon to formulate a general critique of the UI program for an appearance before the Forget Commission, it relied heavily on contacts in the TUUW and local unemployment help centres for specific recommendations.25 The result was an explicitly client-centred brief that ran counter to the coercive line advocated by Forget and the government. Attacking the administration's hard-line approach, and 'stereotyped' depictions of the unemployed as lazy and parasitic, the brief suggested that this image 'does not reflect reality. The truth is that the overwhelming majority are unemployed through no fault of their own ... There is a social responsibility involved here, not a political one. The unemployed require better service.'26 The brief covered a wide variety of contentious issues relating to UI, and in every case rejected further restrictions in favour of a more generous and compassionate approach to the unemployed. It also used the evocative question of UI abuse to criticize employers, noting that 'too

170 Part 2: Border Disputes much emphasis has been put upon client abuse of UI. Employer abuse seems to be generally disregarded ... The experience of our members has been that the rules [penalizing employer abuse] need to be more strictly enforced.'27 EIC's 'neutrality' was also jeopardized, said the brief, by its practice of allowing employment centres to refer scabs to strike-bound employers. Paranoia later published detailed advice on how to sabotage such job referrals using the discretionary power of front-line workers. ThenCEIU President Renaud Paquet (1982-9) says that this and similar union efforts succeeded in getting Toronto employment counsellors to routinely ignore job orders involving scab labour.28 Placement pressures notwithstanding, front-line workers had implemented their own policy of solidarity with striking workers. Beyond the empathy for unemployed clients, and the antipathy to some employers, the dominant theme of the brief to the Forget Commission was that neoconservative cutbacks hurt the unemployed as much as state workers, and reduced both service and efficiency. Constant UI rule changes, service centralization (to bypass front-line discretion), planned staff cuts, and heavy reliance on casual employees, all threatened both service quality and members' jobs, it said.29 This line was vulnerable to charges that it merely appropriated clients' voices to save bureaucrats' jobs. The Globe and Mail said as much when CEIU protested the Charlottetown Accord's proposed devolution of employment services to the provinces.30 Paquet admits that the focus on clients was partly tactical, aimed at opening minds among politicians and the public.31 The degree of opportunism involved here can only be determined through a careful examination of the union's actions over a reasonable period of time. The Globe conducted no such evaluation. But CEIU's references to client service in the Forget brief were neither gratuitous nor expedient. They focused entirely on service to the unemployed and avoided misleading claims that this could involve better service for some vague, generic clientele that included the contradictory interests of employers. EIC, on the other hand, continued to mask business appeasement with precisely that sort of rhetoric.32 Furthermore, in canvassing the jobless for advice, and in acting with them to advance full employment strategies, the union displayed a greater commitment to service than did EIC itself. The contrast was starkly exhibited in 1993, when the union responded to further UI restrictions by distributing a booklet telling claimants (and UI agents) how to avoid them and reasserting its solidarity with the unemployed and the poor.33

Clients and Consciousness 171 CEIU's concern for its members' job security was quite reasonable, considering the magnitude of the threat posed, and the widespread willingness to ignore this issue. Moreover, on a strategic level, if coalitions against neoconservatism need state workers, then purely altruistic appeals that ignore their job security are unlikely to be the basis of longterm mobilization or stable coalitions. Particular care needs to be taken around invocations of 'service to the public.' These tend to echo discredited management strategies inside the state - one of which promised workers they would be 'empowered to serve.'34 The union's approach also reflects some of the daily contradictions faced by its frontline membership: like personal service versus unreasonable caseloads or a formal commitment to service versus informal expectations of social control. The cautious attitude towards rule changes reflects a similar kind of stress, but one which some theorists say actually increases workers' discretionary power. Jeffrey Prottas suggests that constant rule changes allow only a few de facto 'core rules' to be enforced, enabling front-line workers to operate in 'zones of relative indifference' to management.35 In any case, pressure from state workers for a saner pace of work are transparently more conducive to good service than efforts to crank up productivity and crack down on the 'undeserving.' 'Proper Channels': Legitimacy and Resistance

CEIU had presented a similar message to the House Committee on Labour, Employment, and Immigration in 1985. This message found a receptive audience in the committee, but Paquet's faith in the process was shattered when the minister responsible ignored all its recommendations.36 Future CEIU lobbies would seek to embarrass, rather than persuade, government officials. Ultimately Paquet was drawn to the conclusion that lobbying was, by itself, an ineffective way to expend union resources. Seeking a strike mandate in a 1988 video, he said that without a mobilized membership, union negotiators had only 'personal convincing power' to rely on, 'and even if these people are all great, I'm telling you this doesn't work. That's not how you get Treasury Board to say yes to what you want.' CEIU leaders had reached similar conclusions about collective bargaining as early as 1986, when efforts to mobilize members against two PSAC-negotiated settlements had been overcome by support in other components. Acknowledging their minority status within PSAC and the imminent departure (to the Canadian Union of Postal Workers) of

172 Part 2: Border Disputes allies in PSAC's postal component, the CEIU leadership resigned itself to remaining there and presenting its case in a 'firm but no[t] confrontative manner. CEIU members had been active in the grassroots wildcats which sparked the 1980 PSAC clerks' strike, and they would contribute to that union's gradual radicalization, which culminated symbolically in PSAC's first 'general' strike in 1991. But the advent of 'permanent exceptionalism' after 1975 was clearly limiting the gains which could be made through collective bargaining, as a restrictive industrial relations regime became even more confining. Ultimately the 1991 strike would witness impressive feats of mobilization, adroit moves to deflect blame for the reduction of service, and unusually good public relations, but the key job security concession it won proved to be quite feeble when the time • 3Q came to use it/ In 1986 CEIU executive decided to de-emphasize bargaining-based strategies and sponsor direct actions at selected locals, in support of locally generated demands, so long and so far as membership enthusiasm could be sustained. The target was to be EIC or 'a decision the [EIC] can make or influence.' The intent was to exert such unremitting pressure on EIC that 'it will be more trouble for them not to solve [employees'] problems than to resolve them.'40 This meant that cutbacks and layoffs would be tackled politically, in a way that engaged the membership, rather than through the more indirect, elite-driven mechanisms of collective bargaining. Paquet describes this approach as 'getting people interested in what interests them,' and he emphasizes that, on a daily basis, most people are not concerned with collective bargaining issues. Instead, things related to everyday work problems - such as productivity standards, tools for work, changing regulations, and harassment - seem much more pressing. This is the same conclusion reached by EIC's own management studies. And both analyses recognize, in effect, that front-line workers tend to be most interested in things which affect their ability to exercise discretionary power over the pace and content of their jobs.41 This shift was reinforced by Ottawa's ongoing promise to 'let managers manage,' which had produced at EIC a new management philosophy, various quality-service and participation initiatives, and the 'revitalization' of employment services. Union strategists saw these as parts of 'a concerted and systematic effort ... to counter our mobilization efforts ... [and] deal with [employees'] problems on an individual basis.'42 The turn to local action committed CEIU to greater decentraliQQ

Clients and Consciousness 173 zation, an EIC orientation and more sensitivity to members' daily needs, but it retained the emphasis on mobilization over deal-making which had marked its earlier interventions in collective bargaining. It was, in effect, a strategy of 'counter-management' aimed at obstructing the neoconservative transition set in motion at EIC. Amendments to the union's constitution in 1984 had facilitated this transition. In that year a commitment to 'foster good relations and mutual understanding' with management was replaced by one pledging 'to unite all members by fostering an understanding of the fundamental differences between the interests of the members and those of the employer.'43 The dominant tendency within CEIU since at least 1984 encouraged a militant, action-oriented collective consciousness among front-line workers, who comprise the bulk of its membership. In many instances this has produced defensive local actions in response to threatened layoffs and EIC restructuring. Such actions have propelled the union with increasing regularity into the logic of community coalitions. This logic, according to Cres Pascucci (CEIU national president since 1989), is quite compelling: 'Basically, the government is moving itself away from the social services field ... We can't fight that on our own. It's impossible.' Pascucci believes his union's widely dispersed membership can be used to increase contact with other PSAC components and spread the CEIU's militant approach at a grassroots level.44 CEIU has used coalitions not only to gather community support for defensive struggles, but also to develop members' political knowledge and tactical skills. But arousing the will to defy management is a more complicated task. It requires, among other things, that the 'proper channels' provided by management and the state be thoroughly discredited. CEIU's militant attitude to contract demands contributed to this end by revealing the limits of collective bargaining for minorities within PSAC. Repeated government attacks on the bargaining process have had comparable effects. Insofar as both strategies are products of the fiscal crisis, bargaining is unlikely to recover its legitimacy in the foreseeable future. Similarly, the union's flirtation with lobbying demonstrated fairly quickly the limited potential for gains through this channel. This lesson was probably reinforced by growing cynicism towards politicians and the old parties.45 While brief-writing and lobbying drain union resources, minimal efforts here seem useful in garnering local support for action against cuts. Handling grievances through the individualized and legalistic means provided also stretches union resources. In the past, CEIU has tried

174 Part 2: Border Disputes unsuccessfully to delegate these onerous, and often divisive, duties to its locals. Grievances in general tend to atomize, legalize, and postpone eruptions of worker discontent, so CEIU has periodically tried to overwhelm management with mass grievances on similar issues. This tactic helps to collectivize and mobilize the grievance process, and in the past it produced concrete results. But management adaptations led the union to mothball this tactic, and thousands of problems must again be formulated as individual grievances.46 Aside from such obligations, CEIU's leadership has tried wherever possible to disentangle itself from the 'proper channels' maze. Worker and union rights have been asserted symbolically, as when Pascucci defied local managers to visit a Winnipeg employment centre. There he ignored 'little memos' barring him and showed that 'despite barriers imposed by management, CEIU members can control their workplace.' Challenging management rights, even at a largely symbolic level, is an essential task for a progressive union, not only because it helps to keep local managers in check, but also because it promotes the culture of opposition necessary for mobilization. Indeed, management's turn towards symbolic legitimation strategies - such as participation, empowerment, or service-quality-has made symbolic opposition an important, and cheap, weapon in the union arsenal. But a skirmish in Trail, British Columbia, demonstrated the need to challenge basic management prerogatives in a more sustained fashion. Local Action and Local Control

As part of a continuing effort to 'rationalize' service delivery, EIC announced in 1989 that most of Trail's UI services would be transferred to Nelson, some eighty-five kilometres away. The move effectively shut down the UI office in Trail just as 'rationalization' by the area's employers was boosting unemployment.48 The local union president Joe Szajbely speculates that the sixteen CEIU members affected were 'collateral damage' in what was actually a purge of the local manager. Whatever its origin, the plan made a mockery of EIC's supposed commitment to consultation and community sensitivity. Local governments were not consulted before the move was announced, even though EIC later claimed they had agreed to it. They soon became part of a wide CEIU-led coalition against the cuts, which also included other unions, as well as churches and chambers of commerce.49 In its coverage of these efforts Paranoia emphasized the profound dis-

Clients and Consciousness 175 illusionment of those municipal leaders who had relied on 'proper channels' to fight the cuts. It quoted one local mayor, in a letter written to EIC's minister: 'Obviously, to deal with the problem in a discreet, rational and quiet manner is the wrong approach ... we [may] have to accept that the federal government's attitude toward rural Canada is indeed what many claim it to be. If that is indeed the reality of today, you might as well save the taxpayers the expense of going through empty and meaningless motions of consultation.'50 EIC had hoped to use consultation to legitimate neoconservative restructuring. The Trail incident discredited this project both outside and within the department. For Szajbely, consultation meant being informed by EIC managers of decisions that had already been made, or - if they were really important decisions - not being told at all. Consequently his local pressed for a boycott of all labour-management consultations, and this call was eventually heeded by most of the union.51 An editorial in Paranoia explained this blatant disregard for proper channels: Management has the most to gain from formal talks ... After all, management needs formal talks to enable them to wave the minutes of some deadly meeting and claim they practice good industrial relations. In addition [consultations] serve a useful purpose in channeling discontent to board rooms rather than having it spread around the work place and leading to assorted activities which management circles frown on ... [F]ormal talks ... are usually all form and no substance. The result is that we often find ourselves doing a minuet while management throws punches at us. And they have a mean right hook.52

The national union also made much of the threat posed to other small communities by the Trail closing, since 'about half the offices in the country' met the criteria used to shut down Trail.53 This became the basis for the union's claim to victory when Trail did eventually close. Pascucci lauded the solidarity shown across the country for a small, isolated group of members. Trail, he said, 'was and is the first example of how ... EIC intends to do more with less. Flin Flon, Manitoba and Orillia, Ontario have insurance units today because of Trail.' This struggle also revolutionized the CEIU's British Columbia section: Szajbely says it is now common to speak of the B.C. section 'pre- and post-Trail.'54 It is not surprising that the national CEIU has been careful to record and disseminate the tactical lessons learned at Trail. Among these the most crucial have to do with the relationship between local members

176 Part 2: Border Disputes and the union leadership. The Trail members initially decided to fight the cuts through fairly traditional means. Petitions, lobbying, and grievances were pursued 'to the point of exhaustion,' and when it became clear that something more was required, the local called on the national office for suggestions. In response, the latter occupied an Ottawa employment centre for seven hours, to show Trail members 'that their union was prepared to take a risk for a small, isolated membership.' Then Pascucci and other national executives headed for Trail.55 The national leadership joined a group of UI workers who were mostly political novices, although a few expressed regret at having missed out on the activism of the 1960s.56 This is what happened next, according to a fact sheet distributed later: • The leadership outlined a work stoppage strategy to the members, and thereafter did not participate in the debate other than to clarify matters of a procedural nature; the members decided on a workstoppage and the form (sit-in) it would take • The leadership identified the logistical nature of a sit-in; the group undertook the allotment of the various tasks to be performed • Throughout the sit-in, the leadership attempted to anticipate events and proposed strategy options to the membership; the group decided strategy and tactics without extensive leadership participation in the debates?1

The Trail sit-in lasted three and a half days (until police dispersed it) and sparked similar occupations in six other cities. Ultimately Trail did lose its UI office, and the workers who had occupied it were hit with fines and suspensions totalling over $50,000. However, the union used these penalties to do further solidarity work, and CEIU members across the country contributed more than this amount to a Trail support fund.58 The official union record portrays Trail as a victory, not only because it invoked solidarity and perhaps slowed 'rationalization' elsewhere. Trail is seen as a prototype for future efforts to educate and empower members against neoconservative restructuring. It seemed to show that union leaders could facilitate militant local acts of defiance without compromising the principles of self-organization and democracy. Their role is said to have been simply providing options and acting as a 'buffer and conduit' between occupiers and managers. By the third day, 'the group had completely assumed responsibility for devising day-to-day tactics, sit-in administration, and began to fully participate in the anticipation of developments and devising counter-strategies.'59

Clients and Consciousness 177 Such statements, as well as those which seem to equate press releases by local elites with community support, should not be accepted uncritically. However, CEIU leaders' concern with front-line empowerment seems to be quite real, even if it is accompanied by some pretty clear expectations regarding the path a properly developing political consciousness should take. It is interesting to note that EIC management initiatives offering superficial empowerment, and the distorted altruism of 'service,' were followed in fairly short order by union attempts to deepen these thrusts and invest them with more genuine meanings. Undertaken in the first instance as defensive responses to cutbacks, such efforts led quite naturally to new ways of dealing with state clients and their representatives and at least a nominal advocacy of client interests. Faced with the evident bankruptcy of Keynesianism, and neoconservatism's clear hostility, these state workers were moving towards new notions of 'accountability' and 'service' which transcended the options offered by either. Trail helped discredit EIC's new and improved set of 'proper channels' so that consultation helped to provoke, rather than neutralize, dissent. In its place, front-line coalitions were used to enforce accountability, maintain service, and establish the basis for more genuine participatory structures. EIC Workers and Refugees

Lobbying politicians and writing 'constructive,' well-documented briefs retain much legitimacy as political tactics. Some efforts of this kind seem to be essential, if only to crystallize union demands, and mollify the more conservative elements of the membership. In CEIU's case, the contacts made through the initial Ul-related brief soon led to more work in the field of immigration, when the refugee backlog became a hot political issue.60 Here the union faced a dominant internal 'enforcement culture' and found consciousness-raising to be a daunting task. Immigration workers have a history of militant trade unionism and a proven willingness to defy management, especially on workload issues. The frustrations resulting from overwork have also been directed at their clientele. A brief CEIU presented on their behalf in 1987 said that 'most refugee claimants coming to Canada make manifestly unfounded claims' and described immigration work as 'weed [ing] out the bogus claimants from the deserving ones.' Another brief blamed 'bogus' claimants for overwork and the refugee backlog, took a swipe at refugee advocates who 'delay the process in clearly undeserving cases,' and

178 Part 2: Border Disputes expressed alarm at the high number of refugee claims and appeals accepted.61 While it may be true that even the most enlightened perspective would look askance at some refugee claims, the degree of hostility expressed here should make progressives uncomfortable. There are just too many echoes of neoconservatism's punitive 'law and order' stance, too much emphasis on claimants' moral failings, and too little consideration of the larger political and economic context. Furthermore, it is hard to imagine how such attitudes could help build any kind of broader solidarity. Ongoing attempts to streamline refugee processing have, in fact, divided CEIU members from one another, as well as from their clients. Immigration workers in EIC have taken a hard line on refugees at least partly to help secure their own jobs, and they have criticized the Immigration and Refugee Board (where CEIU members also work) for ethnic favouritism. Other members have objected to the racist nature of these attacks.62 Such fissures have caused public embarrassment to CEIU leaders. Cres Pascucci explained a 1992 incident to a Globe and Mail reporter by referring to the larger political context. National divisions over the refugee issue penetrate the union, he said, because 'our membership is fairly reflective of society as a whole.'63 Pascucci had seen this dynamic at work during the union's 1990 convention in Montreal. Post-Meech Lake tensions emerged there when Quebec delegates demanded a reiteration of their right to self-determination and more financial autonomy. The convention granted the first, but when negotiations failed to resolve the latter, Quebec's new vicepresidents refused to take their oath of office.64 This convention also witnessed a miniature Oka crisis when photos of soldiers surrounding Mohawk positions were ripped down. Tensions rose as friends of the photographer cried 'vandalism' while a Native delegate defended the action. Eventually an uneasy peace was achieved with the creation of a 'CEIU Native Humanity Fund.'65 Poulantzas speaks of a state increasingly rent and disabled by 'the struggles of the popular masses.'66 But the above examples show how quickly such struggles - and others irreducible to class - can rip through state unions as well. For Poulantzas, divisions inside the state are (within limits) essential for class rule, since they reflect key social cleavages and reveal the bases for hegemonic compromise. Similarly, divisions inside state unions may be essential to the politics of counterhegemony. Developments in this area affect coalition work, and they are likely to be closely monitored by state officials.

Clients and Consciousness 179 The current union leadership seems to recognize the importance of its position. Pascucci argued in 1990 for political action on both sides of the state border, for 'if we don't change society, we can't change our union.' In part this has meant keeping members abreast of changes to the Canada Immigration Act and trying to increase sensitivity towards the needs of refugees. Surprisingly, the 1987 briefs depiction of 'most refugee claimants' as undeserving is considered a success in this regard. Pascucci says this wording represented a hard-won advance by union leaders, who convinced their immigration members that an even harsher reference to 'all refugee claimants' was inappropriate.6 CEIU leaders regard coalitions as extensions of these kinds of developmental efforts, since they expose members to people normally encountered only as workplace adversaries. Many Toronto members reconsidered their 'satanic' image of refugee advocate Mendel Green, for example, when he joined them on a coalition picket line. This act followed eight years of effort by the Toronto local to bring immigration workers, lawyers, and management together. Charges of racism had originally been leveled by EIC's minister against his own staff, but management used delay and division to avoid the matter thereafter, so the union settled for a meeting between workers and some prominent lawyers in 1987.68 This conference led to the first major action undertaken by what had become an informal immigration coalition. Union members, lawyers, church groups, and community activists sponsored demonstrations and lobbies to help end what they called 'compulsory welfare' for refugee claimants. Prevented from earning their own living until granted refugee status, claimants were being forced onto welfare by backlog-related delays and swelling local welfare budgets, particularly in Toronto.69 The coalition's actions succeeded in forcing the government to change EIC policy, at least temporarily, and grant work permits to refugee claimants - a result of undoubted benefit to these state clients.70 But the coalition had also demanded that the money saved in this manner be used to eliminate the refugee backlog. The government made no moves in this direction. By January 1989 Toronto immigration officers were fed up. Members of 'Local 613 ... weren't going to put up with the long line-ups every night anymore. They weren't going to put up with the lousy service they were giving or making people wait ... from midnight until eight in the morning on the coldest nights of the year standing outside.' The union decided to work to rule for more resources and sought the sup-

180 Part 2: Border Disputes port of the coalition for lunchtime demonstrations and for a boycott of overtime and excessive caseloads. Union members would henceforth deal 'only with those clients who can be reasonably seen during the working day. In redefining a 'fair day's work' to advance the interests of clients as well as workers, a traditional economic demand was given more potency and potential. Service was clearly reduced for some claimants, but the union had little trouble convincing the coalition that this short-term pain would be worth enduring, and when pickets went up, 'the CBA [Canadian Bar Association] was there, the workers' groups were there, the churches were there, literally everybody was there.' National press coverage of this united front forced the government to respond, and Local 613 soon had 280 new members to deal with the backlog.74 This tactic was so successful that the union tried it again in 1991 to support reclassification demands. Workers insisted on extra time to prepare their cases 'meticulously,' adjourned hearings whenever possible, and argued against every single refugee claim.75 There was little community support for this effort, perhaps because it distributed short-term pain quite generously while bestowing potential long-term gains only on those who were actually reclassified. It also ran headlong into the hardline Tory bargaining stance which produced the 1991 PSAC strike. The coalition had been active in 1990, however, holding an 'immigration training weekend' in response to members' frequent complaints of insufficient training amid rapidly changing rules. Participants heard presentations on a variety of topics related to discretionary decisions in immigration: administrative law, Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, statutory interpretation, and the international context. They also received a training manual prepared by the coalition.76 While the union has encouraged these officers to use their discretionary power in an informed way, governments have tried to curtail it entirely, especially where clients are present. Claims are now processed by mail from Vegreville, Alberta - a conservative riding far removed from the sullying influence of the front line. CEIU, with some support from the coalition, has fought such moves, not least because of their unsavoury association with patronage. It celebrated a victory in 1993, when the incoming Liberals set up a second centre in Mississauga. This, according to Pascucci, was 'a vindication' of union claims that one centre could not handle the national workload. The union received more vindication when the Liberals admitted that two-thirds of Vegreville's intended work had been diverted elsewhere. Immigration lawyers

Clients and Consciousness 181 were soon directing clients to visa offices in the United States for quicker service. Meanwhile the coalition continued to be sporadically active. In 1992 it denounced the Tories' conversion to Reform party immigration policies, some of which would actually increase the (punitive) discretionary power of immigration officers. While the coalition remains informal, there have been attempts to forge a community of interests among its participants. One draft pamphlet suggested that: • CEIU members stand to gain a greater understanding of the system in which we are placed, and win allies in our fight for tolerable working conditions, a decent contract and social change • Advocacy groups can achieve support for a faster, juster system both overseas and inland • Immigrants and refugee claimants can look forward to a fairer, more efficient processing of their claims.79

It is remarkable that even this consensus could be achieved so soon after immigration workers had issued blanket denunciations of refugee claimants from a management-identified enforcement posture. By countering EIC efforts to separate front-line workers from their clients, die union was also able to decouple their interests from those of management. This strategy played on the contradiction between these workers' real and nominal functions and provided them with a reasonable ideological context for discretionary decision-making (which management could not provide). Unfortunately, the solidarity forged by the coalition was severely tested in 1994, when immigration investigators (who are CEIU members) were blamed for failing to deport the main suspect in a Toronto police killing. Media reaction to such crimes normally focuses on cries for harsher penalties, and in Toronto underlying racial tensions usually emerge in some form. In this case the murder's 'cause' was quickly traced to specific instances of bureaucratic bungling inside EIC, and a flurry of divisive buck-passing and finger-pointing soon followed. CEIU, on behalf of thirty-six Toronto investigators, used the occasion to press their demands for more personnel, weapons, and police support. Until these 'safety measures' were in place, the investigators refused to enforce deportation orders. These tactics bore fruit in the heat of a media-enhanced moral panic. Liberal minister Sergio Marchi shifted right, talked about 'snitch lines' and public deportee lists, and

182 Part 2: Border Disputes sent the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) after those ordered deported.80 Despite a dramatic mea culpa from one official, the departmental investigation absolved everyone, including its author, who had been the assistant deputy minister responsible when the lapse occurred. However, it admitted that 'the system failed' and confirmed many traditional CEIU complaints about staffing and workload, as did some internal audits unearthed by the Toronto Star. During the period in question (1992-3), investigators were overworked, undertrained, and under pressure from their Tory minister Bernard Valcourt to boost deportations. Some regional managers had responded by directing enforcement towards 'easy' cases (rejected refugee applicants) and away from more difficult and time-consuming ones ('foreigners' with criminal records). The department's service-quality goals could be met most 'efficiently,' it seems, by targeting the weakest segment of its clientele for better 'service.' Valcourt later denied this had been his intention.81 Not surprisingly, refugee advocates reacted with alarm to the news that some of their clients had been placed ahead of criminals in the deportation queue. David Matas, president of the Canadian Council on Refugees, was appalled that this de facto policy, 'viewed refused refugee claimants as worse than the worst criminals.'82 Such revelations could hardly have enhanced relations between CEIU members and his constituency. In cases such as these, the political significance of front-line work and service-quality campaigns become extraordinarily clear. What also becomes clear is the degree to which union interventions in public policy debates are constrained by the interests and consciousness of those parts of their membership most directly involved. Tactically, it might be argued that CEIU performed admirably in the summer of 1994. By raising staffing and 'safety' issues early on, blame was deflected to EIC management, and CEIU members' reputations were protected. Subsequent investigations of the department confirmed CEIU grievances and exposed further management failures. This plus (orchestrated) public anger gave the government and senior bureaucrats the motivation to 'do something,' and the availability of CEIU's concrete alternative allowed them to save some face by acceding to the union's demand. But this tactical victory can hardly be termed progressive, in light of its strategic consequences. The coalition with advocacy groups was shaken by CEIU members' participation in the pursuit of 'easy' deportation statistics and by the strengthened enforcement culture that was the result of this affair. Moreover, it could be reasonably

Clients and Consciousness 183 inferred from this case that an influential (if small) section of CEIU's membership preferred a coalition with the RCMP and the right-wing Toronto Sun to any sustained cooperation with client groups. The union leadership is obliged to forcefully advance the interests of its members, but the nature of its membership is determined at least initially by departmental boundaries and the ideological influence of other actors such as the media and professional groups. These limitations suggest that there will continue to be tensions between client advocacy and 'normal' union business, whatever the intentions of CEIU leaders. Militancy and the Front Line

In 1978 the CEIU's founding convention welcomed EIC's deputy minister as a featured speaker, and cooperation with management was a fundamental union goal. Only four conventions later, in 1990, delegates were applauding calls to 'sabotage' EIC's flagship policy, the Labour Force Development Strategy (LFDS).83 CEIU members went through this transformation even as they faced a combination of unprecedented attacks and sophisticated new appeals from management. The fact that they are still willing, and demonstrably able, to defy management under these circumstances must be taken as a victory of sorts. But, as might be expected given the stakes involved, this defiance has had uneven effects, which have not always been 'progressive.' Every policy decision made by EIC in the 1980s was made against the backdrop of its own steadily radicalizing workforce. From this reservoir CEIU drew strength for many local triumphs and some clear victories. It averted UI closures in Toronto and perhaps elsewhere (after Trail), ended scab referrals by employment centres, alleviated 'compulsory welfare' for refugee claimants, and gained new staff to process refugee claims. Following the developmental dynamic that such struggles tend to have, it also prompted regressive responses from EIC. The clearest example here is the long-term thrust to automate, centralize, and privatize service delivery, which has been implemented strategically against internal 'centres of opposition' at the expense of service quality.84 More awkwardly, workers' increasing militancy has sometimes allowed their frustrations to erupt in indiscriminate or regressive ways. Union officials have their own explanations for such dilemmas. According to CEIU Ontario staff member Allan Lennon, dealing with the public on a daily basis can make front-line EIC employees more sympathetic to client needs than to their colleagues at headquarters. The

184 Part 2: Border Disputes problem in sections like immigration, however, is that a strong organizational 'enforcement culture' normally acts to suppress this potential.85 Similarly, CEIU President Cres Pascucci explains careerism, deference, and weak strike support among Ottawa-Hull members by referring to their lack of contact with front-line work. He also notes the importance of union leadership in drawing out the front line's potential.86 Pascucci's predecessor, Renaud Paquet, suggests that headquarters personnel tend to be overclassified, overpaid, and work at a slower pace, far from the general public. This leaves them 'disconnected from their final work product' (and their union) and insecure about their own qualifications and capabilities. Alienation is compounded by the sheer size of EIC workplaces in the capital.87 There may, however, be reason for optimism in this area. Survival projects based on careerism - always of limited use to clerical workers have become increasingly impractical for huge sections of the state workforce. The trend away from permanent to contract hiring has restricted access to the bottom rung of career ladders and undermined employee loyalty. Delayering and work reorganization have collapsed many of those ladders entirely, while intensifying work expectations at all levels. Fiscal restraint, wage controls, and the diminished status of state work make such sacrifices harder to bear, while 'comparable' private sector jobs (where they exist) often seem more prestigious and rewarding. Moreover, the demographics of the state workforce have produced a 'plateau effect' in which middle-aged baby boomers now glut the few remaining 'good jobs.' Traditional hiring patterns mean that this cohort is composed largely of white males. For all these reasons, careerism's inducements to obedience and conformity may be losing their strength among workers. Evidence of this can be found in media coverage of public servants choosing to 'exit,' but as the discussion of nurses in Chapter 1 shows, other parts of the same workforce are likely to choose more militant options. The explanations provided by CEIU leaders all stress the liberating potential of front-line workers' proximity to service recipients, but it make this potential conditional on political education. This is what union activists have attempted to provide through relatively direct means like Paranoia, through coalitions which expose members to definitions of client interests untainted by EIC mediation, and through lessons in the 'school of struggle.' This is an ambitious but quite sensible strategy. It recognizes the political content of daily workplace issues in EIC and tries to provide alternative perspectives which challenge adminoo

Clients and Consciousness 185 istrative neoconservatism. In many respects it has been quite successful: workers in the process of reconsidering their own roles are now more likely to appreciate the larger context and often side openly with clients. While exploring the possibilities of existing structures, this strategy has also run up against their limits. Obviously members' attitudes cannot simply be read off organization charts, but CEIU's experience seems to suggest that jobs which are overwhelmingly coercive are likely to be least conducive to a solidaristic, client-oriented stance, even if they are on the front line. It is probably not coincidental that the latest incidents in immigration involved members from the investigative branch, for example. These people are selected and trained for a specialized, pseudopolice role in enforcing deportation orders. A comparable section in UI tracks down 'abuse' through increasingly sophisticated methods of database analysis. Both are supported by entrenched enforcement cultures which are probably not typical of either immigration or UI as a whole, although they nurture attitudes which neoconservatives are trying to spread among all front-line workers. One might raise all sorts of questions here about the composition of the union's membership and about the trade-off between strength in numbers and clearly shared interests. Ideally the CEIU might contain a more ideologically compatible group of people - and similar questions might be raised about the presence in the union of some supervisory personnel. For the foreseeable future, however, CEIU has little choice in this respect, and it has chosen to try to transform, rather than purge, regressive attitudes.89 The priority should be stopping the spread of the enforcement culture and neutralizing neoconservative job restructuring, rather than putting out fires in local coercive branches. The union recognizes this, but, as we have seen, does not always control the political agenda. CEIU's coalition work has been aimed at sensitizing members to client needs and to the threat posed by neoconservatism. Tactically, the union favoured forms of direct action which encouraged militancy while discouraging vanguardism and top-down control. This, plus the emphasis on coalitions, began to replace discredited 'proper channels' with new mechanisms of public accountability. Neoconservative politicians facilitated this approach by closing the safety valve of collective bargaining and forcing common sacrifices on state workers and clients. Senior bureaucrats found their faddish management theories were unable to rebuild employee loyalty and morale. Management's service-quality pitch to clients, and the prospect of

186 Part 2: Border Disputes more frequent strikes, have prompted many public sector unions to reconsider traditional strike tactics.90 Instead of merely refining these, such unions might embrace power more confidently through a strategy of 'counter-management.' This would allow groups of state workers and relevant clients to develop and implement policies based on their mutual interests, where necessary (perhaps by definition) in defiance of senior bureaucrats. The message has to be that 'good service' is a matter of content, not just speed, and it cannot be delivered through state structures built on hierarchy and subordination. Coalitions would define good service and use workers' discretionary powers to operationalize their definition, while opening up policy-making to both workers and clients. The consequences of such resistance for state restructuring are potentially quite serious, and they have generally not been recognized by the left. Pessimism regarding unions in general and/or PSAC in particular has overlooked the successes of some unions and some parts of PSAC. Pessimism regarding front-line state workers themselves - expressed invariably in anecdotes about grumpy bureaucrats - overlooks existing centres of resistance and the possibilities of change elsewhere. CEIU, in contrast, has demonstrated that unions can mobilize front-line workers towards progressive ends, with substantial effect, using prototype counter-management strategies. Of course, union leaders cannot always choose their battlegrounds, and they must in any case respond to their members' priorities if internal democracy is to be preserved. Nevertheless, union leaders can clearly help reshape those priorities over the medium to long term. Moreover, their prompt and astute interventions can transform the nature of battlegrounds chosen by others. Such opportunism is the essence of politics. CEIU's experience of activism seems to suggest that gains are most likely to be made when: • Union demands are formulated in cooperation with organizations representing state clients, other community groups, and other unions; • Such demands promise real material gains for all participants, preferably quickly; • The issues at stake relate directly to discretionary decisions that front-line workers make on the job or to their scope for making those decisions.

These conditions are most likely to obtain where there has been regular interaction between state unions and organizations representing

Clients and Consciousness 187 state clients, extending well beyond their respective leadership levels. The frequent absence, or limited nature, of client organizations poses obvious problems in this regard. It may be time to contemplate new organizational forms which institutionalize and deepen client-worker interaction, connect more unorganized clients to collective struggles, and share the 'resources for resistance' on a wider basis. For instance, it might not be outlandish to suggest that CEIU-PSAC create a new membership category open to unorganized state clients in the communities they serve. Bringing clients right in to union gatherings at various levels would certainly facilitate interaction, and it might help to counterbalance the influence of the enforcement mentality among current members. However, union choices in this regard will always be made in the context of ongoing, highly-structured 'service transactions' on the state's front line. Here the attitudes of both workers and clients are shaped by the dynamics of service delivery, rather than by the dynamics of cooperation and collective action. This is why it is essential that coalition work permeate daily experience on the front line. Union efforts must ultimately be limited by the need to respect the autonomy and moral authority of individual front-line workers. If this respect is not granted, front-line workers will find themselves subordinated to new, but equally undemocratic, hierarchies of power and privilege. Self-management, and its implications in a public sector context, need to be explored once again. CEIU leaders now face (as they always do) a series of more pressing concerns that seem to make suggestions like these seem secondary, if not superfluous. On the other hand, CEIU's response to current organizational turmoil has been potentially conducive to the approaches outlined above. It has pushed for a more stable, region-based PSAC structure and has arranged an informal common front of Ontario PSAC components.91 The climate seems ripe for a more basic reconsideration of union structures, which might help to secure them against the reverberations of neoconservative restructuring, and lay the foundations for a truly democratic state.

7 Front-line Workers and Public Policy1

Where enthusiasm is expected, there will be apathy; where loyalty, there will be disaffection; where attendance, absenteeism; where robustness, some kind of illness; where deeds are to be done, varieties of inactivity. We find a multitude of homely little histories, each in its way a movement of liberty. Wherever worlds are laid on, underlives develop. Erving Goffman, Asylum?

The idea that processing a claim is purely an administrative matter is wrong. The clerk who makes the decision that the claimant has quit his or her work voluntarily, which means the claimant can be disenfranchised for 12, 6, 2 weeks or not at all, is making a policy decision. Do not think that politicians are uninterested in that decision. 'Senior Official' at PS 2000 seminar3

Role conflict among front-line workers was, for James O'Connor and others, a beacon of hope as the first waves of neoconservatism began to break against the Keynesian state. It showed that people trained to understand and alleviate social problems were seeing through the formal goals of their work ('serving the needy') to its actual purpose ('regulating the poor'). Unease could only grow as state workers were told again and again to do 'more with less.' The pretense of service would fall away, and the duties of control would become all-consuming.4 Pressures for greater productivity ('mass processing'), and conflicts over the meaning of 'good service,' have clearly escalated since the 1970s, when both O'Connor and Michael Lipsky constructed their analyses. For front-line workers, 'doing more with less' now frequently means

Front-Line Workers and Public Policy 189 doing the work of laid-off colleagues and 'delayered' supervisors as well. Campaigns linked to total quality management (TQM) have articulated a nominal commitment to service quality, but in practice managers tend to use quantitative measures (especially processing speed) to evaluate service performance. Cutbacks and automation reflect this tendency and help to reinforce it. O'Connor hoped that conditions like these would nurture new coalitions between state workers and clients and new visions of a post-Keynesian state.5 His optimism seems to have been vindicated in Employment and Immigration Canada (EIC), as was demonstrated in the preceding chapter. One topic that was neglected there (and has been neglected elsewhere) is the effect that such coalitions, and a general radicalization of the state's workforce, might have on the way front-line workers deliver services to clients. Can front-line workers forge alliances in the workplace, as well as after hours? Can 'underlives' contribute to a larger emancipatory project? The literature on resistance (discussed in Chapter 1, but now burgeoning6) is clearly relevant here. James Scott, Don Nonini, and Erving Goffman lead us towards sites of everyday ('mundane') resistance inside the state and provide a means to judge it. If such resistance passes Nonini's test - if it is not part of a 'beggar-thy-neighbor' strategy - we can label it 'progressive' and consider it conducive to coalition-building as well. There have, of course, been countless studies of administrative discretion which bear on this point. Discretionary decision-making may allow state personnel to interpret, redefine, or effectively operate outside official policies. Most studies of discretion tackle the topic from the perspective of a generic administrator, who deals with conflicting loyalties without really questioning the status quo. How might discretion be used by more politically enlightened front-line workers, alienated from their managers but seeking to serve their clients in a way that undermines the shift to coercion or perhaps capitalism itself? The experience of the Canada Employment and Immigration Union (CEIU) suggests that even in rigid bureaucracies, even after the clampdown, there may be space for progressive resistance inside state workplaces. The intent in this chapter is to offer more concrete proof of effective resistance at the individual level within EIC. Despite the best efforts of auditors general and EIC managers, neoconservative labour market policy has not yet become hegemonic within this strategic department, nor inescapable at the front line. And notwithstanding their absence from the debate between Leslie Pal and Carl Cuneo over

190 Part 2: Border Disputes the origins of unemployment insurance,7 frontline UI personnel have demonstrated the capacity and will to become 'policy actors.' This can be seen if we begin by looking closely at the problem of UI errors and abuse through the eyes of the office of the auditor general (OAG). The next section reverses this perspective, and examines the workplace politics of processing UI claims. Resistance at this level helps produce problems that concern OAG and undermines control of another neoconservative obsession - 'voluntary quits.' Regulation of these involves employment counsellors as well. Their contribution is considered before the final section assesses the broader impact of frontline workers, and the final chapter measures their future potential. It should be noted that the present chapter does not pretend to lay out a one-to-one correspondence between specific acts of individual mundane resistance and policy responses by state managers. This book has gone to some lengths to show that intraorganizational resistance is multiform, difficult to suppress, often hidden, frequently intensified by public displays of defiance, and policy-relevant when, in aggregate, it exceeds the limits of management's tolerance. Resistance can also have decisive effects on policy as it is actually experienced by state clients but these are very difficult to measure, both conceptually and empirically. Politics and public administration would undoubtedly benefit from more ethnographic and participant-observer studies at this level, but such efforts are beyond the scope of this inquiry. Here we rely instead on the keen investigative skills of OAG. The intention below is merely to establish that, in a politically charged context, EIC workers had the motive and the opportunity to engage in policy-relevant forms of resistance. The preceding chapter demonstrated that there was space for counter-hegemonic discourse inside at least parts of EIC, so the likelihood that resistance might take on progressive forms had increased. OAG studies will show that management tolerance for resistance - as measured indirectly through politically defined 'error' rates - had decreased over roughly the same period. A study of EIC workplaces undertaken by Paul Facey will show why it is reasonable to regard error rates as indirect measures of resistance. Errors and Abuse

A close examination of the attack on UI recipients by business, as it has been crystallized in the reports of the auditor general, reveals just how much of this question revolves around the discretionary power of state

Front-Line Workers and Public Policy 191 employees. Until 1994 OAG, in deference to the formal limits of its mandate, generally did not comment directly on a core element of the business position: the argument that UI benefit levels were too high to encourage a return to work. It did consistently argue that the system of distributing benefits was too loose, and it spent considerable effort tracking down resultant 'errors of liberality.'8 In 1994, on the occasion of the new Liberal government's wide-ranging social policy review, OAG issued a parallel report which was an explicit (if somewhat self-conscious) intervention into the policy arena. This report claimed that social programs were creating work disincentives and long-term dependence among clients and that UI was contributing to higher unemployment and lower productivity.9 From the perspective of UI claimants, then, it seems safe to regard previous OAG criticisms as the administrative equivalent of the business position, a similarity enhanced by the reliance of both on the rhetoric of 'insurance principles.' In fact, in rendering judgment on UI benefit decisions OAG has at times been more faithful to its interpretation of these principles than to the Unemployment Insurance Act itself: 'The term "abuse" is used to connote discrepancy with the apparent intent of the Act and in particular its insurance objective and its eligibility requirements of active job search. That is, although these cases may not strictly be in violation of the provisions of the Unemployment Insurance Act prevailing at the time, one can seriously question whether they correspond to the Act's intent.'10 The auditor general admitted that evaluation of this particular kind of error would be 'highly arbitrary' because it involved 'ambiguities, omissions, faulty interpretations or unintended applications of the law.' Nevertheless, OAG has gone fairly far afield to condemn practices allegedly abusing insurance principles in this way, like the use of job creation programs to facilitate UI eligibility.11 OAG attempted to quantify other sorts of errors that more clearly violated both insurance principles and existing statutes. Four times between 1976 and 1981 it surveyed samples of about a thousand claims decisions to find inaccuracies that had escaped detection by the Unemployment Insurance Commission (UIC) and later Employment and Immigration Canada (EIC). These were grouped into five different categories. • 'Identifiable overpayments' and 'potential overpayments' differed only in the degree of evidence provided by the audits to support them.

192 Part 2: Border Disputes • 'Follow-up inadequacies' were instances where OAG felt EIC had not been sufficiently vigorous in monitoring the continuing eligibility of UI recipients. • 'Compliance deviations' occurred when proper procedures were not followed, but no consequential overpayment could be identified. • Finally, 'underpayments' ('errors of stringency') were briefly considered, but 'because this study was concerned primarily with the existence of overpayments, underpayments have not been included in the discussion and analysis.'12 In each survey, and in more limited audits since 1981, OAG investigators found that EIC had missed from 40 per cent to 95 per cent of the dollars likely overpaid to clients.13 Initially, and later with less insistence, EIC claimed that undetected errors were the price of higher productivity: The administration of the unemployment insurance program in Canada requires a balance between service provided to clientele and control over the expenditure of program funds. Both of these activities make demands on limited resources ... The service aspects of the administration require that decisions on both initial claims and bi-weekly reports be made quickly. Delays in these decisions delay the payment of money to individuals, give rise to many enquiries and generally lead to loss of effectiveness and efficiency.14

The results of the auditor general's surveys were sufficiendy startling that EIC adopted their methodology and began conducting similar studies internally in 1984. OAG audits had revealed follow-up inadequacies in 18 per cent to 25 per cent of the cases it studied in 1976 and 1977, and compliance deviations in 32 per cent to 45 per cent for that same period.15 Projecting these proportions beyond the sample cases, the OAG estimated that follow-up inadequacies and compliance deviations affected claims whose 1977 total worth was $950 million and $1.5 billion respectively.16 These figures have not been cited to endorse either the motives or the methodology that produced them. OAG initiated its studies after the 1975 amendments to the Unemployment Insurance Act. Those amendments had reversed post-Second World War trends and begun a gradual constriction of UI benefits, reinforcing other efforts to restore labour market discipline.1 The auditor general's interest in UI may have reflected a desire to ensure that this legislative shift was carried through

Front-Line Workers and Public Policy 193 to the front lines. Slightly different surveys of 'misuse' had been undertaken by the UIC itself after the last major expansion of UI in 1971, revealing rates of about 40 per cent in 1973, 38 per cent in 1974, and 20 per cent in 1977.18 These might be seen to have the opposite intention: containing the practical effect of more generous UI legislation. Such circumstantial correlations suggest that abuse and error statistics from both these sources should be treated with care. Nevertheless, these figures do give some indication of the potential stakes involved, and they highlight the growing concern among OAG and EIC officials about problems on the front line. They also underline the contribution of frequent rule changes to higher error rates - a factor which has been shown to increase the effective autonomy of street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) as well (see Table 7.1). Statistics for follow-up and compliance errors were not compiled systematically after 1977. But OAG, and later EIC, kept a close watch on overpayment and (to lesser extent) underpayment errors thereafter, and tried to identify their origins. OAG surveys, it will be remembered, consistently discovered more errors than those undertaken by UIC or EIC. And errors with monetary implications were usually only a small fraction of total deviations from procedure. EIC uncovered monetary errors in an average of 10.8 per cent of claims between 1981 and 1987, but if 1982 patterns persisted, an equal number of claims would have contained non-monetary errors. This would have brought the average error rate closer to 20 per cent, and OAG estimates would have taken it higher.19 OAG audits and EIC quality control measures, which concentrate on the value of approved claims, do not systematically assess the most fundamental street-level decision: whether or not to reject a claim entirely. Up to 500,000 claims a year were rejected between 1978 and 1982, and interestingly, the rejection rate tended to go down as unemployment rates went up. Between 1981 and 1982 unemployment rose about 46 per cent, but the UI rejection rate declined from roughly 16 per cent to 13 per cent (on a much larger volume of claims).20 This may provide some support for anecdotal evidence that front-line UI workers become more lenient during recessions, despite pressures to the contrary from above. The overpayment and underpayment rates reveal a slightly different pattern, as shown in Table 7.1. The figures in the 'Overpayments' column are those that most concerned the auditor general. They show a steady rise from 1976 to 1978, and then a levelling-off after EIC assumed responsibility for compiling them in 1984. For some of these years, attempts were made to further specify the cause of the errors and attribute blame

194 Part 2: Border Disputes TABLE 7.1 The Unemployment Insurance Account, 1976-1991 ($ millions)* Overpayments

Year

1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991

Underpayments

Ul Benefits Paid

Ul Account Balance

Totaltf $

%

3,331 3,904 4,508 3,947 4,332 4,757 8,454 10,063 9,859 10,118 10,394 10,326 10,716 1 1 ,372 13,369 17,691

+300 +210 +327 -91 -656 +331 -2,397 -3,853 -4,546 -4,372 -3,792 -2,368 +356 +1,113 +2,161 -2,045

00 09 90

.0 .5 .4

6

.1

78

.7

24

00 70 16 42 44 48 67 29

0 .7 .0 .3 .2 .1 .7 .5

45 00 30 50

Internal**

Totalf

$

$

%

Internal**

%

%

7

2 3 .5

3

3

.6

7

.2

6

5

.5 .0 .3 .5

4 09 23 01 41 03 58 12

9 .0 .2 .0 .3 9 .2 .2

0 0 0 5

4 5 5 2

0

*Estimates of overpayment and underpayments are from OAG for 1976-81, and from EIC for 1984-91. t'Most likely value' of identified and potential overpayments and underpayments, in current dollars, and as a percentage of total benefits. "Portion of preceding figures blamed on errors inside UIC, either in dollars, or as a share of total benefits. Estimates for 1984-7 are taken from an imprecise graph in OAG's 1988 Report (Exhibit 18.4). Sources:Canada, Auditor General, Report... 1977, 230; Report... 1978, 295-8; Report ... 1982, 535-7; Report... 1988, Exhibit 18.4; Canada, EIC, Annual Report 1977-8 to 1990-1, UIC financial statements; author's calculations (all percentages).

for those with obvious monetary consequences. The values of errors determined to be internal to the commission are listed in the 'Internal' columns. Before 1982 these are OAG estimates, while after that they are figures produced, and presumably accepted, by EIC. The post-1982 figures should thus be seen as the most conservative possible estimates. They have been vetted by EIC managers, who have a clear interest in minimizing publicly disclosed error rates, particularly internal ones. The dividing line between internal and external errors is not clearcut. EIC says most of the latter are a result of incorrect information in

Front-Line Workers and Public Policy 195 the key record of employment (ROE) document, on which initial eligibility decisions are based.21 Employers are responsible for completing ROEs, and since 1983 they have been asked to complete (voluntarily) a parallel form, the report on hiring (ROH), which EIC uses to track inconsistencies. Private sector employers are thus a crucial part of the systems that control error and deter abuse of UI. Theoretically they have an interest in doing their part well in order to minimize die premiums paid by all and by employers more than others.22 But business has consistently criticized the complexity of these forms, the paper burden involved in completing them, and EIC efforts to explain them.23 Many of the errors that EIC considers 'external' are ultimately blamed on EIC red tape by the private sector or represent an additional enforcement cost that business is unwilling to pay. Thus it seems likely that the real cost of internal errors, and errors in general, is larger than these figures show. If non-monetary errors have other sorts of consequences, or delayed monetary ones, then the real costs will be substantially larger. Inasmuch as unjustified underpayments or denied benefits have a real human cost, the toll is larger still. To give some indication of the dimensions of the problem just in monetary terms, it may be sufficient to note that the figure attached by EIC to total overpayments in 1987 ($342 million) would have been sufficient to pay the operating costs of every Canada Employment Centre (CEC) for about sixteen months.24 EIC has claimed in the past that higher error rates and lower detection rates are to some degree a product of increased productivity, as measured by the number of claims processed and the speed at which this is done. In the case of UI, demand for EIC's product is determined by unemployment rates, which means that productivity pressures will be highest in recessions or depressions. It also means that EIC itself has very little control over demand for its product. Unlike large corporations that create their own consumers through advertising, EIC is almost entirely dependent upon the decisions of others: the hiring policies of hundreds of thousands of employers, and the macroeconomic stance of the state as whole. Consequently, sudden jumps in unemployment often catch EIC off-guard and lead to massive internal dislocations as staff are shifted to the insurance side of the department (from employment services or immigration) to cope with rising demand. Linking error rates to high volume and productivity in EIC also involves linking them to staff dislocation and recession. Recalling that Lipsky's theory drew front-line autonomy from pressures for mass pro-

196 Part 2: Border Disputes cessing and overwork, it seems reasonable to suggest that many of these 'errors' are deliberate actions by front-line workers trying to ration their time and energy as pressure mounts. This means that higher productivity demands may actually increase the capacity of front-line workers to ration some of the services they provide, and it would certainly increase the incentive to do so. Since these workers are human beings who witness the reality of unemployment every day, some of their rationing tactics will operate in the interests of UI recipients, or to the detriment of employers - constituting what the OAG would call overpayment errors, 'follow-up inadequacies,' or 'compliance deviations.' UI Agents and 'Fiddles' Former unemployment insurance agent Cres Pascucci, now president of the CEIU, says this is exactly what happened after 1982, when workload overload resulting from recession, reorganization, and staff cuts made it easier for UI workers to empathize with their clients and easier to play loose with the rules on their behalf. Employment centres also become more violent and dangerous places as frustration builds among the unemployed, and UI agents have an interest in doing what they can to minimize confrontation.25 The mechanics of such actions are analysed in a detailed study of EIC workplaces by Paul Facey. He observes that while front-line insurance agents were formally committed to fixed national standards for productivity and error rates, in practice only quantitative productivity statistics concerned local management. Consequently, a 'zone of relative indifference' existed for errors of content: the prime imperative was to speed processing, especially of older claims.26 This allowed space for a number of work 'fiddles,' which sacrificed quality for mass processing, and in some areas encouraged collusion between workers and local management towards these ends. One fiddle had workers circumventing the selective quality inspections by taking difficult or contentious files directly to the next stage of processing. There were also a variety of fiddles that produced what the auditor general would have called errors, but which also saved the agents time and/or benefited the claimants.27 Two types of agents processed claims in the CECs that Facey studied. Agents I dealt with 'non-contentious' claims and determined from eligibility criteria (such as the number of previous weeks worked) whether the claimants were entitled to benefits and, if so, for how long. Agents II dealt with 'contentious' claims, such as firings or 'voluntary quits,' which

Front-Line Workers and Public Policy 197 demanded some attribution of blame either to the claimant or to their former employer. Agents II thus exercised more discretionary power and could impose penalties such as temporary disqualification.28 Discretionary power was important to both positions: To the outsider the processing of claims appeared to involve a vast array if not an outright tangle - of technical and discretionary elements. The average length of time to become a fully functioning agent was estimated to range from six months to one year, and once competent an agent had to keep abreast of continual changes which flowed from amendments to regulations and shifts in the interpretation of discretionary rules ... This level rested, in a rough sense, between the unskilled, routine clerical positions and senior supervisory - lower management jobs.29

These UI agents were, in other words, situated in the classic position of street-level bureaucrats (SLBs). Their specialized knowledge and discretionary power made them targets (along with other EIC front-line workers) of a series of management efforts in the 1980s to seize and control both.30 The fiddles which these agents used to exert some control over their work environment produced a good proportion of the 'errors' which concerned the auditor general. Agents I were obliged to reconcile inconsistencies between a claimant's application, and the record of employment submitted by their former employer, by contacting one or both parties. Such inconsistencies affected both eligibility and the rate of payment, but tracking down their cause slowed down the processing of claims. So agents would often simply accept the ROE version if it 'seemed right.' The result was likely to be a marginal difference in benefits paid - most likely an 'underpayment error' - which would be too small for claimants to notice or complain about. Facey says this fiddle was quite visible to quality inspectors, but that the agents used it on claims they knew would not be inspected.31 Other Agent I fiddles worked to the advantage of both worker and claimant. Information missing from a claimant's application form, such as an acceptable wage level, would be inserted by the agent ('at the going rate') to speed processing of the claim. Since the agent was formally obliged to contact the claimant for this information, this time-saving fiddle would have been seen as a compliance deviation and perhaps a follow-up inadequacy by the auditor general.32 Fiddles worked by Agents II fell more clearly into these latter categories. Here the pivotal issue was 'just cause' in cases of firings or quitting

198 Part 2: Border Disputes work. If employers could not show a claimant was fired for 'just cause,' or if a claimant could show that she or he had 'just cause' for quitting, then UI disqualification time could be minimized or eliminated (and benefit payment would proceed). Agents II were required to investigate such controversial matters and come up with an official version of the facts. The depth and direction of these investigations were at their discretion, allowing room for fiddles which saved time, and perhaps enabled them to avoid confrontations.33 The technique was called 'minimal factfinding,' and Facey notes that 'one agent put the matter as a simple equation: good production = minimal factfinding.'34 It consisted, as the name suggests, of practices designed to simplify research. Employers would be asked leading questions in order to quickly build a case in favour of the claimant. Often these emphasized procedural fairness (such as prior warnings), which employers - especially small, nonunion ones - were prone to ignore. Time savings could be considerable: Tf the agent was to do the claim "by the book" it would involve a much wider search for relevant circumstances which would then have to be carefully weighed. Through the fiddle of minimal factfinding a sufficient number of recognized coordinates could be mapped which would be sufficient to justify the decision reached.'35 While minimal fact-finding utilized a variety of shortcuts whose beneficiaries depended on the attitudes of the agent in charge, Facey suggests that its overall direction tended to favour claimants. This is because there were 'inherent incentives to conclude that only a minimal disqualification was warranted.' Among these was the established pattern that claimants might appeal decisions against them but employers 'virtually never' did. Since Agents II also prepared appeal cases, they could save themselves both processing and appeal time through minimal fact-finding. In addition, EIC had explicit policies encouraging agents to seek mitigating circumstances and to give claimants the benefit of the doubt in their decisions. This policy, which seems to go back at least as far as the last UI expansion in 1971, was attacked in practice by other measures, but not formally changed until 1993 (see below). Agents II relied heavily on these principles to justify discretionary decisions which helped them save time and helped their clients maintain eligibility. The auditor general, however, would have regarded such practices as compliance deviations or follow-up inadequacies at the very least, and overpayments in his terms would no doubt have resulted.37 Facey notes that minimal fact-finding became more prevalent, and more visible, when 'production pressures were severe.'38 Since such

Front-Line Workers and Public Policy 199 pressures are apt to increase with dramatic surges in the unemployment rate, this helps to explain the tendency for observed UI error rates to increase during recessions. Local managers emphasize quantity over quality when faced with soaring claim volumes. In doing so they implicitly expand the autonomy of UI agents even while increasing productivity demands. UI agents use this autonomy to ration their time and energy so that claim processing speed is maximized. Given the structural incentives in their workplace, and perhaps an increasing empathy for the victims of the recession, UI agents are led to use fiddles that save them time and favour their clients. But increasing UI expenditures also trigger closer attention from the auditor general, who discovers more 'errors' and demands both higher productivity and higher 'quality' in order to minimize business costs. Ironically, Facey suggests that the agents making most use of minimal fact-finding fiddles were those most acquainted with the arcane rules and procedures of the UIC, and he emphasizes that they never actually falsified data. It might quite reasonably be argued that many of the decisions OAG calls errors are simply the use of front-line discretionary power. If this is granted, then the OAG studies look less like objective efficiency studies and more like attacks on the scope and use of that power. The motives here would not be hard to fathom, since regaining control over these workers could save business and the government money and help 'price the poor back to work.'39 Allowing EIC employees to give the benefit of the doubt to UI recipients and claimants probably resulted in better service for these clients. Removing or restricting the discretion of UI agents in this regard would not serve these clients better, although those who paid UI premiums (business and the employed) would undoubtedly benefit. This fits with the depiction of UI agents and other front-line state workers as relatively autonomous possessors of specialized knowledge, whose position has become increasingly strategic in the class struggle. It also has disturbing implications for state managers and auditors: in some key cases at least, it appears that the more workers know management rules, the more likely it is that the aims of some of those rules will be frustrated.40 As I have argued elsewhere, such considerations underlie much of the recent management interest in organizational 'culture' and 'values': motivational strategies which speak in rational terms are no longer sufficient for such workers, and the incentive to go 'beyond reason' becomes evident.41 Yet UI agents are clearly driven to produce, and the autonomy they enjoy in the realm of quality is not duplicated in

200 Part 2: Border Disputes the realm of quantity. Facey concludes that their fiddles have little overall impact on the 'effort bargain' because local managers allowed for the effect of fiddles and structured their plans accordingly: 'Supervisors in effect factored fiddling in.'42 Facey's is a comparative study of the labour process, and so his assessment of the significance of fiddling does not consider broader political consequences. However, these fiddles seem to be connected to the error rates that so concerned the auditor general, and at times OAG says this directly.43 Since these in turn are part of neoconservative attacks on the social wage, it is apparent that UI agents' fiddles are 'policy-relevant' at least. In fact, EIC's inability to impose sufficient control on these agents, and on other front-line workers in related professions, was the driving force behind many of its most prominent management initiatives in the 1980s. Thus, in aggregate, such fiddles may have had indirect 'policy effects' (under the wide definition employed here) to the extent that EIC's approach to departmental management affects its approach to labour market policy. And there is considerable overlap here, as I have demonstrated elsewhere.44 This is not to say, however, that all such effects are intended (or even foreseen) by front-line workers engaged in mundane resistance through rationing. But it is still reasonable to speak of their actions as 'resistance' because management directives emanating from some level are being consciously evaded. When local managers are not aware of the full scope of 'minimal factfinding,' for example, their effective control has been reduced. When workers' fiddles are factored into local managers' calculations, or when workers go along with what is clearly a fiddle by local managers, then higher management echelons lose some degree of effective control. In this respect, front-line workers could be said to be taking advantage of splits within management ranks - the sort amply documented in The Vertical Solitude, for example.45 Effective unions often share this sort of information and attempt to manipulate these splits to their own advantage. Policy-relevant resistance (whether mundane or not) is not necessarily progressive in the sense of benefiting the client. However, even instances of mundane resistance which ultimately produce reactionary results (the targeting of refused refugee claimants for 'easy' deportation by immigration workers falls into this category)46 demonstrate that front-line workers have the power - and thus the responsibility - to act in more progressive ways, whatever the attitude of immediate or distant superiors.

Front-Line Workers and Public Policy 201 In the current political context, it should be clear to all that senior managers and OAG are pressing both for higher productivity and more coercive definitions of service and quality. Actions which impede either goal are expressions of resistance, and these will be progressive to the extent that they limit the erosion of services to clientele from subordinate groups. Voluntary Quits

As was mentioned above, UI Agents II exercise their greatest autonomy in cases of firings or voluntary quits where they are called upon to determine whether either action had a 'just cause.' Former CEIU President Renaud Paquet believes that UI agents had the most flexibility in determining voluntary quit penalties.47 Relevant judicial precedents guide these decisions to some extent, but as Facey notes these could be manipulated through minimal fact-finding fiddles. UI coverage of people who quit their jobs voluntarily has always been controversial from the perspective of business and state managers. Business economists claim that this practice typifies a system that is overly generous, by American standards, and encourages higher unemployment rates (by enticing people to quit rather than endure bad jobs).48 Prime Minister Brian Mulroney put the issue in terms of morality and fiscal prudence: 'In this society with the fiscal problems that this country has, is it appropriate that someone who quits his or her job without reason, without excuse and without provocation continues to draw unemployment benefits paid for by his or her fellow Canadians? That is the issue.'49 EIC officials in the Task Force on Unemployment Insurance had put forward similar arguments in more statistical ways in 1981. They noted that those who faced temporary disqualification for quitting without just cause were more likely to 'misuse' the UI system in other ways as well. But 'quitting a job without just cause is in itself an expression of a disincentive or disinclination to work.' Thus penalties were appropriate, according to EIC, for 'in labour market terms these penalties strengthen work incentives.'50 The task force concluded, in fact, that stronger measures were required to discourage voluntary quitting, and they justified their conclusion with the same fiscal rationale later used by Mulroney.51 Neoconservative economists, politicians, and bureaucrats seemed united in the belief that the penalties UI agents administered were key weapons in the battle against fiscal crisis and labour indiscipline. Since at least 1976, when maximum penalties were restored to their pre-1971

202 Part 2: Border Disputes levels, they have relied upon these agents to impose harsher and harsher penalties (ranging from a maximum three weeks disqualification in 1971 to twelve weeks in 1991 ).52 In 1992, in the second major UI overhaul in three years, the government drastically reduced this discretionary power. Claimants who voluntarily quit without 'just cause' or who were fired for 'just cause' would no longer merely be penalized, they would be rendered entirely ineligible for UI benefits. This meant that UI agents could no longer choose from a range of temporary penalties to apply. They could only label claimants 'eligible' or 'ineligible,' giving them full benefits or no benefits.53 Agents retained some autonomy in determining the presence or absence of just cause, although further clarifications were issued by EIC to guide such decisions. Moreover, EIC had been trying for the past decade to computerize and centralize as many aspects of UI claims processing as possible including computer programs said to facilitate agents' calculations.54 There were historical precedents for this kind of strategy, for as Marx noted in another context: 'Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labour.'55 But machines have still not been able to duplicate the kind of judgment necessary to determine just cause, and impatient officials in the Department of Finance and the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) seemed to have insisted on more traditional means to assert control over front-line workers. In response to the initial uproar over the exclusion of firings and voluntary quits, the government expanded the official definition of just cause from five categories to fourteen categories and claimed that the new definition codified forty causes established byjudicial precedents. It quickly moved to limit the effect of this concession by abolishing the previous principle that claimants were to get the benefit of the doubt. By forcing workers to prove just cause, they effectively replaced benefit of the doubt with a presumption of guilt.5 This achievement, although it took over twenty years to accomplish, was a major turning point in the reform of UI and the Keynesian infrastructure. It may yet be undone or diminished by new fiddles. The presumption of guilt further 'simplified' agents' decisions and would probably reduce their discretionary power still further. However, PSAC and the CEIU, warning of potential violence from irate clients at UI offices, published an information booklet designed to help clients get around the new restrictions, which explained why UI agents were not to blame for their increased severity.58

Front-Line Workers and Public Policy 203 Business lobbyists supported the UI changes enthusiastically and finessed the obvious benefits to themselves from heightened labour discipline and lower UI premiums with arguments stressing morality and insurance principles. The head of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce insisted that 'people who quit work for no good reason or who are unemployed because of their own misconduct do not have the right to expect to be supported by working Canadians.'59 This argument echoed the remarks cited earlier by the prime minister, who had also adopted for this skirmish the 'insurance principles' line favoured by business, EIC, and OAG. Mulroney acknowledged that social support for those who quit without just cause might be appropriate, but 'that action is not insurance against unemployment.'60 The responsible minister again cited potential cost savings (now $900 million vs $450 million in 1981), and a reporter paraphrased Bernard Valcourt describing previous provisions as 'a loophole that amounted to legal fraud.' Valcourt said the unemployed would understand this action since they knew what it was like to live on limited means, and he encouraged them to take pride in their deficit-fighting role. In fact, Valcourt wanted to provide them and other Canadians with a snitch line to encourage further monitoring of 'abuse,' but was dissuaded from this by widespread opposition.61 Valcourt expressed with unusual clarity the simultaneously punitive, patronizing and divisive essence of the neoconservative approach to the unemployed. The clarity of his position was no doubt related to the growing electoral threat posed by the Reform party. But both the message and its origins showed how symbolically important the voluntary quits issue had become. In the midst of the deepest recession since the 1930s, and another massive jump in UI payments, the Conservatives were making UI even more restrictive and launching high-profile attacks on those who dared to leave or defy their employers. It was not a subtle message, but it was entirely consistent with pre-Keynesian-neoconservative nostrums supporting the cleansing effect of recessions and the propriety of governments heightening, rather than alleviating, 'fear of the sack.' The new approach was supported structurally by the changes to UI financing contained in Bill C-21, which came into effect in 1991. Government contributions to the UI fund had averaged $2.75 billion a year since 1983 and were partially triggered by high unemployment rates. Bill C-21 ended these contributions and whatever incentive they gave the government to minimize unemployment. Instead, 'by dismantling the trigger, Bill C-21 effectively abandons the pursuit of full employment.'62

204 Part 2: Border Disputes The Conservatives had also taken away the moderately counter-cyclical effect that government contributions had on the UI account itself. Future recessions would produce even larger deficits in this account and enhance the pressure for deep benefit cutbacks and/or premium increases.63 These would in turn magnify the disciplinary effect of recessions on the labour force. Moreover, the 'privatization' of UI financing could provide a basis for mustering the interests of premium payers (employers and the employed) against benefit recipients (the unemployed) to reinforce the ongoing campaign against 'idleness' and 'abusers.' The accounting conventions that separated UI from other government accounts would now bring the catalytic effects of permanent fiscal crisis into a major legitimation program. And inasmuch as this new arrangement opened the door for more private sector input into UI decisions, while undermining the economic strength of labour, it laid the groundwork for a future devolution of UI administration. The Forget Commission had recommended that a 'bipartite' and independent Crown corporation take on this duty, and some of the provinces seemed eager to assume it themselves.64 The commission's recommendations, along with parallel developments in the Canadian Labour Market and Productivity Centre (CLMPC), appeared to offer organized labour the kind of influence Swedish unions exercise over labour market policy. However, the commission's analysis privileged organized interests over clients and justified the influence of the former with reference to payment, ownership, and insurance principles.65 Any bipartite privatization undertaken on these terms would privilege the major contributor (employers) over the lesser one (employees). It would also exclude all responsibilities not directly related to UI - including those, like training and job creation, that constitute the key inducements to union participation in the Swedish arrangement. Some of these, of course, might have been slated for devolution to the provinces or for use as bargaining chips in constitutional negotiations. On the other hand, bipartite financing supported the EIC public relations campaign stressing 'partnership' and client service. This campaign was the product of an attempted 'values transformation' inside EIC, aimed at securing departmental unity, and reconciling its internal and external purposes.66 Defining 'partnership' and 'client' in a way that largely excluded the people who actually received UI would mean that EIC's internal unity of purpose would be constructed around service to business and the employed. That is, its priorities would shift towards accumulation and away from material legitimation, and a more coercive

Front-Line Workers and Public Policy 205 (or at least instrumental) attitude to UI recipients would be encouraged. For many ETC employees, such a shift was unacceptable. 'Sabotage LFDS!'

As always, front-line enlightenment was possible only after the clouds of management rhetoric and obfuscation had been swept away. These clouds have been particularly opaque during the neoconservative ascendancy, when unemployment has been renamed 'adjustment,' basic income support has been disparaged as a 'passive' measure, and employers and governments have whipped themselves into a training frenzy promising (with ever-decreasing credibility) 'well-paid, highly skilled jobs ... [which] exist only if we actively seek them.' In this delusory realm, as one observer noted, the ubiquitous concept of empowerment 'actually means "don't bother me with your problem,"' and 'partnership' has become a code word for privatization. At EIC, the clouds began to part by the late 1980s, as Paranoia caught Hamilton CEC managers discussing 'how we can move from the concept of "Contracting Out" to "Forging Effective Service Partnerships."' These managers did not explain, noted Paranoia, 'why it is better to lose a job to an effective service partnership than to contracting out.'68 CEIU viewed bipartite devolution as just another means of privatizing public services and reducing the social wage. Certainly, from the perspective of state workers concerned about their jobs, these notions are hardly distinguishable.69 The talk of partnerships, privatization, and constitutional devolution which accompanied the Tories' Labour Force Development Strategy (LFDS) simply fueled the anxiety and role confusion experienced by EIC workers who had already fought a decade-long war of attrition. Employment services had been particularly hard hit by resource reallocations resulting from changing political priorities and persistently high unemployment levels. One management report produced by EIC Ontario showed that counselling staff in a sample of twelve Ontario employment centres had been reduced by an average of 54 per cent between 1984 and 1991. In Toronto proper, the 380 counselling positions of 1982 had been reduced to 114 in 1991. The report, which Paranoia described as 'devastating,' said explicitly that such under staffing was inhibiting the implementation of government programs and the delivery of services.70 When EIC management finally boosted staff levels in employment ser-

206 Part 2: Border Disputes vices, just as another recession kicked in, the doctrine of market sensitivity was laid down to justify external hirings (open competitions) for these new permanent positions. Those who had laboured for years in casual or temporary EIC jobs now had to scramble to meet the market test or watch their job security evaporate. And anyone hired off the street would take years to be fully trained, in the meantime contributing little to the immediate staffing crisis.71 This attempt to inject market discipline into the consciousness of employment counsellors was preceded by a gradual transformation of the content of their work. The management report confirmed counsellors' complaints that more and more of their workdays were being eaten up by administrative matters, at the expense of counselling. In fact, it estimated that only about 50 per cent of a counsellor's workday was now spent actually serving clients, the other half-day being consumed by work that used to be done by support staff. The latter were now spending most of their time on Ul-related work as a result of continuing pressures to process (and cut off) UI claimants more quickly. The overall effect on employment counselling, which was supposed to be the linchpin of all EIC program delivery, was crippling. Backlogs were so severe that clients frequently did not receive counselling referrals simply because of the delays involved in getting an interview.73 Employment counsellors themselves faced frustrations not only in getting time to talk to clients, but also in finding programs stable enough to refer them to. Government rhetoric about the need for training, and client demand for it, consistently exceeded the services actually available. On one occasion, Ottawa even cancelled a training program that thousands of clients had already enrolled in, causing major disruption for those who had rearranged their lives for sessions up to a year in length. Counsellors were appalled by orders to effectively 'forget what you've promised,' three months after slotting their clients into training spots. Notifying clients of the cancellation was quite traumatic. Said one counsellor: 'You hate defending something you don't believe in but we're told we're public servants and that we have to.'74 Other features of the Labour Force Development Strategy left counsellors equally discomfited. EIC was stepping up efforts to automate as much of its employment services delivery as possible, and computerized job information centres (JICs) were being tested in selected employment centres. One such test sparked a demonstration by the CEIU's Toronto East local, and they were joined by a group of clients idled when that employment centre's JICs were disabled by a system failure.

Front-Line Workers and Public Policy 207 CEIU Ontario's national vice-president Barbara Kerekes portrayed the issue in terms reminiscent of those used historically by skilled workers and artisans, defending their craft against mass production: 'In the past, all workers had access to employment counsellors who could provide strategic advice about labour markets and re-training possibilities ... Now they are left to line up in front of computers to view job vacancies a wonderful service, especially for those whose first language is neither English nor French.'75 In fact, the full-scale deployment of automated JICs will mark a major escalation in the strategy of bureaucratic disentitlement being pursued by EIC. A government which used the prevalence of functional illiteracy to justify training hysteria now expects unemployed job-seekers to be computer literate (in English or French) and is essentially leaving them to their own devices in pared-down, self-serve CECs offering the bare minimum of human contact. And, as one counsellor observed, 'if you have computer phobia, the automated JIG is a disaster. UI recipients, on the other hand, may soon be issued 'smart cards' with embedded computer chips encoding their claim histories and job search records. The scope for invasion of privacy, expanded monitoring, and coercion will then rise dramatically, and, as an added benefit, it is expected that UI inquiries (and potentially UI workers' jobs) will be reduced by up to 60 per cent.77 Such technology may ultimately allow EIC to extend its control over employment counsellors' discretionary power in two key respects. Automated JICs could alleviate the need for extensive training and re-indoctrination of employment counsellors to instil the new emphasis on labour market re-entry, and diminished job expectations. And smart cards could help overcome or bypass counsellors' traditional reluctance to cooperate with insurance in policing UI recipients. In advance of potential technological breakthroughs, EIC continued its efforts to effect the coercive shift by stepping up harassment and monitoring of UI recipients. The Claimant Re-Employment Strategy (CRS) - a component of the LFDS - tried to force counsellors to be 'UI cops' by increasing their exposure to UI recipients and more closely monitoring the latter's job searches. Failure to conduct a satisfactory job search was another form of UI 'abuse,' according to the EIC and OAG, but monitoring claimants' efforts in this regard had always been problematic. It required close cooperation between EIC's employment and insurance branches and extra discretionary effort on the part of employment counsellors. These had not been forthcoming at a rate

208 Part 2: Border Disputes which satisfied the OAG, largely because counsellors resisted this shift in their role. One employment counsellor described the re-employment strategy as 'all negative ... [i]t's all about monitoring clients,' and the evidence on this seems clear-cut.79 One worker at a Toronto CEC describes the CRS as having three goals: 'to reduce the number of weeks for a UI claim, increase the number of disqualifications, and increase training referrals ... We're supposed to keep on them with job openings and training opportunities, and if they're not following through on things, you cut them off. I think it stinks.'80 CEIU's analysis of this move emphasized the positive features of the gap between employment services and insurance, which EIC was once again trying to bridge. According to Alan Lennon, this separation enhanced both counsellor autonomy and the quality of service delivered because it allowed counsellors to discuss employment issues beyond those strictly related to UI eligibility: 'People could be frank with employment counsellors because their interviews would not have a control aspect to them.'81 However, the drive to subordinate counselling to UI policing would transform that friendly atmosphere, and Lennon wondered: 'What will this look like to the client? ... An interview with a CEC worker who claims to be providing counseling and/or service needs determination but who is also exercising a control function. Lennon ended with a clearly oppositional redefinition of service. Fighting LFDS in all of its local manifestations, and helping clients survive its attacks, would be 'our best public service yet,' he said. CEIU was already organizing CEC workers and anti-poverty groups to this end, and the pamphlets it would later distribute apologized for further UI restrictions, and offered clients tips on how to finesse them. Coalitions were again being developed based on an appeal to the mutual interests of union members and their clients. Lennon noted that the drive to streamline UI rolls was aimed at UI workers as well: 'Fewer claimants means fewer workers in the CECs ... [a]nd those who are left will face increased abuse from unemployed workers who will be sent to welfare, food banks and homelessness because of their ineligibility for UI benefits.'84 But union activists did not have to try very hard to whip up opposition to LFDS. At their 1990 convention, delegates were clearly restive, seeing in LFDS an identifiable (if amorphous) target that seemed to consolidate all the threats, and rumours of threats, that they had been hearing for years. A few months earlier, a national CEIU conference convened in reaction to the labour development strategy heard reports of the initiative oo

00

Front-Line Workers and Public Policy 209 taking strikingly different forms in various regional labour markets. Conference participants were adamantly opposed to its privatization thrust, but there was an even stronger consensus which demanded that 'the employment counsellor categorically refuse to police the unemployment insurance.'85 One of the CEIU's first acts after the LFDS conference was to distribute pamphlets explaining its position on the policy to delegates at the convention of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC). Thereafter, 'reach [ing] out to your community and other unions' became one of the major goals of the CEIU's anti-LFDS strategy.86 The other salient facts about the initiative were pithily summarized in a flyer distributed to the CEIU's own triennial convention in the fall of 1990: 1. 2. 3. 4.

CEIC plans to cut back 2800 person years under LFDS by 1992. CEIC will contract out Employment Services UI benefits will be cut back under Bill C-21. Training for new jobs will not be available for clients.87

This convention engaged in a fairly lengthy discussion of the LFDS's street-level effects and intentions. One delegate from Sudbury described how management there had pushed client job searches so vigorously, despite an evident work shortage, that local employers had complained of harassment from job-seekers. Another from British Columbia recalled how much heat members had taken from clients over the government's retroactive cancellation of a UI training program (see above). She expressed disappointment that some members had bought the government line on LFDS and advocated coalitions with user groups to change these attitudes. Otherwise, she said, 'We'll end up part of those user groups.'89 A delegate from Quebec related EIC workers'job insecurity to the CLC's dalliance with bipartism and collabouration. The Canadian Labour Market and Productivity Centre, he said, was a parallel structure mirroring EIC which might very well replace it if CEIU was not careful.90 Paranoia later warned its readers of the development of smaller, parallel employment services in community colleges and boards of education in Ontario. This 'blatant contracting out of employment' typically paid non-EIC counsellors substantially more (EIC counsellors were forbidden to work on these jobs after hours or while on leave), but collected user fees from clients. The chronic underfunding of CECs had meanwhile taken a turn for the worse, as the department dealt with high unemployQQ

210 Part 2: Border Disputes ment rates by 'gutting' employment services to secure personnel for UI. Toronto's Parkdale employment centre, for example, was then operating with only four of its thirteen counselling positions filled.91 When it came time for the convention to determine CEIU's strategy given all these considerations, calls for various sorts of action were made. A Quebec delegate linked LFDS and PS 2000 to the larger government strategy of downsizing and privatization, to make the point that the threat workers faced was too big for lobbying to be of any use. He recommended a focus on militant collective bargaining instead.92 A delegate from Ontario disputed this view, saying there was no time to wait for bargaining to produce results, since management had spent '99% of their time for months' planning and implementing the local versions of LFDS. He suggested the union demand a parliamentary inquiry into the abuse of contracting out.93 Other delegates issued more ambiguous calls for hard work of all kinds, but in each case their opposition to LFDS was emphatic. Eventually two motions were passed unanimously, and the union was committed to fighting 'a priority campaign' which exposed the flaws of CRS and LFDS; educating its membership, other unions, and community groups on related issues; and forming coalitions to deal with deteriorating employment services.94 Opposition to LFDS at the convention was more intense than these moderate motions suggest. One delegate asserted that 'LFDS means that someone else's labour force is being developed, but not ours' - since the strategy was aimed at reducing union membership. He then elicited a standing ovation and a round of 'Solidarity Forever' - an emotional high point of the convention - by calling on the leadership to provide instructions on how to 'sabotage' LFDS at the local level.95 These came in short order, as the CEIU leadership sent out 'LFDS survival kits' which showed locals how to spot, and how to resist, signs that LFDS was being implemented in their area. While these kits may have kept members alert and reinforced their suspicion of management initiatives, any catalytic effect they might have had on direct local action was soon overwhelmed by outrage at the way Treasury Board was conducting the 1990-1 round of bargaining and by preparations for the strike that followed. This strike produced the largest mobilization in PSAC's history and failed to produce a decisive government victory, or the outpouring of public hostility towards state workers that the Tories had sought. CEIU did not entirely escape the entrapments of 'principled participation.' It expended considerable energy encouraging locals to try to stack the local advisory boards which would extend Ottawa's collaborative train-

Front-Line Workers and Public Policy 211 ing initiatives to the community level. Motivated in part by their past marginalization, but mostly by the need to assert the case against contracting out EIC work (especially employment counselling), the Ontario CEIU urged its members to submit nominees to the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL), which was collecting names for labour's representatives.96 Assessing the Impact of Front-line Workers The drive against UI agents and recipients was part of a larger attack on the relative autonomy of other front-line workers in EIC (especially employment counsellors and immigration officers). Indeed the neoconservative project contemplates an even broader assault on all discretionary or political powers seen to impede the operation of market forces. It is, in a fundamental sense, an attempt to limit the freedom of all workers, despite its frequent portrayal in terms which suggest exactly the 07 opposite. It should be noted that the timing of the voluntary quits initiative provides further evidence of the link to labour discipline problems inside the state. As can be seen in Table 7.1, UI overpayment rates took a dramatic leap during 1991, exceeding the rate of increase in total benefits brought on by the recession. The year 1991 also witnessed the first government-wide PSAC strike, in which CEIU members were quite active, just as they had been in the clerks' strike of 1980. In this context it is difficult to regard the simultaneous imposition of a wage freeze for PSAC members and disentitlement for voluntary quits (in the December 1992 economic statement) as entirely coincidental. The 1992 package also included a one-year freeze on UI premiums and a premium holiday for new businesses.98 All these actions could be attributed to electoral pressures from the Reform party, business hostility to further premium increases, or instructions from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)." Clearly fiscal crisis, and particularly the localized, artificial fiscal crisis in the UI account, provided a continuing rationale for deeper cuts. It also reinforced the moralistic enforcement mentality at the heart of the local actuarial ideology and perpetuated divisions between the employed and unemployed, between 'taxpayers' and 'abusers.' More generally, any system (like UI) which is based on some degree of cooperation is vulnerable to charges that 'cheaters' and 'free riders' are taking advantage of it. Such charges tend to corrode the legitimacy on which the system depends (to minimize collection and enforcement

212 Part 2: Border Disputes costs, for instance), while stoking popular resistance to contribution hikes and pressure for more miserly benefits. So it is not surprising that anti-abuse campaigns have been so widely employed in the neoconservative assault on the state or that muckraking auditors have risen to prominence in the process. But the wage freeze and the exclusion of voluntary quits were also attempts to provide 'macho management demonstration effects' for both public sector and private sector labour markets. As such they echoed past practices and demonstrated a new ambition to take the neoconservative project to its next natural plateau. Thus they also reflected lower levels of tolerance for indiscipline among key groups of 'strategic' workers, or a diminishing margin for concessions, or both. Following on the heels of PSAC's most extensive mobilization, and continued OAG interest in the discretionary decisions of UI agents, the intended targets of these initiatives become pretty obvious. Federal workers, and front-line workers in particular, were to play the exemplary role. And insofar as continuing to be a credible target or an unsolved problem constitutes having an effect on public policy, state workers such as UI agents were important. The image of the lax or inefficient UI enforcer, like that of the 'mythical scrounger' that Loney describes, continues to influence labour market policy to an extent perhaps disproportionate to the actual strength of the workers involved. 10° It may be tempting to suggest that the neoconservative focus on state workers is merely irrational scapegoating, a neurotic obsession. On the other hand, it may be said that adjectives like these describe the reading of recent history outlined in this chapter. So it is important to be precise about the quality and quantity of influence I have ascribed to UI agents. Unlike Pal, whose focus on bureaucratic elites and formative events downplays class and ignores state workers, and unlike Cuneo, who sees class struggle only outside the state, I have tried to indicate through this (admittedly sketchy) discussion that front-line UI workers have been both the subjects of, and participants in, some of the central policy struggles of the neoconservative era. On this key symbolic battleground, the limits to the power of state managers have been repeatedly demonstrated. UI agents and their front-line colleagues, on the other hand, seem to possess an unappreciated capacity for resistance based on their boundary-spanning position - and on the strength of their union. If these agents are incompletely controlled, despite the proliferation of laws, regulations, and practices which embody Pal's 'actuarial ideology,' then the practical importance of this ideology is diminished as

Front-Line Workers and Public Policy 213 well. And if we accept that the widespread agreement among neoconservative forces regarding 'insurance principles' is more than coincidental, then actuarial ideology becomes not a source of independence for this state agency, but a transmission belt for societal (read: neoconservative) pressures. It is important to note, however, that this 'official transcript' is resisted both inside and outside the state and that front-line workers are affected in the use of their power by hidden as well as official transcripts. This becomes particularly apparent if one studies the fifteenyear consciousness-raising campaign initiated by CEIU among EIC workers. This campaign has deployed coalitions both to defend members'jobs and to change members' attitudes, as I have shown.101 Efforts such as this are essential if the space for resistance within the state is to be used 'progressively' - for purposes which enhance solidarity with client groups. Recognizing resistance on the front lines of the state allows a more nuanced understanding of state policy choices than the approach used by Cuneo. It is abundantly clear from the rhetoric used around the voluntary quits issue, and from Ottawa's past practices with respect to its own workers, that the federal state does attempt to maintain labour discipline in the way that Cuneo describes. But his framework makes no room for potential conflict between the state's internal and external management roles or for resistance in the former to affect developments in the latter. Certainly it might be argued that the origins of UI half a century ago can be understood without much reference to internal class struggles. For analysis of contemporary policy debates, however, there can be no excuse for neglecting the effects of 'policy slippage' and front-line resistance - much less explicit oppositional campaigns by the departmental union. Clearly an appreciation of state workers' power, and the limits of state managers' power, need to be worked into our analysis, and our strategies. The next chapter tries to move this project forward.

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PARTS: Self-Management and Citizenship

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8

State Workers and Democratic Administrationl

Faithful execution of democratic decisions is what a public service is for, not to substitute for them some other definitions of the public good ... But democratic politics is crucial to our system of government. It is not for public servants to judge its implications, except when considering advice on how to do better. Public servants must remember who they are - delegates of their minister. And what system they serve - a democratic system where elected officials have legitimacy to define public interest. Once public servants have done their best to advise, they must accept the legitimate decisions of their ministers.2

This admonition is the product of some ten years of reflection in Ottawa on the values appropriate to a 'renewed' public service.3 Prompted initially by a legitimation crisis brewing inside the bureaucracy, a 'values search' had at first produced strange promises that front-line workers would be 'empowered to serve.'4 But the cited document returns in a much cruder way to traditional values like obedience and loyalty. Mass layoffs might inspire doubt, but A Strong Foundation (from which the citation is taken) assures workers that people remain 'the greatest asset of the public service' and urges them to 'discover afresh the values of loyalty.' It specifies that loyalty's proper object is the public interest as interpreted by ministers and (implicitly) by their most senior officials. This holds true even if ministers no longer take their responsibility to Parliament seriously enough to resign when their departments err. 'Principles of responsible government' now demand Little more than ministers' presence during question period. Meanwhile, those same principles 'work ... in a quiet, positive way every day, maintaining ministerial authority over officials.' Senior bureaucrats are not accountable to Par-

218 Part 3: Self-Management and Citizenship liament, ministers need resign only in extreme cases, yet public servants should put aside their own concerns and be loyal to both in the name of 'responsible government.'5 I have already examined the strategic significance of these sorts of exhortations - and of related appeals to altruistic service - in the context of neoconservative attempts to restructure the Keynesian welfare state.6 Here I want to use them merely to begin a discussion about the place of state workers in the struggle to achieve a democratic society. A Strong Foundation provides a convenient synopsis of 'state-of-the-art' thinking on these questions and helps to demonstrate the need for a decisive break with the parliamentary model. The case for such a break must ultimately refer to some minimally plausible alternatives. The latter are needed not only to respond to the 'TINA' ('there is no alternative') argument supporting marketization, but also to prepare for a 'post-post-Keynesian' future. While there is no shortage of elaborate schemes for reconstructing society along more democratic lines, most seem to have been written before state workers came into their own as a social force, and before the new social movements began to change the way we think about the structures and practices of power.8 The experience of the Canada Employment and Immigration Union (CEIU) shows that coalitions between state workers and their clients can obstruct the consolidation of neoconservative hegemony and prefigure new democratic forms. If state workers are crucial allies in achieving a deeper democracy, how can their interests be incorporated in the vision of a post-capitalist society? The Greater London Council (GLC) could seek guidance from literature on participatory democracy and social movements when trying to include unorganized citizens, but the smaller literature on state workers rarely strays beyond matters related to collective bargaining. Thus it is not a coincidence that, of all the GLC's democratization efforts, the one clear failure had targetted the council's own internal labour relations.10 Participants at the 1991 conference that sparked much of the Canadian literature on democratic administration included members of the recently elected New Democratic Party government in Ontario, which would later be impaled on precisely the same sword. The more general problem here is that, in trying to wield the state as an agent of social justice and democratic transformation, governments of the left are often tempted to tolerate inequality and hierarchy closer to home. This tendency is reinforced as new ministers battle to control obdurate senior bureaucrats, and all public servants come to be seen as

State Workers and Democratic Administration 219 'obstacles to reform.'11 It may also be reinforced if proponents of democratic administration advance their arguments in terms which stress its contribution to efficient policy-making (like 'tapping the gold in workers' heads,'), rather than to the expansion of all workers' democratic rights. State workers are seen either through the prism of existing hierarchies or in largely instrumental terms. Neither view is likely to support a sustained effort at internal democratization. I argue below that front-line workers may be best attracted to a transformative project if it recognizes their need for greater control over their own work. In practical terms, this means expanding their scope for discretionary decision-making. Workers in the human services are now defending this space against neoconservative assaults, but this is an old battle, and control of front-line discretion will probably always be a 'management problem.' Their intimate connections with the instruments of social control make struggles at this level ideological to a surprising degree, so the task is to provide a supportive context for the progressive use of discretion. This might be accomplished by linking it to institutionalized worker-client coalitions outside the state, as will be seen. This project will proceed fastest in the besieged social service sector, so front-line workers there will be the focus of the discussion below. Their colleagues in more coercive branches pose a different challenge, and they will be dealt with in a future study. Nevertheless, my assumption is that there is usually more to gain in trying to influence the use of discretion, than in ignoring it entirely. State Workers and Responsible Government

As is very clear above, equating democracy with actually existing parliamentary government helps to legitimize an undemocratic hierarchy inside the public service. Autonomous action by front-line workers is never supposed to stray beyond 'helping ministers, under law and the constitution, to serve the common good.'12 The distinctly public nature of their jobs has long been used to justify restrictions on state workers' rights, and this argument remains popular even as public-private boundaries are blurred by 'recommodification' and various sorts of 'partnerships' with business. Its enduring strength helps to explain why the fruits of the postwar compromise - basic bargaining and strike rights came late (if at all) to state workers and began to spoil almost as soon as they arrived.13 Nor can it be said that freedoms outside the office compensate for

220 Part 3: Self-Management and Citizenship limitations within. Politics infuses state workplaces, but discussion of much of what goes on there is stymied by the threat of prosecution under the Official Secrets Act.14 The right to be involved in election campaigns beyond merely voting - a right other workers have taken for granted for decades - was first exercised by federal employees in 1993, and then only after the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) had won an appeal based on Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Current trends in this regard are not encouraging - one of the provisions of Ontario's Fewer School Boards Act bars both teachers and their spouses from seeking election as trustees.15 Such formal limits have been supplemented during the rise of neoconservatism by what Leo Panitch and Donald Swartz call the 'ideological excommunication' of state workers.16 Images of the virtuous citizen were reconstructed so as to exclude state workers almost by definition, and their rights were rolled back quite nonchalantly. Public employees found themselves subject to torrents of 'common sense' abuse which underwrote further attacks on their bargaining rights, job security, and working conditions, and on the services they delivered. These attacks might have been easier to take had they been the product of an informed debate and a government acting indeed for the 'common good.' But, even apart from the overwhelming influence of money and capital (at home and abroad), it has become increasingly apparent that liberal democratic governments are structurally incapable of legitimately representing their citizens. The 'chain of accountability' that is supposed to bind the bureaucracy, through government, to Parliament and the electorate is broken in so many places that it has become little more than a convenient myth. Consequently, it is impossible to see much less act upon - the common good or the 'public interest.' Informed voters know that the candidate they vote for is only loosely attached to whatever policies and attitudes he or she campaigns on. Those voters may very well be frustrated by the choices available and by the repetitive, superficial nature of campaign rhetoric and campaign coverage. Many will not vote (at the municipal level, most will not vote), and those who abstain likely will be poorer than those who vote. On election day, most of the voters in most ridings will vote against the member of Parliament who wins the seat. The overall result is very likely to be a federal government that most voters voted against (federally there have been only three exceptions since 1921). Sometimes the party securing the most seats gathers even fewer votes than the runner-up. (Joe Clark and Glen Clark both gained office this way.)

State Workers and Democratic Administration 221 Once a government is in office, it is supposed to be kept in check by the opposition and by the traditions of collective and individual ministerial responsibility to Parliament. The press, the courts, and interest groups of various kinds are said to play similar roles outside the loop. But a government with a majority of the seats in the House of Commons cannot be dislodged during its mandate by even the most determined opposition. Very unpopular governments may hang on for years, so long as party discipline is enforced adroitly (think of Bob Rae's or Brian Mulroney's in its last term). This is less true of minority governments, but these, if frequent, tend to be short-lived. While the media exaggerate their frequency, moments at which ruling parties are in real danger of losing the confidence of the House have historically been exceptionally rare. As we have seen, the same is true of individual ministers - at least with respect to the actions of their departments. They may be shuffled, or resign if caught doing something illegal, but even the most massive scandals (for example, the Somalia affair) have left 'responsible' ministers largely untouched.1 The courts, press, and interest groups (not to mention opinion polls) do, of course, help to set the parameters for state action, and all are overdetermined by the decisive influence of capital. None of these are integral to the parliamentary model, and the claims of responsible government make no reference to them. Related traditions of judicial independence have become increasingly important with the advent of the Charter. However, neither an independent judiciary, nor countervailing market forces, can be relied upon to express and enforce the will of the people. Given the weaknesses of the formal mechanisms of restraint, it is not surprising that election promises are often ignored or that unheralded priorities emerge when governments take office. Vague mandates, too easily obtained and too easily forgotten, are used to legitimize the broad powers of Cabinet and the upper bureaucracy. This is the effective locus of power in the parliamentary model, and it is effectively unconstrained by Parliament.18 Yet, as I have argued, it does face real and growing constraints from below - from long-standing resistance on the state's front line, and from recalcitrant middle managers.19 In the short to medium term, this venue is likely to be more promising than efforts in the parliamentary sphere to, say, transform the NDP, create a new party, or introduce proportional representation. Even if sudden gains were to be made in the latter arena, they will stall or be contained without progress inside the state. While activists debate the

222 Part 3: Self-Management and Citizenship merits of electoral and extra-parliamentary politics, few have considered how popular movements might appropriate some of the existing power of the state while operating outside its 'proper channels' (such as elections or lobbying). This task requires that centres of opposition within the state be found and connected to popular movements. New sorts of politics bloom in these fertile borderlands, and if properly nurtured, they can transform the state itself.20 Lessons from CEIU

To see how this might happen, we need to go well beyond prevailing orthodoxies at both the political and administrative levels. A preliminary orthodoxy draws a rigid line between these levels and places elected officials (policy-makers) above and those bound by policy (administrators) below. It is now commonplace in the administrative literature to dismiss this tidy arrangement as a description of actual or potential reality, but it is equally common to hear it invoked by politicians or journalists in defence of the power of state managers and/or 'responsible' government. This book has focused on the discretionary power of front-line state workers and on their battles to retain and expand its scope against incursions made by management. One of the clear lessons arising from this research concerns the limited value of the policy-administration dichotomy - either as description or as an ideal. Senior bureaucrats are perhaps the most important policy actors, but they are administrators. Their policies are spread throughout the bureaucracy, but many are evaded or ignored in administrative struggles that can only be described as 'political.' If policy is understood as a general guide to more detailed decision-making, then many front-line workers make their own policy. Certainly, from the perspective of state clients, this sort of 'actually experienced policy' is often far more important than 'official' policy statements.21 This research challenged other orthodoxies as well. An overview of thirty years of federal government management studies revealed them all to be political in the most profound sense. Apart from similar methodologies (ask senior managers what they want and generalize the outcome), each was built around three central principles: (1) respect for private sector expertise, (2) deference to the market, and (3) faith'm arbitrary management power.22 In the face of accelerated state restructuring along these lines, the

State Workers and Democratic Administration 223 CEIU turned away from collective bargaining and adopted a relatively successful strategy combining local direct action with client and community coalitions. This strategy drew upon ongoing resistance at the individual level - front-line workers often used their discretionary powers to undermine the grand plans of senior bureaucrats. Rather than heeding demands for a stronger 'enforcement' posture, they employed 'mundane resistance' tactics to carve out what free space they could for themselves and their clients. Analysis of these efforts revealed another three-fold typology, this time a recipe for successful coalition work. It recommended that the demands of state unions be drawn up in cooperation with clients and community groups, promise real material gains for all concerned, and engage the discretionary power of state workers.23 The lessons here may be summarized in three principles: cooperation, mutual gain, and workplace links. The last needs some elaboration, because a crucial feature of front-line work is the presence of clients often dispossessed and marginalized clients - in the workplace. The state's front line is now being rolled back as services are cut or commodified, and these workplaces have once again become highly politicized arenas of class struggle. Like other service workers, public employees construct their primary relationships with clients on a day-to-day, faceto-face basis. After-hours coalition building will have little net effect if the enforcement culture at work is not contested in a serious way.24 It should be noted that much of the prevailing management rhetoric about 'steering not rowing' and 'client-centred organizations' might be enlisted to support the proposal outlined below. This rhetoric is increasingly used to cover the devolution of front-line work to the private and non-profit sectors, where labour costs are cheaper - or non-existent. In both cases the goals of that work are usually transformed to meet the capacities of the new provider. When rehabilitation is finally abandoned as a goal of the corrections system, for example, private high-tech 'super-prisons' can be seen as adequate providers (of warehousing, punishment, and state-subsidized profits). Almost inevitably this entails a degradation of 'service' for the benefit of 'control.' It is not at all clear that corporate expertise is the panacea it is often made out to be. Private prisons have already been tried, found corrupt, and abandoned - as has much of the rest of the neoconservative agenda. Charity-based solutions have also been found wanting for their paternalistic, often short-sighted approach. It is fairer to say that corporations have benefited from restructuring not because of their superior

224 Part 3: Self-Management and Citizenship efficiency, but because of superior propaganda - they have made 'TINA' (There is no alternative) national policy. As was noted in the Introduction, part of the appeal of Reinventing Government is that it speaks to a real social need for innovative thinking about the structure of public spaces. Although allowing for 'participatory democracy,' the book embraces TINA as an article of faith, and covers stodgy corporate bureaucracies with a veneer of experimental dynamism. The left can probably count on this veneer wearing thin over time, but to take advantage of this situation it needs to have established that there are real alternatives (TARA?) to the corporate model and to its meagre services. At that point, real local control can be convincingly offered as a way to reconcile 'steering' and 'rowing,' while providing services that recognize and meet a much wider variety of social needs. Mutual Aid and Democratic Citizenship

The goal of some radical social workers is to transform paternalistic 'professional-client' relations into more egalitarian 'dialogical relationships' which 'challenge the ideological hegemony of the larger society.' Rather than churning out passive recipients of whatever the state deems appropriate, and holding to a professional model that prizes neutrality, distance, and self-sacrifice, workers would engage with clients in a process of training for democratic citizenship. Practical suggestions in this regard support anti-bureaucratic survival strategies and client autonomy. This may mean sharing confidential information, eliminating formality and jargon, altering statistical reports, or ignoring certain caserelevant facts and rule violations. Recent research has shown that even the most impoverished and oppressed welfare state clients are far from passive in their encounters with welfare bureaucracies.25 Their activity is undocumented, not non-existent. The key is to feed them 'resources for resistance. »9fi Such tactics aim to take clients beyond their role as disempowered recipients of services, and involve them in the political life of front-line state agencies. Building upon existing practices, and what is probably an inescapable element of discretion in front-line work, these tactics make strategic sense only if some larger collective entity is able to guide and inform front-line resistance. State unions are able to play this role in some circumstances, by initiating a strategy of 'countermanagement.'27 Even the most progressive union must deal with the impact of management ideology, the enforcement culture, and the prevailing version of

State Workers and Democratic Administration 225 'common sense' on those who exercise front-line discretion. These influences help operationalize the coercive power of the state, and their strength has led to much pessimism on the left regarding both those who exercise discretion and discretion itself.28 Moreover, state unions alone cannot defend essential services against the neoconservative onslaught, and many have difficulty getting beyond a defensive posture that victimizes other workers.29 Perhaps more fundamentally, state unions - as presently structured have no mandate to represent state clients. This problem parallels that faced by private sector unions with respect to unorganized workers, and of course, many of the latter are state clients as well. The political problem is similar in both cases: interests may be shared, but they also conflict, and it is presumptuous for the organized to speak for the unorganized. Private sector unions have begun to respond to their side of this problem with mergers and aggressive organizing drives in the service sector. Gains here have traditionally been limited by legal barriers, union disinterest, and a fragmented, hard-to-reach workforce. One of the innovations arising from more recent efforts has been the creation of a new category of union membership. 'Associate' members are eligible for some union benefits (insurance, for instance), but pay reduced dues because the union has not been certified in their (often very small) workplaces.30 This model may be a natural outgrowth of coalition-building efforts in the public sector as well. In that case, experience has shown that face-to-face interaction with clients outside the workplace is an effective way to counter the punitive, enforcement-oriented attitudes fostered by state managers. So the mere presence of state clients sitting as associate members in meetings of state unions might improve frontline relations, whether or not the union benefit umbrella is extended.31 Finding ways to extend that umbrella would certainly help to solidify the bonds between workers and clients. Here we enter dangerous territory, as attempts to revive union traditions of mutual aid and welfare work might dovetail in quite reactionary ways with neoconservative efforts to offload the state's welfare responsibilities. The popularity of books like Reinventing Government in management circles lends credence to the view that everything really is up for grabs, that the state no longer has any core commitments, and that a flurry of exciting organizational experiments are under way.32 However, in practice, restructuring has favoured devolved, commodified, or charity-based provision of services where it has not simply eliminated them.

226 Part 3: Self-Management and Citizenship And unions are among those that have been pressured to pick up the slack, rather than the reins of power. Part of the reason this has happened is that the left has yet to come up with a persuasive, much less a compelling, vision of life beyond the bureaucratic welfare state. Given what has been said above, it should be evident that this vision must contain not only a dramatic redistribution of social resources and social power, but also new means to accomplish this which are faithful to much higher standards of democracy. As Leo Panitch notes, the way forward lies 'not in privatizing the public sector, but in democratizing it,' for 'only far more democratized public institutions will ever have the creativity and popular strength necessary to

democratize the private sector.

If we are to take seriously the insights from social work, this may (must?) also mean the dissolution of boundaries between the two sectors and the reordering of relationships between citizens and state personnel at every level. Here we could do worse than hearken back to traditions of mutual aid, so long as these could be linked to some sort of transformative agenda. One is provided through the conception of democracy as a developmental process - 'not a fixed set of institutions ... but something to be extended, renewed and developed so that all people might learn through democracy how to rule and be ruled.'34 On the state's front lines, mutual aid would involve training for an enriched democratic citizenship. Obviously this echoes the theorists of participatory democracy, who emphasized the connections between democratic struggles in the workplace, in other institutions, and in society at large.35 But these people wrote at a time when participatory democracy was a popular slogan, embraced by all the burgeoning movements of the 1960s - and many of those who sought to contain them. After this broader wave of militancy had subsided, those who experimented with new democratic forms continually emphasized the necessity of links to larger movements. A classic study of 'collectivist organizations' noted that their democratic, nonhierarchical character depended to a large degree on their provisional nature - that is, their very existence needed to be subordinated to the changing needs of the supporting movement.36 A recent addition to this literature has made the logic clear. Collectives degenerate not primarily because they are inefficient, or because 'the iron law of oligarchy' prevails, but rather because hierarchy is deeply ingrained in this society's common sense - it is the 'default' approach to organization.37 Unless kept in check by an actively counterhegemonic movement, this default position will eventually re-emerge

State Workers and Democratic Administration 227 inside collectives. This tendency is reinforced among community-based 'alternative service organizations' when they are forced or enticed into accepting state funds.38 All of this raises at least four problems for any effort to democratize the welfare state. First, does a movement supporting such aims now exist, or might one exist in the near future? I believe that, in the neoconservative context, the relationship between front-line workers and clients produces the raw materials for such a movement every day. Furthermore, evidence from CEIU and elsewhere suggests that some state unions have begun to appreciate the potential of more ambitious coalition efforts. Second, can we expect those who now work for the state do be drawn into a project that promises them organizational instability and zero job security? The answer to this can only be no - that is their current trajectory, and they need a better offer. Since economic offers may be neither credible, nor conducive to broader solidarity, it makes sense to think seriously about worker control as a solution to alienated labour.39 Third, where can we find models for self-management by state workers? The answer here is 'practically nowhere' - it is remarkable how little has been attempted either in theory or in practice, and it will be necessary to extrapolate from non-state environments.4 Finally, how do we deal with the problem of resources and, more broadly, the power of retaliation by capital and state managers? This is a more difficult question, but the short answer here is that state workers and clients need to build mobilized constituencies capable of effectively demanding and defending their share of state resources. Appealing to Front Line Workers

It is important first of all to be clear about the context and purpose of democratization. With respect to the context, I assume below that attempts to restructure the state along neoconservative lines will proceed for the foreseeable future and that these will continue to provide a notional basis for at least defensive unity among state workers and state clients.411 assume that there is room for meaningful gains through strategies which expand and connect existing spaces for resistance. It is also clear that such encroachments will themselves be vigorously resisted and that attempts to seize the 'seat of power' within the state will fail not least because the latter is quite mobile. A Canadian revolution is not imminent, nor even on the horizon.42 It may be possible, however, to transform parts of the state in the interim - starting from bastions of

228 Part 3: Self-Management and Citizenship state worker militancy on the front lines of 'human service' agencies. The problem of worker militancy in the state's more coercive branches is significant, but not immediately relevant to this argument.43 For now the focus will be on prospects for more immediate gains. With respect to the purposes of democratization, Assef Bayat has summarized the options here quite concisely in a comparative study of selfmanagement initiatives. The latter have been defended in essentially three ways, he says. Some arguments stress 'efficiency,1 and the gains to be made through schemes that share workers' knowledge, create a collegial atmosphere, and enhance job satisfaction. These clearly overlap with much that now passes for 'progressive' management. Other arguments stress the 'sociopolitical' benefits that flow from workplace democracy - generally the satisfaction of knowing that principles of political democracy have penetrated the economic sphere. A final variety builds an 'ethical-moral' case based on freedom, justice, and liberation from alienation.44 Arguments based on increased efficiency or productivity are unlikely to be very attractive to state workers. Most have had their fill of passing management fads that promise participation of one sort or another while delivering work intensification and undermining unions. Management enthusiasm for such programs follows a cyclical pattern 'with democratization held as bait but always receding, like a carrot-stick tied to a donkey.'45 Furthermore, while increased efficiency may indeed be a by-product of democratized workplaces (real openness to client needs would presumably lead to better decisions about resource allocation), this rationale perpetuates the instrumental use of state workers. Their democratic rights remain conditional on performance criteria set elsewhere and subject to the influence of reactionary forces like the auditing profession. When state unions try to save their members' jobs by bidding on contracts for privatized services, they leave themselves vulnerable to these sorts of pressures. Market-based efficiency criteria and competition from low-wage employers make it difficult to avoid job losses, a downward wage spiral, and deteriorating work conditions.46 Worker control under these circumstances will amount to little more than an elaborate form of concession bargaining. More dangerous still is the scenario recently proposed by Ontario Hydro's Power Workers' Union. This would liberate $3.7 billion from Hydro's pension fund so that the union and a private sector partner could buy Hydro assets - including one of its nuclear plants.47 Not only would the union help to finance privatization (which, admittedly, may

State Workers and Democratic Administration 229 be inevitable), it would also assume more direct responsibility for one of the most troubled and ecologically unsound industries in the province. Even if Hydro's labour process is democratized in the process, it will not necessarily become more environmentally sensitive. Green theorists, like feminists, stress the need for constant monitoring of even basically friendly organizations, so they do not lose sight of the goals of their movement.48 Without much restraint from either a democratic movement or the environmental movement, a worker-run Ontario Hydro might be as distant and dangerous as it is now. Given these sorts of considerations, it seems appropriate to stress the 'sociopolitical' and 'ethical-moral' arguments for workplace democracy when approaching state workers and when justifying its wider implications. The 'developmental democracy' principle enunciated earlier actually straddles both these categories. It argues from ethics and morality inasmuch as it assumes that everyone has the right to basic democratic freedoms, and that they carry this right into nearly every social institution. Pursuit of this principle will clearly have social and political effects - although not perhaps in the way this is usually argued. Having spent some time highlighting the failings of responsible government, it would be decidedly unambitious to aspire merely to replicate it throughout society. It is also probably unwise to assume that democratic examples can be drawn only from the public sector - especially as its boundaries are blurred and spanned by coalitions, partnerships, and alliances. The fundamental purpose of workplace democracy, then, must be to develop the capacity for self-management and democratic citizenship as widely and deeply as possible. The absence of such an effort in management-inspired participation programs, or in employee buyouts such as the one proposed at Hydro, helps to undermine their credibility — as does their disconnection from wider democratic struggles. What is a better way to think about democratizing state services, and how can it appeal to both clients and workers simultaneously? After all these caveats, a sketchy outline will now come into view. First it seems imperative that front-line workers expand their scope for discretionary decision-making. This is necessary not only because discretion can be a useful means of implementing 'counterpolicy' forged by coalitions outside the state. Nor is it important simply because front-line resistance here may protect client services as well (automation and procedural crackdowns erode both - delivering services in an increasingly faceless, opaque, and inaccessible fashion). Fundamentally, discretion must be

230 Part 3: Self-Management and Citizenship defended because it is an essential component of front-line work, which allows employees to inject their own values and priorities into the job they do. Self-management must involve at least some minimal control over the product of one's work. On the front line, this means retaining some latitude for individual discretion in the application of rules and procedures and contributing to the development of the latter For strategies and tactics in this domain, we (that is, unions, activists, and academics) need to recall and disseminate lessons from the long history of struggles by individuals to 'sustain and recover their humanity despite contributing to or being subjects of oppressive social systems.'49 Working-class history has much to offer in this regard,50 but the repertoire could draw from much more diverse sources as well — from Henry David Thoreau to Erving Goffman and beyond.51 Developmental democracy at this level means giving front-line workers the confidence and moral capacity to place client needs ahead of 'their duty to obey.' State workers already do this, of course - despite legal sanctions and their managers' claims to democratic legitimacy. These efforts often take advantage of the discrepancy between their employer's formal commitments to service (which have taken on a new prominence as mission statements pop up everywhere) and the informal pressures for speedy processing, stricter enforcement, and visible deterrence.52 What these workers lack is a well-articulated defence of this position in democratic terms. Part of this gap can be filled by taking their self-management rights seriously — like other workers, those on the state's front line are entitled to greater autonomy at work. But there is still reason to worry about regression to 'default' attitudes (professional paternalism) and petty tyranny. Clients ultimately cannot rely solely on union education programs to safeguard their rights. Structural reform of state unions, and of the dynamics of power in state workplaces, may offer them more security. Self-management is often understood to involve control over the pace and organization of one's work, but in the period we are discussing, standards in this regard are likely to remain in the hands of the state's central powers. There has always been room for 'fiddles' at the workplace level, however, and local managers often cooperate with front-line workers in reaching informal accommodations that may stray from standard operating procedures.53 There may be some potential in this space to advance principles of workplace democracy more systematically; however, they will always be unduly reliant on management's good graces. Initiatives coming from higher up the bureaucratic ladder that look like

State Workers and Democratic Administration 231 participation (work teams, job enrichment, or transitory task-based units) should probably be rejected out of hand. How then, will democracy ever arrive in state workplaces? One route might be through the 'unauthorized' use of parliamentary mechanisms like confidence motions, elections, and referenda. Motions of non-confidence in senior administrators, supported by union-organized votes, have been used to diminish management legitimacy in the Quebec branch of Employment and Immigration Canada (EIC) and more recently (1997) at York University and Glendon College. Cape Breton miners were urged in 1922 to elect 'shadow' managers at all levels - not to take office, but to serve as 'a constant reminder to the owners that the miners were out, not merely to get a little more money while living under industrial tyranny, but... also to take over the operation of industry under democratic methods.'54 Leo Panitch made similar suggestions to a group of Ontario public servants in 1989, asking them to consider electing their assistant deputy ministers, and making policy decisions by conducting referenda among clients.55 Many government departments have now hired market research specialists to solicit client feedback through polls and focus groups. However, the value of all these actions will be diminished by their largely symbolic nature (in the case of union proposals) or by their reliance on atomized, passive, and manipulated 'consumers' (in the case of market research). Furthermore, as has been repeated above, the parliamentary model of democracy is ultimately a poor model to emulate, since it delivers only a very diluted form of accountability. Beyond Responsible Government: Collectivist Organizations

A better model can be found in the 'collectivist organizations' mentioned earlier. Many of these began as support groups dedicated to delivering personalized service to marginalized people traditionally ignored by welfare bureaucracies. Joyce Rothschild's reflections on those that survived the 1960s (primarily, but not exclusively, in the women's movement) led her to draw from them a new 'ideal type' of organization with which to confront Weberian bureaucracy.56 Its essential features may be taken for granted by many of today's activists, but they stand in stark contrast to the Weberian ideals that still guide the public sector. Collectivist organizations are distinguished by their vigilance in exercising authority only through the whole collective. Hierarchically ordered offices and permanent officials are replaced by temporary dele-

232 Part 3: Self-Management and Citizenship gations of duties and power. The absence of hierarchy makes careerism irrelevant. Community is valued over impersonality, and formal rules are minimized to facilitate substantive, rather than procedural fairness. Discipline is achieved through moralistic appeals to the common values of a fairly homogeneous membership. 'Normative' rather than material incentives dominate, and the latter are distributed relatively equally. Job specialization is discouraged, and expertise is demystified and shared as tasks are circulated.57 From the point of view of those who work in the state, or seek help from it, this is an attractive model. It offers plenty of scope for discretion and personalized work, and it is certainly more appealing than lengthy welfare lines or dead-end voice mail boxes. Collectivist organizations seem much more likely to hear and respond to client needs, as they have essentially set aside homogenized mass production (through the bureaucratic model) to target specialized 'niche' markets. In this respect they are truly 'post-Fordist.' But niche production may be problematic in both economic and democratic terms. From the economic perspective, it will be argued that collectivist organizations have always been small, and therefore they are an impractical prescription for the massive duties of the welfare state. Self-management advocates often refer to the Mondragon network of producer coops, banks, and schools in response to these sorts of questions. Presumably, self-management experiments need to feel some kinship with each other and network along these lines if they hope to supplant the bureaucratic welfare state. In truth the cost-benefit calculation here is much more complex, since it must consider the trade-off between cheaper, short-term, band-aid approaches and longer-term investments that really attack the social bases and social costs of poverty. What seems clearer, however, is that smaller-scale organizations are much more easily controlled by their members. At some point economies of scale become diseconomies of democracy. So, again following the priorities set earlier, I would have to argue for a trade-off that leans more towards developmental democracy. This would mean aiming to disaggregate state workplaces so that they are at least as small as those in the more decentralized parts of the federal bureaucracy (Human Resource Development Canada outside of Ottawa, for example, rather than Revenue Canada) ,58 If the goal is to decentralize the state's labour processes, and if states even neoconservative states - reflect to some degree the prevailing balance of social forces, then the point must be to exercise more effective community influence (not formal authority) over the state's local out-

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posts. A program following these lines would initially be defensive, linking up with community struggles to preserve personal access to state services - especially outside major urban centres. The point in these efforts should be to make the connection between community access and community control. Success in defending a local UI office threatened with closure should lead fairly quickly to demands that it respond to community priorities - as defined by the coalition that saved it. Similar tactics should be used in questions of operational policy, and here front-line workers are uniquely positioned to see that community priorities are respected. Campaigns such as these would eventually run up against the problem of Ottawa, or to be more precise, the problem that most federal departments are concentrated there in large clerical factories. They would also have to overcome the divide-and-conquer games that politicians and employers love to play.59 The neoconservative project relies particularly on the political isolation of state workers and state clients, but if this begins to break down, we can expect other divisions to arise (or be wedged open). While the first problem argues for dispersal of state offices and functions, the second warns that such centrifugal movement might start a 'race to the bottom' led by (reactionary) partisans of community control. This race is under way right now - downloading and offloading are defended with market-friendly terms like 'taxpayer rights' and 'value for money'. Popular control of the state has been debased with the language of consumer sovereignty. Without presuming to answer the larger problem of reconciling central coordination and redistribution with community control (there are limits to the immodesty even of this chapter), a few points can still be made.60 First, the clerical factories mentioned above need to be dismantled, but this need not mean that they leave Ottawa - at least not yet. It certainly means that management hierarchies and rigid specialization need to be attacked there, while production units are brought down to a more humane scale that allows more contact with client groups. For many state workers, this will require a serious (political) rethinking of who their "real" clients are and a break with the priorities of management in this regard. It will often mean that those units intensify their connections with communities outside of Ottawa and with communities that are geographically dispersed. If this sounds like another consultation exercise, the crucial distinction is that its form and scope would be initiated and controlled on the state's side by workers, not by managers or senior bureaucrats. The second point is that we need to develop a code of minimum work-

234 Part 3: Self-Management and Citizenship place standards that reflects our heightened democratic expectations, helps to advance them, gives coherence to the struggle, and distinguishes workers' demands from similar-sounding schemes by management. Such a code would include some inviolable space for individual workers and workplaces and build from there to demand the elimination of specialized management and job hierarchies. It would stress the importance of collective deliberation and personal reflection in decision-making.61 It would expand the boundaries of'industrial citizenship' to include not only everyone who works in a state workplace (professionals and support staff, say), but also those who use its services. This brings us to another problematic aspect of collectivist organizations. In the absence of hierarchical authority, collectives tend to employ moralistic appeals when resolving internal disputes and motivating members. Both the effectiveness of such appeals, and consensual decision-making itself, rely upon a certain degree of ideological homogeneity. Initially this may be provided by the zeal of the organization's founders, who vet newer members by their faith in founding principles. Over time, such practices (combined with voluntary departures) may 'restrict... the social basis of the membership, making it less representative of the larger community.' Taken to extremes, 'the exclusion of "outsiders" may lead to the degeneration of the cooperative form.'62 Clearly this problem parallels Robert Michels's 'iron law of oligarchy,' although here it is stated as a tendency within a series of 'organizational dilemmas,' rather than an 'iron law.'63 If Michels's stronger view is accepted, then the democratization project is pointless. The task at hand is to uncover some likely counter-tendencies. Fortunately, Joyce Rothschild and Allen Whitt provide an opening here. One of the conditions that facilitates the survival of collectivist organizations is self-reliance, that is, the ability to draw on support from their worker and client base. Hierarchy will be strengthened, and collectivity undermined, to the extent that these bodies rely on government or corporate resources.64 The latter come encrusted with authoritarian residues, as well as expectations that they will be used in ways that are both financially and politically 'responsible.' This dilemma is not new, of course. The authors of In and Against the State observed that 'resources we need involve us in relations we don't.'65 Organizations representing poor and marginalized people will rarely be totally self-sufficient, especially if they wish to avoid too much voluntary self-exploitation and burnout.66 But they must choose their allies carefully. The unreformed state is a dangerous partner to begin with, and neoconservatives have been play-

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ing particularly destructive games as they reconfigure the provision of welfare.67 What can be said about a state in the scenario described above, where encroaching self-management is challenging neoconservative restructuring and may have scored some isolated victories? Clearly in this situation, it should be in the interest of claimants' groups to support and expand those beachheads. Conversely, the survival of the latter will depend upon a mobilized base of client and community support. Some means of permanent mobilization is needed to counter the influence of capital throughout the state apparatus. Public Service Councils

This is why client-worker coalitions and expanded state unions (including associate members) should evolve towards new structures able to assert popular power more decisively and more legitimately. For want of a better term, and without intending to invoke too many old debates, we might call these 'public service councils.'68 The idea would be to unite those who currently provide and use various sorts of social services. The provider side would be represented by personnel from both state and community-based agencies. This would include clerical and support staff, as well as front-line professionals, but not management personnel - except in extraordinary circumstances. The choice between participation in authoritarian or democratic regimes would be a test of 'citizenship.' People should not be allowed to enjoy both the perks of the first and the legitimacy of the second. The user side (terminology is a problem here, since the intention is to dissolve these sides and make users into participants) could include all those receiving the relevant services and those who might reasonably be expected to do so in the future.69 Affected unions might contribute participants to both sides, as well as organizing tools and access to cheap communication technologies (e-mail, for example). State unions in particular would seem to have both the motive and the resources to play an important initiating role. Meeting regularly, such councils could share information, uncover gaps in the provision of public services, act to fill some of them through collective action, and explore longer-term goals. Participants employed as providers would often be able to implement council decisions in their workplaces and would presumably receive the support of council in fending off resulting management sanctions. Workplace caucuses of

236 Part 3: Self-Management and Citizenship council members would help to coordinate and defend such actions inside existing bureaucracies. These caucuses, as well as the councils, should govern themselves according to the principles of self-management and collectivist organization. It must be clear that to do otherwise will lay the groundwork for the resurgence of hierarchy and oligarchy even among (perhaps especially among) the best-intentioned activists. Adopting alternative styles will enhance both the councils' legitimacy and their capacity to act. If the councils actually begin to have important effects on political struggles, then sympathetic state employees may be threatened or laid off as their work is suddenly found to be redundant. Providers in community agencies will be vulnerable to the extent that their employer relies on state or corporate funds. Users will face escalating intimidation through whatever means are available. But these dangers would be present in any serious challenge to the welfare state - the question is whether the councils can defend their members and show flexibility in responding to setbacks. The presence of unions inside these councils, as well as their more routine activities, should maintain existing levels of protection for union members. For those outside the unionized workforce, the councils would be a new source of support and solidarity. Both groups would benefit from their connection with a broader political base, mobilized around the defence and expansion of public services. If this agenda is adroitly linked to the power of front-line workers, an entirely new element will have been added to the political equation. The potential for flexibility, and advance beyond a defensive position, turn partly on this link. Early decisions about council membership are also crucial. Discussing the appropriate boundaries for political organizing and representation means raising most of the questions that have divided the left for at least the past thirty years. What can be said here is that any organization run on collectivist principles needs to be relatively small, but connected to a larger movement. A self-management movement must respect the right of oppressed groups to organize themselves, while recognizing that they need energetic help to do so. If state workers and clients are to be involved, the structure should make sense to them and serve their needs better than competing arrangements do. If it is to promote solidarity and transcend divisions, it must employ a new discourse that serves these ends. Placing unemployment insurance and welfare claimants in the same category as workfare's forced labourers one author suggests 'unemployed workers' - may lead to innovative

State Workers and Democratic Administration 237 approaches to organizing, service, and representation.70 Noting that some state dependents (RRSP deductees) are treated very differently than others (welfare recipients) makes another kind of political point.71 All of this argues for some sort of umbrella structure at the local level - public service councils uniting providers and users of some broad category of service, probably delivered by three levels of government and a variety of private companies and charities. Because the fundamental line of division remains the service provided, communities might very well have more than one council, with overlapping memberships. A constellation of independently organized caucuses (for instance, from state workplaces, unions, women's groups, and immigrant support services) should feed into the open meetings of the local council. Because its deliberations would be both education- and action-oriented, formal representative structures should probably be avoided so that caucuses could send different members to each council meeting. These measures might be supplemented with broad membership referenda to boost council's representativity and authority on key issues. If all of this sounds too close to the existing structures of municipal government (with city councils, school boards, and Hydro commissions) , then two crucial differences need to be highlighted. First, public service councils will owe their existence to the strength of popular movements and not to the whims of provincial governments. Being outside the formal division of powers and current state structures, they will have much greater scope to articulate a wide-ranging (counter-hegemonic?) political agenda. Second, so long as they guard against the return of hierarchy, and remain committed to dissolving differences between state workers and client-citizens, then the strength of their democratic claims will soon make those of municipal government seem quite pathetic. Local government based on minimal election turnouts and blatant business control will look especially pale in the shadow of an ongoing participatory democracy. This, perhaps, is the most important goal of the proposal advanced here - to promote the growth of visible, living organs of 'deeper democracy' as responsible government withers and neoconservatives try to breed bizarre public-market hybrids.

Conclusion: Bringing State Workers In

Recapitulation

It is important to remember that nearly all the issues discussed above relating to the Canada Employment and Immigration Union, and to struggles inside Employment and Immigration Canada would be ignored entirely in traditional studies of labour market policy. Methodological debates here are implicitly polarized between only two options: take state workers seriously or expunge any trace of them from the analysis. Through an empirical examination of one federal department and one policy field, this book has tried to insert state workers into state theories, policy debates, and progressive political strategies. It has argued that the neglect of these workers makes key state theories incomplete, separates policy-making theory and practice from actual state outputs, and leads progressives to forego promising strategic opportunities. This case rests on the premise that overt and mundane resistance in state workplaces have discernible political effects, and the book has tried to uncover evidence to this effect. The Introduction offered a simple but indirect measure of mundane resistance. When management was demonstrably worried about trends in the speed and content of state work, such resistance was likely increasing. Attitudes and productivity levels associated with Keynesianism were worrisome to managers seeking to adapt to neoconservativism. The new ethos favoured the recommodification of many state activities and placed state restructuring high on its agenda. Yet the shape of the emerging 'social-industrial complex' was still much in dispute, and progress towards it required new attitudes on the state's front line. Thus the failure of state workers to work harder (or acquiesce in the gutting

Conclusion: Bringing State Workers In 239 of their departments) could be seen as mundane resistance. A climate of heightened labour-management conflict, and the presence of militant state unions, would likely encourage resistance of this kind. State workers had become increasingly strategic, yet increasingly problematic. Six questions were raised to bolster the argument that state workers mattered here. The answers that emerged throughout the book would show that politically relevant resistance on their part was theoretically possible, reflected in management ideologies and practices, observable at the departmental level, capable of producing progressive outcomes, a result of justifiable actions, and potentially linked to a larger project of democratization. Chapter 1 used street-level bureaucracy theory to link policy with front-line power and discretion. This allowed a clear focus on state workers, but failed to distinguish their interests from those of managers or place either in their proper social context. Consequently SLB theorists could find no material common ground for worker-client alliances or a persuasive alternative to the status quo. Nicos Poulantzas provided the essential insight that the state's hierarchical integrity is fragile, variable, and intimately related to the broader rhythms of class struggle. Although he remained sceptical about the ability of state workers to think freely (even in revolt), he accepted that front-line workers were the most likely to do so. Poulantzas said little about the role of state unions, but I argued that the primary constraints they face are the legitimacy of parliamentary government and the immediate needs of the state's clients. These might inhibit militancy, but they can also force state unions to confront and overcome them. To do so means questioning management's opportunistic use of altruism and its shallow definition of 'public service.' It also means taking advantage of managers' superficial understanding of their own workforce. Many forms of worker resistance are effectively invisible, and the lines of sight here may be highly gendered. Literature on clerical workers and nurses indicated that fiscal crisis interacted with a longer-standing crisis of masculinity inside the federal state. Neoconservatism was an explicit response to both, meant to restore 'order' in the broadest sense, but the clerks' strike (and the militancy it engendered) were also linked to these twin crises. A few key moments in Ottawa's management history were examined next, in order to assess the state's capacity to undertake neoconservative restructuring. This was an attempt to outline the political contours of struggle inside the state, and it included a discussion of the alleged boundary

240 Beyond Service separating 'policy' and 'administration.' Neoconservatism was portrayed as an attempt to rebalance class forces in the context of Keynesian crisis and inscribe a much larger business presence inside the state. Brief examinations of recent trends in the theory of public management, the Glassco Commission, and the so-called audit revolution, unearthed three central operating principles - respect, deference, and faith - which seemed capable of accommodating neoconservative goals. These were closely related to the three central functions of the capitalist state - legitimation, accumulation, and coercion - and thus potentially contradictory. This chapter also examined some of the mechanisms through which business tries to regulate the state. The theories of public administration, and the principles of comprehensive auditing, were linked to larger trends in management ideology, which conveyed to government changing business expectations regarding worker productivity and discipline. Their advice was not without its contradictions, for example, those produced by the need to bribe or flatter the state managers. But for the most part it could be offered without fear of serious challenges. By the late 1990s, management advice was pouring into the state from a much wider variety of sources, and it had been brought together in management training under the unified but incoherent banner of La Releve. Chapter 3 sifted through a decade's worth of management initiatives to uncover proof that Ottawa's managers were indeed worried about implementation deficits arising from mundane resistance. Perhaps the clearest evidence in this regard was found in the report entitled Governing Values, which seemed to recognize and respond to an internal legitimation crisis brewing among front-line workers. Attempts to create new forms of symbolic legitimation were particularly well suited for wavering front-line workers. Their discretionary powers were still indispensable, and their discretionary effort was now central to neoconservative plans for a more productive state. The emphasis in Governing Values on a thoroughgoing values transformation of both organization and individuals used service as its mantra, and this invoked all the myths based on altruism in the public sector. Past exclusion of worker interests, and perhaps basic insincerity, made these appeals contradictory and inherently selflimiting. The classic example in this regard told state workers that they would be 'empowered to serve.' The report of PS 2000's Service to the Public Task Force focused quite explicitly on the problem of discretionary decision-making by front-line workers, but it was remarkably vague about the meaning of its central

Conclusion: Bringing State Workers In 241 concept - service. The state was seen as both a service organization and an organization structured to inhibit service. Sometimes coercion was termed a service (to abstractions like society or the public interest). But this loophole was quite selectively applied, and occasionally the service pitch was portrayed plainly as a clever way to elicit harder work on the front line. The confusion on this point probably relates not only to problems in transferring a flawed business scheme to the public sector. At a broader level the state was facing a representation crisis in the party system while burdened with a Keynesian legacy of popular alienation from its institutions. Key input channels were blocked, and it was necessary to re-emphasize service and sensitivity to social needs (those of business especially). These measures would create new proper channels in which the proper interests would again be privileged, but through which the broader legitimation crisis might be alleviated. Similar themes were examined at the departmental level in Part 2. Here policy and management are intertwined, and resistance clearly contributed to a broader working-class solidarity. Chapter 4 introduced EIC and CEIU. Labour market policy and the people who administered it were priority targets in the neoconservative campaign to pare back Keynesian interventionism. Debates over unemployment insurance in particular condensed many larger neoconservative themes. But state workers have been written out of both mainstream and neo-Marxist accounts. Neoconservative labour market policy consists of (1) a punitive and moralistic attack on state dependents, (2) more direct subsidies to business, and (3) coercion and symbolic legitimation to encourage compliance on the front line. Front-line workers helped to inspire, and continued to obstruct, neoconservative action on each of these fronts. EIC deployed symbolic legitimation in response to worker militancy or in anticipation of it whenever major program restructuring was under way. EIC's surveys confirmed that altruism would sell as well internally as externally, but the related concepts of 'service' and 'client' had to be fudged. Coordination between EIC's two largest sections, while critical to the attack on UI recipients, was traditionally problematic because front-line workers in both sections tended to protect their discretionary powers. Management sought a rhetorical basis for unity, groping through the murky world of transcendentals and management philosophies to eventually settle on service and partnership as the foundations for its internal and external public relations campaigns. However, as would be demonstrated at Trail, British Columbia, and elsewhere, these ultimately laid only a thin veneer over the harsher elements of the neo-

242 Beyond Service conservative platform, and cracks appeared with every service cut or salary freeze that EIC workers were asked to swallow. In order to explain why EIC workers might be dubious about strategies focused on collective bargaining, Chapter 5 outlined some key moments in the history of federal labour relations. A record of legislative coercion and union confusion provides part of the answer here, but the 1980 clerks' strike seemed to show that both could be overcome, at least temporarily. Tracing the later influence of that strike, it became clear that the clerks had propelled new leaders and activists into the Public Service Alliance of Canada, provided a political base for feminism inside the union, and initiated organizational changes designed to accommodate both. Ottawa struck back, with designations, new wage controls, and longerterm strategies like automation and contracting out. The 1980s witnessed increasingly blatant manipulation of the law to block one of the few proper channels open to state workers: collective bargaining. They were thus increasingly forced to choose between obeying their political masters (and stifling their own interests) or defying both law and politicians to assert their demands. This produced increasing pressure within their union for a more militant and more tactically imaginative stance. But PSAC only slowly gathered its forces to follow the clerks' lead and still preferred to channel militancy, rather than cultivate it. So CEIU leaders reconsidered their attempts to move PSAC in the bargaining sphere and pondered workplace-based strategies that engaged local management more directly. These were discussed in Chapter 6. EIC management's worries about individual acts of mundane resistance were compounded by the CEIU's appeals to the hearts and minds of front-line workers. This union's leadership had been radicalized by experience on the front line, and it tried to expose its members to similar experiences unmediated by state managers. This played upon the role confusion produced by fiscal crisis and turned the state's formal commitment to service and the public interest against it. Tactically the union favoured forms of direct action that encouraged militancy while discouraging vanguardism and top-down control. But coalitions forged new policy communities and new mechanisms of accountability to support counter-policy on the front line. Strategies like these can be termed 'counter-management' because they attempt to direct individual acts of mundane resistance towards a public interest ignored by the state. By the early 1990s CEIU's approach even included alternative training sessions for immigration staff.

Conclusion: Bringing State Workers In 243 It is important to recognize that union efforts to move beyond the proper channels were facilitated in no small measure by neoconservative policies themselves. In closing the safety valve of collective bargaining, in forcing common sacrifices on state workers and the unemployed, in being so blatantly heartless and greedy in the midst of a recession they had created, neoconservatives sowed the seeds of their own undoing at the human level on the front lines of the state. The visible presence of state workers as objects of policy and policy actors continues to clarify their current reality and future potential. It differentiates the pejorative category of bureaucrats into two distinct groups, one of which is clearly politicians and management, the other clearly workers. It also divests state management of the exclusive right to define 'the public interest' in practice, and opens political space for another definition to emerge. Any muscle-flexing in this regard will invoke the usual campaign of intimidation. This happened again during the last part of the 1991 strike, as PSAC's relatively good press evaporated when designated workers started walking out, and those 'random acts of defiance' sometimes crossed legal bounds. A raft of reactionary editorials then painted Darryl Bean as a revolutionary usurper.1 State workers have already begun to react more forcefully to such charges. Ultimately they may realize that 'responsible' government helps to sustain authoritarian social relations and that challenging it creates space for deeper kinds of democracy. New forms of direct action, and new links between

state unions and the public, are first steps in this direction.

During the 1991 strike, for example, both PSAC and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers tried to create their own system for delivering income support payments to state clients. But these efforts have been essentially superficial, largely because they remain subordinated to the goals of collective bargaining, and restricted by the limitations inherent in that process. They need to be extended much further. What is needed at this point is not merely a refinement of strike tactics, or better electoral choices. Instead a more fundamental reorientation is required, towards a strategy of counter-management. This would allow groups of state workers and relevant clients to develop and implement policies based on their mutual interests, where necessary in defiance of senior bureaucrats. The message has to be that good service is a matter of content, not just speed, and it cannot be delivered through state structures built on hierarchy and subordination. A small minority of unemployment insurance clients ('abusers') exercise disproportionate influence over UI policy, and neoconservative UI

244 Beyond Service policy in particular. This was demonstrated in Chapter 7. A generally unappreciated corollary of this tendency is that the state workers charged with controlling abuse are thereby rendered even more 'strategic' than they would otherwise be. This led to strenuous efforts by the office of the auditor general and EIC management to eliminate processing 'errors' which were alleged to facilitate 'abuse.' These errors were substantial enough to elicit serious concern from both agencies, and a good proportion of them could be linked to discretionary decision-making and work 'fiddles' on the part of frontline UI agents. Many of these fiddles benefited both UI agents and their clients, and this sort of fiddle actually tended to become more common when productivity pressures increased. Insofar as such low-level client advocacy can be defended as a legitimate use of front-line discretion, it constituted a sort of individually arranged solidarity with clients, and its material basis was the shared experience of attack by neoconservative forces. These individual acts were also a kind of mundane resistance, and they provided further justification for later efforts to undercut client-worker solidarity, that is, the ideological assault on 'voluntary quits' and the tightening of UI agents' scope for discretion. In the final part of Chapter 7 it was suggested that 'continuing to be a credible target' was a kind of policy effect in this context, one which displayed the practical limits of management power and 'actuarial ideology.' Thus Leslie Pal's argument was undermined, but at the same time Carl Cuneo's analysis, while clearly correct in its general sense, could not really account for the influence of the state's own management problems. These required consideration of the techniques used to motivate, coordinate, and control front-line workers. In the case of EIC such techniques are intimately linked with the mechanisms used to regulate the labour market as a whole. Thus it was suggested that any analysis of EIC's production of policy had to appreciate the limits of its managers' power, the extent of its workers' power, and remain open to the possibility that class struggles inside the department affected its product line. Chapter 8 provided a democratic justification for front-line resistance and showed that solidarity could be crystallized in relatively stable coalitions promoting mutual aid for democratic citizenship. Beginning with a critique of the democratic pretensions of parliamentary government, and linking these to the perpetuation of hierarchy inside the state, this chapter tried to open up space for state workers in the struggle for a deeper democracy. Against the public management orthodoxies of respect, deference, and faith, it found in existing movements the princi-

Conclusion: Bringing State Workers In 245 pies of cooperation, mutual gain, and workplace links. The latter, it argued, could best be driven forward by a focus on developmental democracy and by strengthening links between those on both sides of the state's borders. From coalitions mixing state clients and workers, and drawing upon older traditions of resistance and mutual aid, the chapter addressed the problem of building political constituencies to defend and extend the resources of the oppressed. This problem has become more pressing as neoconservative restructuring speeds ahead, because the latter divides state workers and clients from potential allies in alternative service organizations and the volunteer sector. The solution, presented as sort of a medium-term Utopia, was to use union and other resources to create new structures - public service councils - which could educate, deliberate, and act. Their effectiveness in dispersing resources for resistance would depend partly on their ability to mobilize the discretionary powers of front-line workers and the defensive power of unions. Initially such efforts might employ tactics of 'symbolic delegitimation' to discredit established authorities. In the longer term, they would depend on the strength of supporting movements and the quality of the democratic example they set. The collectivist organization was used as a model here, but obviously there is much more that needs to be said about how democracy at the micro-level, and in state workplaces, might be firmly ensconced in future socialist projects. I hope to provoke more of that sort of discussion. Implications and Criticisms

This book has suggested that state unions, given a strategically astute leadership committed to self-organization and social change, can mobilize or radicalize enough of the state sector to have serious repercussions on class struggle and policy-making in times of fiscal crisis. Thus it has added another element of agency and contingency to the Poulantzian framework, which seemed to be evolving in this direction anyway. It has done so by expanding on the insights of James O'Connor, who is often caricatured as a rigid (and obsolete) functionalist, and those of Michael Lipsky, who focused on a micro-level that neo-Marxists tend to neglect. But the point has not been to hammer another nail into the coffin of structuralism, however this term is defined. It must be stressed that many of the structuralist residues still present in Nicos Poulantzas's last works have in fact been incorporated into this book, especially the focus on patterns in state action which reproduce hegemony and ine-

246 Beyond Service quality. I regard this work as an extension, not a refutation, of Poulantzas's own, although in some cases I have tried to reinterpret his work at an operational level (vs Rianne Mahon, for example). As a comment on progressive political strategies, my intentions were similarly reformist. Considered at a strictly tactical level, there is little particularly novel in the work of the CEIU. Coalition work is typical of many social movements, and other unions have been as militant as this one. But few have taken militant coalitions to the front lines of the state and extended the battle with management into matters concerning the daily implementation of state policy. As I have repeated throughout the book, the consequences of this sort of action for state restructuring are potentially quite serious, and they have generally not been recognized by the left. The attitude this book has tried to convey regarding mainstream public administration and public policy studies is much more critical. I have suggested that they are elitist, undemocratic, and largely captive of managements, both public and private. Their limitations have been displayed in the study of labour market policy, where the vast majority of state actions (including some of the most political), and nearly all state workers, have been expunged from the analysis. Lipsky et al. flirt with the notion that managers and policy are actually irrelevant to a large part of what the state does. This study has not gone that far, but it has continually emphasized that elite-focused analyses distort reality, and stifle change, by ignoring the countervailing power of state workers. Inasmuch as they simply presume policy is carried through to the front line in some recognizable form, rather than regarding this as an open empirical question, such works (even Pal's) simply perpetuate the polite fiction that elected officials control the state. It has to be said that the left is also impoverished by its failure to systematically construct an alternative theory of management, one which would allow people to act in concert without hierarchy, with minimal compulsion (economic or psychological), with genuine self-organization, and without that pathological altruism that leaves no room for legitimate self-interest. The habit for too long has been to accept capitalist definitions of efficient administration and good management, or to enlist pathological altruism in the struggle for 'a good cause,' and to repress any recognition of the exploitation which is at the heart of such practices. One can see this phenomenon in the CLC's collaboration with business on the Canadian Labour Force Development Board, and on the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board, in the Ontario NDP's

Conclusion: Bringing State Workers In 247 'social contract,' in historical examples dating back to Lenin's espousal of Taylorist production techniques, and in the lives of thousands of burnt-out social activists. Fortunately, those who study democratic administration seem willing to contemplate more imaginative solutions to the management problem. In this they are joined by thousands of people who have voted with their feet for the right to do socially meaningful work in a democratic environment, often of their own construction. But many strands need to be gathered together if we are to find patterns for better living beyond neoconservatism. One strand involves state workers and their role in the democratic transformation of the state. Others remain hidden and isolated. The harbingers of a new society are already present in this one, but they need to be rendered visible, and their significance made clear. The argument presented above is vulnerable to a number of criticisms, both methodological and substantial. In the first category, one could argue that by focusing on CEIU, and its Ontario activists in particular, I have selected an atypical union in an unusual department, whose experience is largely irrelevant to other workers. This may be true for now. But if the point was to examine state workers' political potential, it makes sense to concentrate on those at the leading edge, especially if the force of analysis suggests that others may soon be placed in similar situations. The list of street-level bureaucrats compiled by Lipsky is very long; it practically cries out for further research, regardless of the current state of local unions or workers' consciousness. Nevertheless, it is true that this book has to some extent sacrificed breadth for depth, opting not to study a number of departments simultaneously, for example. Alternatively, it might be suggested that the effects and significance of front-line workers are a product of the neoconservative conjuncture that their position as strategic workers may evaporate as neoconservatives fade from the scene. However, as we saw, fundamental neoconservative assumptions have now been woven into the ideological fabric of practically every political party in Canada. Moreover, neoconservative nostrums are merely the (still-dominant) responses to a fiscal crisis which has not yet been overcome and which neoconservatives themselves may perpetuate (through tax cuts and debt-fighting, for instance) The fiscal crisis itself makes these workers strategic, and allows them to recognize the reality of their position. It might be said as well that I have exaggerated the threat posed to state restructuring by coalitions of state workers and clients, either because of the localized and defensive nature of these efforts, or

248 Beyond Service because of their own elitist tendencies. Yet it could be plausibly argued that intense community opposition to cutbacks, as crystallized in confrontations like the one at Trail, and organized in a variety of new political forms - including worker-client coalitions - has already defeated the neoconservative constitutional agenda and the Tories themselves, forced a dramatic realignment in political representation, and placed unemployment back onto the political agenda. Coalitions have at the very least been a part of all this, and could conceivably be much more, since they challenge at a very basic level the social control functions which state workers are asked to perform. Events at Trail and elsewhere could, of course, be explained in more prosaic terms, leading to less threatening implications. If these expressions of public rage and disgust were directed primarily at the Tories, then the demolition of that party and the rise of Reform should satisfy, at least temporarily, the public thirst for change (and vengeance). Alternatively, these events could be regarded as issuing from regional tensions that are typical of Canadian politics, and ultimately 'manageable.' But a third, and I would say more likely, scenario is that Trail, Reform, Charlottetown, and the rest were all eruptions of a more deep-seated public fury, which will soon start seeping through the caps placed on it by partisan realignment and renewed habits of elite accommodation. If coalitions were an insignificant or secondary part of the last eruption, they may still be the best way to harness the next one for creative ends. Lastly, three definitions are central to the case argued above, and readers may remain unconvinced by the treatment they have been given here. Policy, which has been the instrument used to measure the individual and collective strength of state workers, has been defined far more broadly than is usual. I have spent some time justifying this usage in the text; however, these arguments are unlikely to persuade those who favour more precise and visible objects of study. At root I think there is an irresolvable dispute. The broader definition reveals patterns that interest me and that I think are relevant to political activists. The narrower focus may satisfy those who are content to work within the status quo, or who are primarily interested in other questions. Similar divisions arise with respect to my definition of resistance, and mundane resistance in particular. Many will argue that it is too loose and that trends in the speed and content of work that worry management is a very indirect (and somewhat irrational) way to measure it. However, alternative definitions tend to be equally fuzzy. What would conscious revolutionary activity look like inside the state, and how could

Conclusion: Bringing State Workers In 249 it be measured? And why should it be assumed that conscious, politically consequential resistance is exceptional merely because it is rarely visible? Could it not be an endemic, yet subterranean, part of bureaucratic life? And while the worries of management may be irrational, they are not irrelevant if they can be shown to affect future policy choices (which has been done in most cases above). Finally, and related to the question of irrationality, is the problem of defining 'ideology' and the importance of ideological struggles (including those engaged with public relations and slogans). My assumptions about the meaning and social context of ideology were never explicitly set out, frankly because I did not originally believe they would figure so prominently in the book. However, it should be clear that I see ideological struggles as linked to class interests, the state as a major contributor to the power bloc's ideological hegemony, and ideology itself as a central determinant of political action or inaction. None of this requires a rigid correspondence between class place and class position or organizational location and ideology. As we saw in the case of public interest and service, the meaning of central ideological concepts tends to be contradictory, contested, and partially constructed by contemporary political actors. Thus the state's internal public relations are important, not only because they reveal the preoccupations of state managers, but also because they shape the way interests are defined and mobilized politically. This raises, of course, the question of competing identities and axes of domination beyond class. Gender and race have been highlighted in a few of the stories told above, but protagonists have clearly been defined primarily by their class or organizational location. This has resulted in a tendency to speak in gender- and race-neutral terms, giving a one-dimensional account of the dynamics of domination and resistance. A richer narrative would have woven the specificities of race and gender more thoroughly into both the theoretical basis and the empirical analysis of this book. Their absence has limited this work's reach, but it may not be fatal to its goals. This book, I would argue, breaks new ground in carving out a place for state workers as autonomous political actors and gaining respect for their past and future struggles; I plan to begin cultivation in future efforts, and hope others will nurture this neglected garden. No doubt other omissions and inconsistencies will soon become apparent, but those above will probably remain some of the most contentious. I point them out now to make sure my positions are clear.

250 Beyond Service This leaves only the question of where research should proceed from here. As has been mentioned, Lipsky set out a long list of SLB occupations which might be deserving of future research. But, in line with the narrower focus on front-line workers and mundane resistance employed in this book, the most pressing need in this regard is to identify the points at which such resistance might be congealing into forms that pose serious threats to the established order. Current trends seem to indicate that the battle has moved on to the provincial and municipal levels. The Chretien Liberals have downloaded much of the deficit crisis to the provinces (along with new responsibilities in training and labour market policy), who in turn have passed the crisis on to municipalities and the 'parapublic' sector. This has allowed the more reactionary provincial governments to forge ahead with a new burst of restructuring and rationalization. Conservatives in Ontario and Alberta lead the way here, the former feeding off the failures and betrayals of Bob Rae's New Democratic Party. Foremost among the latter was the NDP's 'social contract, ' which shut down two sets of proper channels simultaneously - clamping rigid limits over collective bargaining and testing the faith of many in electoral solutions to workplace problems. Ultimately both electing the NDP, and using the Tories to defeat them, proved very painful from the perspective of state workers. What has happened to the anger, frustration, and alienation that front-line work generates now that these two safety valves have been closed? Did mundane resistance increase in the wake of the social contract and the Tories' election? Can it be linked to the very visible expressions of discontent that marked their first term (strikes by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, teachers, and the Days of Action)? Studying provincial employees in Ontario (and elsewhere) might help answer these questions, and a focus on the provincial level makes sense in Canada because this is where the vast majority of front-line workers are. But the Ontario case also raises another more difficult question that has been alluded to above. What do we do about militant, but reactionary, front-line workers? Among the most active supporters of the OPSEU strike were jail guards accused of provoking riots among their 'clients.' Stories of abuse and shadowy guard conspiracies figure prominently in the media - in the news, in entertainment, and on the common ground they now share ('real-life' police shows, for example). Furthermore, similar stories arise in practically any job associated with the exercise of physical coercion, whether police, soldiers, or immigra-

Conclusion: Bringing State Workers In 251 tion officers. Is this what discretionary power and worker control will look like in the coercive arms of the state? Studying front-line workers in the state's coercive branches will provide the ultimate test of the viability of a democratization project. As I have noted above, there may be room for substantial progress in less coercive parts of the state, and it may be a long time before we need to think seriously about democratizing the police. However front-line police work is now being transformed in a manner that reflects developments elsewhere, and is producing comparable contradictions. The inconsistent behaviour of police facing pickets or protesters can be taken as symptomatic here. Police activism in the political sphere (such as the recent 'True Blue' campaign in Toronto) also raises difficult questions that need to be addressed by the left. Meanwhile we need to know more about how the 'enforcement culture' is created, maintained, and challenged. Conveniently, this topic makes dealing with gender, race, and class practically inescapable. It also forces class analysis to deal with the challenge posed by Michel Foucault and other students of 'discipline.' The toughest questions for proponents of 'deeper democracy' lie in this direction, and I have now begun to address them.3 There is also a critical gap in leftist literature with respect to alternative theories of management and organization. This makes it very difficult for socialists to conceptualize the post-capitalist state with any degree of specificity, and it severely compromises their commitment to democracy, especially with the Soviet experience looming forever in the background. One exception to this tendency is Goran Therborn, who provided a rough sketch of post-capitalist democratic structures some fifteen years ago. According to Therborn, these should build on cadre administration, a 'genuinely working class form of organization.' Cadres were more like labour organizers than capitalist managers, exercising leadership based on commitment rather than issuing orders based on superior knowledge, and 'what makes the cadre part of the collective is above all an ideological bond of solidarity, sustained by links of common organizational practice.'4 Yet Therborn ultimately views cadres as creatures of a class society, and movement towards a classless society required 'both a fight against bureaucracy and technocracy and a process of self-abolition of cadres.'5 The latter would be accomplished by steadily expanding the scope of direct mass rule, at the expense of indirect representative mechanisms, including the cadres. To ensure that cadres continue to represent workers, Therborn thought 'the cadres must simultaneously belong to a

252 Beyond Service labour movement independent of the state and exercise powers of noncommanding direction over bureaucrats and managers ... Some of the political cadre functions may be fulfilled by unions of state employees.'6 To see beyond capitalism and beyond bureaucracy, I tried to build a case for worker self-management in the Canadian state, founded upon 'ideological bonds of solidarity' between state unions and client groups. Despite the immodest pretensions, this is a humbling project. But a more complete vision would directly confront the tyranny of management and the inadequacies of parliamentary democracy, while taking current talk of empowerment and delayering to its ultimate conclusion. It would also encourage unions to extend the work of CEIU in forging new grassroots relationships and in deepening union democracy. State unions need to consider their political cadre functions, and to confront the question of whether self-abolition or a major role change may ultimately be necessary. The task is to develop new state structures which liberate state workers' capacity for empathy and policy control, while ensuring accountability to clients rather than to a vaguely defined public interest. The promise of this approach derives from the simple fact that Canadians interact with front-line workers far more frequently than they vote. This direct relationship between citizens and the state can serve as the foundation for new forms of democracy - or for new, more effective means of surveillance and control. Neoconservatives have opened this window of opportunity, but only the left can provide fresh air.

Notes

Introduction 1 Canada, Public Service 2000: The Renewal of the Public Service of Canada (Synopsis) (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1990), 13. 2 See Chap. 8, below. 3 K.E. Ferguson, The Feminist Case against Bureaucracy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), 92-3. 4 J.C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). 5 See M. Burawoy, The Politics of Production (London: Verso, 1987); P.B. Evans, D. Rueschemeyer and T. Skocpol (eds.), Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). Burawoy's Introduction is titled 'Bringing Workers Back In.' 6 See G. Albo, 'The Public Sector Impasse and the Administrative Question,' Studies in Political Economy 42 (1993) 113-27; G. Albo, D. Langille, and L. Panitch (eds.), A Different Kind of State? (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1993); M. Mackintosh and H. Wainwright (eds.), A Taste of Power (London: Verso, 1987); G. Mulgan, 'Power to the Public,' Marxism Today (May 1991) 14-19; R. Murray, 'The State after Henry,' Marxism Today (May 1991) 22-6. 7 L. Panitch, 'A Different Kind of State?' in Albo, Langille, and Panitch, Different Kind, 2-16. See alsoj. Shields and B.M. Evans, Shrinking the State (Halifax: Fernwood, 1998). 8 See Chap. 8 below; Mackintosh and Wainwright Taste of Power, G. Albo, 'Democratic Citizenship and the Future of Public Management,' in Albo, Langille, and Panitch, Different Kind, 17-33. H. Wainwright, 'A New Kind of Knowledge for a New Kind of State,' in Albo, Langille, and Panitch, Different find; 112-21.

254 Notes to pages 7-18 9 Other avenues of influence - the 'proper channels' - will be discussed below; see Chaps. 5, 6 and 8. 10 See below, 'Glassco's Common Sense.' 11 See esp. D. Zussman and J. Jabes, The Vertical Solitude: Managing in the Public Sector (Halifax: Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1989). 12 P. Aucoin, The Nerv Public Management: Canada in Comparative Perspective (Montreal: Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1995), 106-7; D. Savoie, Thatcher, Reagan, Mulroney: In Search of a New Bureaucracy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 184, 304. 13 Aucoin, Neiv Public Management, 9. 14 Ibid., 254. 15 Ferguson, Feminist Case, 80-1. 16 Canada, Royal Commission on Financial Management and Accountability, Final Report (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1979), 126. (Hereafter Lambert Report). 17 Lambert Report, 229. 18 See P. Facey, The Organization and Control of the White-Collar Labour Process: A Case Study of a Canada Employment Centre' (Master's thesis, University of Warwick, 1987). 19 On the technical coordination and control distinction as the dividing line between Weberian and Marxist approaches, see D. Beetham, Bureaucracy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 56-96. 20 L. Panitch, and D. Swartz, The Assault on Trade Union Freedoms (Toronto: Garamond, 1988); R. Hyman, 'Facing Thatcherism: The State of British Unions,' Canadian Dimension 23/I (1988) 39. 21 Facey, 'Organization and Control,' 66; Panitch and Swartz, Assault. See also C. Offe and H. Wiesenthal, 'Two Logics of Collective Action,' in Offe's Disorganized Capitalism, ed. J. Keane (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), 214-20; R. Warskett, 'Bank Worker Unionization and the Law,' Studies in Political Economy 25 (1988) 41-73. 1: 'Appearing to be in Control' 1 The first few pages of this section were adapted from G. McElligott, 'Resisting to Serve? Discretionary Power and Public Service' (paper presented to the Society for Socialist Studies, St John's, Nfld., 1997). 2 See, e.g., S. Pile and M. Keith (eds.), Geographies of Resistance (London: Routledge, 1997); R. Hodson, 'Worker Resistance: An Underdeveloped Concept in the Sociology of Work,' Economic and Industrial Democracy 16 (1995), 79110; M. de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).

Notes to pages 18-20

255

3 J.C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), xiii, 203, 217, 227. 4 D. Nonini, 'Everyday Forms of Popular Resistance,' Monthly Review 40 (1988) 25, 31. Nonini credits Scott as the inspiration for this article, which discusses non-voting, draft avoidance, the underground economy, and even employee theft. See 36 nl. 5 E. Goffman, Asylums (Toronto: Anchor, 1961), 304-5. 6 E.P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act (London: Allen Lane, 1975), 189. For a modern defence of jury nullification' as a tactic of resistance, see P. Butler, P., 'Black Jurors: Right to Acquit?' Harper's Magazine (Dec. 1995) 11-16. Butler sees the power to ignore evidence and acquit for the sake of 'justice' as 'perhaps the only legal power black people have to escape the tyranny of the majority' (14). British Conservatives, on the other hand, continue to view juries with suspicion. They recently sought to eliminate jury trials for most crimes and termed this a cost-cutting measure. See M. Drohan, 'British Tories Frown on Trial by Jury,' Globe and Mail, 28 Feb. 1997,A1,A15. 7 For a summary of this critique see S. Clegg and D. Dunkerley, Organization, Class and Control (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), 136-70; C. Ham and M. Hill, The Policy Process in the Modern Capitalist State (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1985), 148-173. See also H.A. Simon, Administrative Behavior (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1945); A. Gouldner, 'Three Patterns of Bureaucracy,' in F. Fischer, and C. Sirianni (eds.), Critical Studies in Organization and Bureaucracy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 72-82; P.M. Blau, TheDynamics of Bureaucracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955) 164; P.M. Blau, 'Orientation toward Clients in a Public Welfare Agency,' in E. Katz, E. and B. Danet, (eds.), Bureaucracy and the Public (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 229-44. 8 R.K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1957). Ham and Hill, Policy Process, 156-8; A. Downs, Inside Bureaucracy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), Chaps. 7-9; F.F. Piven and R.A. Cloward, Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (New York: Vintage, 1979), Chaps. 1,2,5. 9 Ham and Hill, Policy Process, 157, 170. 10 See C. Boyle, 'The "Irrationality" of the State: The Nielson Report as a Challenge to Left Analysis,' Studies in Political Economy 27 (1988) 72-5; K.A. Graham (ed.), How Ottawa Spends 1989-90: The Buck Stops Where? (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1989). There is, of course, a much larger conventional literature on discretion, and attacks on non-market discretion are central to much neoconservative writing. 11 See M. Lipsky, 'Standing the Study of Policy Implementation on Its Head,' in

256 Notes to pages 20-3 M. Weinberg, and W.D. Burnham (eds.), American Politics and Public Policy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1978), 391-402; M. Lipsky, Toward a Theory of Street-Level Bureaucracy,' in M. Lipsky and W. Hawley (eds.), Theoretical Perspectives on Urban Politics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1976), 196213;J.M. Prottas, People-Processing: The Street-Level Bureaucrat in Public Bureaucracies (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1979); R.A. Weatherley, Reforming Special Education: Policy Implementation from State Level to Street Level (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1979). 12 M. Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy (hereafter SLB) (New York: Russell Sage, 1980), xii, cited in Ham and Hill, Policy Process, 137; Lipsky, 'Toward a Theory,' 197. 13 Lipsky, SLB, xv-xvi; 23-5, 216 n20. Locating SLBs becomes even more problematic as duties change through normal staffing decisions or as a result of larger processes like delayering, downsizing, and the trend to 'multiskilled,' contingent work. Key criteria might include the intensity or frequency of written, telephone, or personal contact with clients and/or the significance of discretionary decisions. 14 Weatherley, Reforming Special Education, 6, 146. 15 C. Offe, 'Social Policy and the Theory of the State,' in his Contradictions of the Welfare State, ed. (J. Keane), (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), 106. 16 Prottas, People-Processing, 6, 164-5. 17 C. Offe, 'The Growth of the Service Sector,' in his Disorganized Capitalism, ed. (J. Keane) (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), 107. 18 J. O'Connor, J., The Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York: St Martin's Press, 1973), 237-56. 19 Ibid., 240-2. 20 Ibid., 242-6. 21 See ibid., 242; and 'Class in the State' and Chaps. 5 and 6 below. 22 E.O. Wright, Classes (London: Verso, 1987), 78-95. For a more recent Canadian application of Wright's methodology, see W. Clement, andj. Myles, Relations of Ruling: Class and Gender in Postindustrial Societies (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994). 23 J. Thompson, cited in Prottas, People-Processing, 86. 24 G. Carchedi, Two Models of Class Analysis,' Capital and Class 29 (1986) 195215; E.M. Wood, 'Rational Choice Marxism: Is the Game Worth the Candle?' New Left Review (hereafter NLR), 177 (1989), 41-88. 25 Wright, Classes, 203-7, 330-1. Lipsky, in 'Standing the Study,' 398, speaks of taxi drivers implementing antidiscrimination laws. Like the taxi driver, many private sector workers implement policy by enforcing state laws and regulations. Many more work on contract to the state, in grant-funded non-govern-

Notes to pages 23-27 257

26

27 28 29

30 31 32

33

34 35 36 37 38 39 40

ment organizations, in joint ventures with state agencies, and the like. Neoconservative restructuring has expanded such intermediary positions by blurring the distinctions between the public and private sectors. Others have made this point. See N.P. Lovrich, B.S. Steel, and M. Majed 'The Street-Level Bureaucrat - A Useful Category or a Distinction without a Difference? Research Note on Construct Validation,' Review of'Public Personnel Administration 6/2 (1986) 14-27. Lipsky, 'Toward a Theory,' 201; Weatherley, Reforming Special Education, 6, 112, 145; Prottas, People-Processing, 9, 166. Prottas, People-Processing, 7-9; Lipsky, SLB, 181-2. Prottas, People-Processing, 91-3, 166. Discretionary enforcement is, of course, increasingly prevalent among cash-starved agencies out of favour with neoconservative politicians. In 1997 the legal implications of such choices in Ontario's environment ministry made headlines. See M. Mittelstaedt, 'Ontario Prepares Negligence Defence,' Globe and Mail, 18 Feb. 1997, Al, All. Prottas, People-Processing 10; Weatherley, Reforming Special Education 122; Lipsky, 'Toward a Theory,' 201; SLB, 47. Lipsky, 'Toward a Theory,' 201. A Health Canada manager, when asked to choose between public safety and the pharmaceutical industry in approving new drugs, said, 'I guess if you focus it that way, the client and the public, industry is our client.' See L. Eggerston, 'Drug-Approval Process Criticized,' Globe and Mail, 28 May 1997, A1,A10. Lipsky, SLB, 186; Reforming Special Education, Weatherley, 6, 122. A very thorough treatment of front-line co-optation might consider the cumulative effect of resistance by individual state clients. On the latter, see B.Jordan, 'Framing Claims and the Weapons of the Weak,' in G. Drover and P. Kerans (eds.), New Approaches to Welfare Theory (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1993), 205-19. Lipsky, SLB, 180-3. Ibid., 11-12, 183; O'Connor, Fiscal Crisis. Lipsky, SLB, 17, 25. Ibid., 27-8. Ibid., 76-8, 188-92, 197, 204-10. Ibid., 185. On individualization in the former sense, see N. Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism (hereafter (SPS) (London: Verso, 1980), 65-6. Lipsky, SLB, 217 n3. Apart from the standard distinction between those who receive and those who benefit, EIC programs had different primary users. Canada Employment Centres served both small business and individual job-

258 Notes to pages 27-32

41 42 43

44

45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

57 58 59 60 61

seekers. Contract programs like Outreach had race- or gender-specific target groups. Larger training grants subsidized skilled workers, big business, and provincial education institutions. EIC referred to all of these groups as its clients when it tried to improve service quality. In practice, it is difficult to articulate a basis for unity on the latter front without diluting the notion of service, as will be seen below. R. Mahon, The Politics of Industrial Restructuring: Canadian Textiles (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984); Part 2 below. N. Poulantzas, Classes in Contemporary Capitalism (hereafter CCC), 277; N. Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes (hereafter, PPSC) (London: Verso, 1987), 332-5, 350. R.W. Connell, 'A Critique of the Althusserian Approach to Class,' in A. Giddens and D. Held (eds.), Classes, Power and Conflict (London: Macmillan, 1983), 131, 134-5; B.Jessop, Nicos Poulantzas, Marxist Theory and Political Strategy (London: Macmillan, 1985), 187-190, 344; Poulantzas, PPSC, 350; SPS, 155-6. Poulantzas, CCC, 209-30. Poulantzas, SPS, 156-7. Ibid., 157. Poulantzas, CCC, 273, 276. Ibid., 272. N. Poulantzas, 'The New Petty Bourgeoisie,' in A. Hunt, (ed.), Class and Class Structure (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1977), 124. Poulantzas, CCC, 187; SPS, 154; PPSC, 334, 339. O'Connor, Fiscal Crisis, 25-9. J.E. Hodgetts, W. McCloskey, R. Whitaker, and VS. Wilson The Biography of an Institution (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1972), Appendix. Poulantzas, CCC, 25-6. Ibid., 317-19; quotation 317. Ibid., 281, 316-26; H. Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974), 293374. Poulantzas, CCC, 14-15. See the second section of Chap. 2 for a discussion of policy definitions. Poulantzas, SPS, 241-65. Cited in R. Hyman, Marxism and the Sociology of Trade Unionism (London: Pluto, 1975), 43. Hyman, Marxism, 6-7, 26; S. Aronowitz, 'Trade Unions and Workers' Control,' in G. Hunnius, G.D. Garson, andj. Case (eds.), Workers'Control: A Reader on Labor and Social Change (New York: Vintage, 1973), 96.

Notes to pages 32-6 259 62 Hyman, Marxism, 40. 63 S. Cohen, 'A Labour Process to Nowhere?' NLR 165 (1987) 48. 64 Hyman, Marxism, 49; R. Hyman, Industrial Relations: A Marxist Introduction (London: Macmillan, 1982), 158. 65 L. Panitch, 'The Importance of Workers' Control for Revolutionary Change,' Monthly Review 29/10 (1978) 46. For a concise summary of the problem from the green perspective, see N. Carter, 'Worker Co-operatives and Green Political Theory,' in B. Doherty and M. de Cues (eds.), Democracy and Green Political Thought (New York: Routledge, 1996), 56-75. See also Part 3, below. 66 C. Lipsig-Mumme, 'Futures Conditional: Wars of Position in the Quebec Labour Movement,' Studies in Political Economy (hereafter SPE), 36 (1991), 73-107; L. Panitch and D. Swartz, The Assault on Trade Union Freedoms (Toronto: Garamond, 1988), 38-9, 150-2; B. Palmer, Working-Class Experience: Rethinking the History of Canadian Labour, 1800-1991 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1992) 366-70; M. Munro, 'Ontario's "Days of Action" and Strategic Choices for the Left in Canada,' SPE 53 (1997) 125-40; B. Russell, 'Reinventing a Labour Movement?' in W.K. Carroll, Organizing Dissent, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Garamond, 1997), 124-32. 67 Russell, 'Reinventing,' 129-30. 68 See Munro, 'Ontario's Days,' Russell, 'Reinventing,' 129-32; S. Gindin, 'The Party's Over,' This Magazine (Nov.-Dec. 1998), 13-15; G. McElligott, The Shifting Boundaries of Industrial Citizenship,' Socialist Studies Bulletin 57-8 (July-Dec. 1999) 5-24. 69 Aronowitz 'Trade Unions,' 102; O'Connor, Fiscal Crisis 18-23, 234-43. O'Connor thought such arrangements in the state would be limited by business tolerance and by the 'taxable capacity' of the population. These were political and economic variables, and both declined precipitously in the 1970s. 70 London Edinburgh Weekend Return Group (hereafter LEWRG), In and Against the State (London: Pluto, 1980), 58. 71 Lipsky, SLB, xviii. 72 LEWRG, In and Against, 87-90. 'Positive strikes' are said to get around this problem by improving client service to the point where management incurs unexpected additional expenses. 73 Ibid., 140; Hyman, Industrial Relations, 170. 74 Panitch, The Importance,' 48; Hyman, Marxism, 25-37; C. Offe and H. Wiesenthal, Two Logics of Collective Action,' in Offe's Disorganized Capitalism, 170-220; J. Rinehart, The Tyranny of Work: Alienation and the Labour Process (Toronto: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987), 194-6.

260 Notes to pages 36-43 75 Offe and Wiesenthal, 'Two Logics,' 214-20; L. Panitch, Social Democracy and Industrial Militancy: The Labour Party, The Trade Unions and Incomes Policy 1945-1974 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 235-259; L. Panitch, Workers, Wages and Controls (Toronto: New Hogtown Press, 1976). 76 Hyman, Industrial Relations, 197. 77 A. Gorz 'Workers' Control Is More than Just That,' in G. Hunnius, G.D. Garson, and J. Case (eds.), Workers' Control: A Reader on Labor and Social Change, 335; Hyman, Industrial Relations, 188-9; D. Nonini 'Everyday Forms of Popular Resistance,' Monthly Review 40/6 (1988) 25-6, 29-33. 78 R. Mahon, The Politics of Industrial Restructuring: Canadian Textiles (Toronto: University Press, 1984) 12, 38. 79 LEWRG, In and Against, 43. 80 Or, it might be said, more conducive in the long term to burnout, cynicism, and reactionary attitudes. The latter are fostered by the distorted use of 'service' inside the state (see below). 81 LEWRG, In and Against 45, 47. Emphasis in original. 82 K.E. Ferguson, The Feminist Case against Bureaucracy, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984) 123-53. Her criticism is less true of some of the 'policy communities' literature - see, e.g., W. Coleman and G. Skogstad, (eds)., Policy Communities and Public Policy in Canada (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1991). 83 Ferguson, Feminist Case, 124. 84 Ibid., 123, 125. 85 Mahon, Politics, 38-43. 86 See section with this title in Chap. 3, below. 87 See Chap. 3, below. 88 Ferguson, Feminist Case, 81. 89 Ibid., 72-3. 90 Glaus Offe makes a similar point in a much more elaborate way; see 'The Theory of the Capitalist State and the Problem of Policy Formation,' in L. Lindberg et al. (eds.), Stress and Contradiction in Modern Capitalism, (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1975), 136-7. 91 See section on 'Public Service 2000: Empowering to Serve,' in Chap. 3, below. 92 R. Warskett, 'The Politics of Difference and Inclusiveness within the Canadian Labour Movement,' Economic and Industrial Democracy 17 (1996) 608. 93 R. Warskett, 'Women and Clerical Work: Revisiting Class and Gender,' Studies in Political Economy (hereafter SPE) 30 (1989) 167-82. 94 G.S. Lowe, Women in the Administrative Revolution (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987); G.S. Lowe, 'Mechanization, Feminization, and Managerial

Notes to pages 43-6

261

Control in the Early Twentieth-Century Canadian Office,' in C. Heron and R. Storey (eds.), On theJob: Confronting the Labour Process in Canada (Kingston: McGill-Queen's, University Press 1986), 194. 95 Lowe, 'Mechanization,' 195-6. 96 Hodgetts et al., Biography, Appendix. 97 G. Kinsman, P. Gentile, H. MacDonnell, and M. Mahood-Grier, 'In the Interests of the State': The Anti-gay, Anti-lesbian National Security Campaign in Canada - A Preliminary Research Report (Sudbury: Laurentian University Press, 1998), 17-18. 98 Warskett, 'Women and Clerical Work,' 179-80. 99 Lowe, 'Mechanization,' 182, 200-1. 100 HJ. Krahn and G.S. Lowe, Work, Industry, and Canadian Society, 3rd ed. (Toronto: ITP Nelson, 1998), 187. 101 J. Guard, 'Womanly Innocence and Manly Self-Respect: Gendered Challenges to Labour's Postwar Compromise,' in C. Gonick, P. Phillips, and J. Vorst, (eds.), Labour Gains, Labour Pains: 50 Years of PC 1003 (Halifax: Fernwood, 1995), 130, 132. 102 A. Forrest, 'Securing the Male Breadwinner: A Feminist Interpretation of PC 1003,' in Gonick, Phillips, and Vorst Labour Gains, 139-62. 103 S. Findlay, 'Feminist Struggles with the Canadian State: 1966-1988,' Resources for Feminist Research 17/3 (1988) 9. 104 The daunting size of a similar project is graphically displayed in a 'Preliminary mapping of relations that need to be investigated,' in Kinsman et al. In the Interests, 53. 105 See R. Pringle, Secretaries Talk: Sexuality, Power and Work (London: Verso, 1988); Kinsman et al. In the Interests. The latter will be discussed below. 106 B.W. Carroll and D. Siegel, Service in the Field: The World of Front-Line Public Servants (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1999), 7-8, 199213. 107 L. Ames, 'When Sense Is Not Common: Alternatives to Hierarchy at Work,' Economic and Industrial Democracy 16 (1995) 563, 574—5. 108 P. Armstrong, 'Women's Health-Care Work: Nursing in Context,' in P. Armstrong, J. Choiniere, and E. Day, Vital Signs: Nursing in Transition (Toronto: Garamond, 1993), 25-6. 109 A. Baumgart, cited in E. Day, 'The Unionization of Nurses,' in Armstrong, Choiniere, and Day, Vital Signs, 90. 110 E. Day, 'Unionization,' 93. On teachers see H. Smaller, The Teaching Profession Act in Canada: A Critical Perspective,' in Gonick, Phillips, and Vorst Labour Gains, 341-60; R. Heap and A. Prentice (eds.), Gender and Education in Ontario (Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press, 1991).

262

Notes to pages 46-50

111 P. Armstrong, 'Women's Health-Care Work: Nursing in Context,' in (Armstrong Choinieu, and Day, Vital Signs, 35, 38. 112 Lowe, 'Mechanization, 200. 113 SeeJ. Fudge, The Gendered Diminsion of Labour Law: Why Women Need Inclusive Unionism and Broader-Based Bargaining,' in L. Briskin and P. McDermott, (eds.), Women Challenging Unions: Feminism, Democracy and Militancy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 231-48. 114 White, Sisters and Solidarity, (Toronto: Thompson, 1993) 'Unionization,' 54-5; Day, 106. 115 Armstrong, 'Women's Health-Care Work: Nursing in Context, in Armstrong, Choiniere, and Day, Vital Signs, 38. 116 Ibid. 48. 117 J. Brenner 'On Gender and Class in U.S. Labor History,' Monthly Review 50/6 (1999) 9. 118 Ibid., 2. 119 Ibid. 6,9. 120 Ibid. 7. 121 Ibid. 11, 12. For more on masculinity, see Labour / Le Travail 42 (1998) - a special edition on 'Masculinities and Working-Class History.' 122 See White, Sisters and Solidarity;]. Stinson and P. Richmond, 'Women Working for Unions: Female Staff and the Politics of Transformation,' 137-56 in Briskin and McDermott, Women Challenging Unions; K. Muir, 'Difference or Deficiency: Gender, Representation and Meaning in Unions,' 172-93 in B. Pocock, (ed.), Strife: Sex and Politics in Labour Unions (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1997); L. Sudano, 'Women Union Leaders: Mongrels, Martyrs, Misfits, or Models for the Future?' 149-71 in B. Pocock (ed.), Strife: Sex and Politics in Labour Unions (St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1997). 123 L. Briskin, 'Union Women and Separate Organizing,' 89-110 in Briskin and McDermott Women Challenging Unions; L. Briskin, 'Unions and Women's Organizing in Canada and Sweden,' (Paper presented to the Society for Socialist Studies, St. John's, 1997). 124 Kinsman et al., In the Interests, 23, 25, 28. 125 Ibid. 26, 47. 126 Ibid. 15,20-1,123,127. RA stands for the Recreation Association, an Ottawa organization offering sports and leisure programs to state workers, like 'company welfare' in an earlier era. On the latter see W. Littman, 'Designing Obedience: The Architecture and Landscape of Welfare Capitalism, 1880-1930,' International Labour and Working-Class History 53 (1998) 88-114. 127 Kinsman et al., 'In the Interests,' 18-20. Emphasis in original.

128 Ibid., 15-20.

Notes to pages 50-57 263 129 Ibid., 25-6, 28, 142. 130 Ibid., 55, 116-23. 131 Ibid., 116-23. 132 On careerism and conformity see R. Edwards, Contested Terrain: The Transformation of the Workplace in the Twentieth Century (New York: Basic, 1979), 21. 133 Kinsman et al., 'In the Interests,' 55. 2: Class and Management in the Canadian State 1 D. Wolfe, 'The Rise and Decline of the Keynesian Era in Canada, 19301982,' in G. Kealey and M.S. Cross, (eds.), Modern Canada, 1930-1980$ (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1984), 49-56, quote 55. 2 J.B. Rose, 'Growth Patterns of Public Sector Unions,' in M. Thompson and G. Swimmer, (eds.) Conflict or Compromise: The Future of Public Sector Industrial Relations (Montreal: Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1984), 83-119. 3 Wolfe, 'The Rise and Decline,' 70-1; D. Wolfe, 'The Politics of the Deficit,' in G.B. Doern, (ed.), The Politics of Economic Policy, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 111-16; J. O'Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973). 4 See F. Block R.A. Cloward, B. Ehrenreich, and E Fox Piven (eds.), The Mean Season: The Attack on the Welfare State (New York: Pantheon, 1987); S. Hall and M.Jacques, (eds.), The Politics of Thatcherism (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1987); R. Miliband, L. Panitch, andj. Saville (eds.), Socialist Register, 1987: Conservatism in Britain and America: Rhetoric and Reality (London: Merlin, 1987). 5 S. Clarke, 'Capitalist Crisis and the Rise of Monetarism,' in Miliband et al., Socialist Register 393. 6 R. Mahon, The Politics of Industrial Restructuring: Canadian Textiles (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 10-11; A. Przeworski, 'Material Interests, Class Compromise, and the Transition to Socialism,' Politics and Society 10/1 (1980)125-53. 7 O'Connor, Fiscal Crisis, 5-10; C. Offe, 'Theses on the Theory of the State,' 119-29 in his Contradictions of the Welfare State,]. Keane (ed.), (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985) N. Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism (hereafter SPS) (London: Verso, 1980) 190-1. Emphasis in original. 8 O'Connor, Fiscal Crisis, 48-50. 9 A. Maslove and G. Swimmer, Wage Controls in Canada, 1975-78 (Montreal: Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1980), 10; T. Courchene, Monetarism and Controls: The Inflation Fighters (Montreal: C.D. Howe Research Institute, 1976), 100-4.

264 Notes to pages 57-60 10 O'Connor, Fiscal Crisis, 51. 11 A. Gamble 'Thatcherism and Conservative Politics,' in Hall and Jacques (Politics ofThatcherism, 109-31; B. Jessop 'Popular Capitalism, Flexible Accumulation and Left Strategy,' New Left Review (hereafter NLR) 165 (1987) 104-22; J. Krieger, 'Social Policy in the Age of Reagan and Thatcher,' in Miliband et al., Socialist Register 1987, 179. Emphasis in original. 12 Jessop, 'Popular Capitalism,' 115; Krieger, 'Social Policy,' 179. 13 Krieger, 'Social Policy,' 179; F. Block, 'Rethinking the Political Economy of the Welfare State,' in Block et al., Mean Season, 137; K. Moody, 'Reagan, the Business Agenda and the Collapse of Labour,' in Miliband, et al., Socialist Register, 1987, 159. 14 H. Chorney and P. Hansen, 'The Falling Rate of Legitimation: The Problem of the Contemporary Capitalist State in Canada,' Studies in Political Economy (hereafter SPE) 4 (1980) 89; L. Panitch, 'The role and Nature of the Canadian State,' in his The Canadian State: Political Economy and Political Powers (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), 18-22. 15 O'Connor, Fiscal Crisis, 236-42; Poulantzas, SPS, 241-7. 16 O'Connor, Fiscal Crisis, 240-56. 17 Poulantzas, SPS, 244-7. 18 That is, 'difficult to monitor but highly sensitive to differences in conscientiousness.' E.O. Wright, Classes (London: Verso, 1987), 94. See also discussion in Chap. 1 above. 19 A. Giddens, 'Class Structure and Class Consciousness,' A. Giddens and D. Held (eds.), Classes, Power and Conflict (London: Macmillan, 1983), 174. 20 Weber cited in Giddens and Held, Classes, 171; Giddens, 'Class Structure,' 174. 21 S. Clegg and D. Dunkerley, Organization, Class and Control (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), 508. 22 Giddens says Braverman revealed class domination to be 'the absent centre of the linkage Weber drew between the rationality of technique and the rationality of the most "technically effective" form of authority: bureaucracy.' Giddens, 'Class Structures,' 172. 23 Among his critics and defenders are S. Cohen, 'A Labour Process to Nowhere?' NLR 165 (1987) 34-50; D. Stark, 'Class Struggle and the Transformation of the Labour Process: A Relational Approach,' in Giddens and Held Classes, 310-29; C. Mouffe, 'Working-Class Hegemony and the Struggle for Socialism,' SPE 12 (1983) 7-26. 24 C. Offe, Disorganized Capitalism; Contradictions of the Welfare State, ed.J. Keane (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985); 'The Theory of the Capitalist State and the Problem of Policy Formation,' in Stress and Contradiction in Modern Capitalism,

Notes to pages 60-3 265

25

26

27

28

29

30 31 32 33

L. Lindberg et al. eds. (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1975) 125-44; C. Boyle, 'The "Irrationality" of the State: The Nielsen Report as a Challenge to Left Analysis,' SRB27 (1988) 53-85; R. Mahon, 'Canadian Public Policy: The Unequal Structure of Representation,' in L. Panitch (ed.), The Canadian State: Political Economy and Political Power, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977) 165-98. On partial productivity, see G. Carchedi, On the Economic Identification of Social Classes (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), 14-15,127-42. On indirect productivity, see I. Gough, The Political Economy of the Welfare State (London: Macmillan, 1981), and O'Connor, Fiscal Crisis. On the state labour process see H. Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974), 267, 410-23. See also N. Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes (hereafter PPSQ (London: Verso, 1987), 84; N. Poulantzas, Classes in Contemporary Capitalism (hereafter CCQ (London: NLB, 1979), 186, 209-30. B. Jessop, Nicos Poulantzas, Marxist Theory and Political Strategy (London: Macmillan, 1985), 187-90. On the distinction between position in the class struggle and place in the class structure, see Poulantzas, CCC, 14-15, 209-30; and 'Class in the State,' below. M.F. Brodie andj.jenson, Crisis, Challenge and Change: Party and Class in Canada (Toronto: Methuen, 1980). Both these formulations are influenced by Offe, 'Theory of the Capitalist State,' 135, and by R. Miliband, 'A State of De-subordination,' British Journal of Sociology 29/4 (1978), 399-409. Hereafter 'SLB' will refer to street-level bureaucrats as well. Gatekeepers have been studied in social work, community psychiatry, journalism, and in politics. For the latter, seej. Brodie, Women and Politics in Canada (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1985), 98-121. See D. Smith, 'Feminist Reflections on Political Economy,' SPE30 (1989) 37-59; M. Luxton and S. Findlay 'Is the Everyday World Problematic? Reflections on Smith's Method of Making Sense of Women's Experience,' review of D. Smith, The Everyday World as Problematic, SPE3Q (1989) 183-96. See, e.g., E. Bardach, The Implementation Game: What Happens after a Bill Becomes Law (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984). See, e.g., Carl Cuneo's contribution to the debate on the origins of unemployment insurance in Canada, discussed in Chap. 4 below. R. Simeon, 'Studying Public Policy,' Canadian Journal of Political Science^ /4 (1976) 556-9. See Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital; M. Burowoy, The Politics of Production (London: Verso, 1987).

266 Notes to pages 63-7 34 J. Silver, 'The Ideology of Excellence: Management and Neo-Conservatism,' SP£24(1987) 106, 118-19. 35 P. Aucoin, The New Public Management: Canada in Comparative Perspective (Monreal: IRPP, 1995), 3. 36 Ibid. 1. 37 D. Savoie, Thatcher, Reagan, Mulroney: In Search of a New Bureaucracy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), Chap. 3. 38 Aucoin, New Public, 3; Savoie, Thatcher, 12, 110, 274. 39 Savoie, Thatcher, 277. 40 Aucoin, New Public, 131. 41 Ibid. 130-1; Savoie, Thatcher, 229-31. 42 See esp. Canada, La Releve Task Force, First Progress Report on La Releve: A Commitment to Action (http://lareleve.pwgsc.gc.ca/compendl/); Canada, La Releve, Making Citizen-Centred Service Delivery a Reality (Ottawa: CCMD, 1999). Larousse translates 'La releve' as 'relief or 'changing of the guard.' But here it is also an acronym that stands (in English) for Leadership, Action, Renewal, Energy, Learning, Expertise, Values, Excellence. 43 D. Osborne and T. Gaebler, Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit Is Transforming the Public Sector (New York: Penguin, 1993). 44 Ibid., Appendix A. 45 T. Gaebler, 'Situating the Debate on Government Reform,' in F.L. Seidle (ed.), Rethinking Government: Reform or Reinvention? (Montreal: IRPP, 1993), 24. 46 Osborne and Gaebler, Reinventing, 22. 47 Ibid., Chap. 2, 'Community-Owned Government: Empowering Rather than Serving.' 48 Ibid., 45; emphasis in original. 49 Gaebler, 'Situating,' 26. 50 Osborne and Gaebler, Reinventing, 38. 51 T. Gaebler, 'Reinventing Government: Priorities and Potential,' in F.L. Seidle, ed., Rethinking Government, 126; emphasis added. 52 See Chap. 4 esp. 53 J. Shields, and B.M. Evans, Shrinking the State, (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 1998), 71-72. 54 See B. Ehrenreich, 'Spinning the Poor into Gold,' Harper's Magazine (Aug. 1997) 44-52. 55 J. Rinehart, The Tyranny of Work: Alienation and the Labour Process (Toronto: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987), 108. 56 See S. Sutherland, 'The Office of the Auditor General of Canada: Watching the Watchdog,' in G.B. Doern (ed.), How Ottawa Spends Your Tax Dollars: Fed-

Notes to pages 67-70 267

57

58 59

60 61

62

63 64

65

66

67

eral Priorities 1981 (Toronto: Lorimer, 1981) 184-231; Canada, Auditor General (OAG), Reports of the Auditor General to the House of Commons, 1975-1990 (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1975-1990). On the significance of VFM, see G. Kaser, 'Value for Money in the Public Services,' Capital and Class (hereafter C&Q 36 (1988), 31-57. Compare the list of advisers to the Auditor General in each annual report various pages; G. Kaser, 'Value for Money in the Public Services,' C65C36 (1988) 32. See, M. Campbell, 'Management as "Ruling": A Class Phenomenon in Nursing,' SPE27 (1988) 29-51. Nurses were laid off en masse in favour of a largely unskilled contingent workforce. De-skilling their jobs was an essential first step. Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital, 150-1. Braverman does neglect the cumulative effect of minor workplace skirmishes and other labour struggles which are not organized political challenges to capital as a whole. But, as we have seen, he is by no means alone in this failing. A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. Q. Hoare, and G.N. Smith, (New York: International Publishers, 1980), 326 n5, 419, 423. Canada, Report of the Royal Commission on Government Organization, vol. 1, Management of the Public Service, abridged ed. (Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1962). (Hereafter, Glassco Report). A. Doerr, The Machinery of Government in Canada (Toronto: Methuen, 1981), 1; Hubert Laframboise, as cited in T.W. Plumptre, Beyond the Bottom Line: Management in Government (Halifax: IRPP, 1988), 411-12. K. Kernaghan and D. Siegel, Public Administration in Canada: A Text (Scarborough: Nelson, 1991), 69-70; Doerr, Machinery, 1-2. See C. MacLennan, 'The Democratic Administration of Government,' in M.V. Levine, et al. (eds.) The State and Democracy (New York: Routledge, 1988), 53-4. Glassco Report, 23-4, 35; J.E. Hodgetts, The Canadian Public Service: A Physiology of Government, 1867-1970 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974), 24. Hoover had also, of course, presided over the onset of the Great Depression. Glassco Report 46-7, 128; Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital 293-358. One particularly appalling study set out efficiency standards in micro-seconds for the thought time involved in keypunching letters or numbers. See Ibid., 319-26. Glassco Report 213-15.

68 Ibid., 45-6. 69 Ibid., 155.

268

Notes to pages 71-9

70 Ibid., 132, 176-7. 71 Ibid., 165. 72 Ibid., 62, 168, 172-3. No concerns were expressed about low pay (except managers') or depressed local labour markets. 73 Ibid., 144-5. 74 Ibid., 169-70,173. 75 Ibid., 44, 136-8. 76 Ibid., 150. 77 Ibid., 151. 78 Ibid., 151. 79 Ibid., 51-7, 64-6, 143-7, 152-3, 158-62. 80 Ibid., 153, 160, 163. 81 See A. Maslove and G. Swimmer, Wage Controls in Canada, 1975-1978 (Montreal: IRPP, 1980), 10 on public sector wages as a cause of the AIB controls; Canada, OAG , Report 1975, 3. 82 Canada, OAG , Report 1975, 4, 6-9, 11, 13. 83 Ibid., Report 1975, 104-5; Report 1976, 14; Report 1977, 8. 84 Ibid., Report 1975, 17-19; Report 1979, 233-4; Sutherland, 'Watching the Watchdog,' 193, 197, 202, 216, 220, 226 n23. Contracting out bypasses most 'merit' controls on hiring and perpetuates itself by eroding in-house knowledge. OAG 'exchanges' were massively one-sided: 170 private sector people came in, while only 13 OAG personnel went out. 85 As cited in Sutherland, 'Watching the Watchdog,' 185; emphasis in original. 86 Sutherland, 'Watching the Watchdog,' 184, 190. 87 Ibid., 202. Former Auditor General Maxwell Henderson found the virtues of OAG expansion dubious. 'The cost of all of this is enormous,' he notes, 'are we getting value for money?' See his 'More Attention Needed,' letter, Globe and Mail, 23 Jan. 1992, Al 6. 88 Canada, OAG, Report 1978, 33-5; Sutherland, 'Watching the Watchdog,' 214; Kaser, 'Value for Money,' C6fC36 (1988) 34. 89 M. Williams, 'Learning and Teaching Managerial Economics: A Critical Approach,' C&C36 (1988) 114-15. 90 A. W.Johnson, 'Efficiency in Government and Business,' in W.D.K. Kernaghan and A.M. Willms, eds., Administration in Canada: Selected Readings (Toronto: Methuen, 1971) 235-48; G. Kaser, 'Value for Money,' 41. 91 Kaser, 'Value for Money' 39, 44. 92 Sutherland, 'Watching the Watchdog,' 189, 196-7. 93 Ibid. 194; Canada, OAG, Report 1978, 61-2. 94 Canada, OAG , Report 1978, 61-2. 95 Ibid., Report 1978, 62-3, 65.

Notes to pages 79-86 269 96 Ibid., Report 1978, 64, 67. See also, n66 above on work measurement. 97 Ibid., Report 1978, 64-5. 3: Beyond Reason: The New Legitimation 1 N. Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism (hereafter SPS), (London: Verso, 1980), 155. 2 Canada, Auditor General (OAG), Report of the Auditor General to the House of Commons, 1979, 10. 3 'Personnel management in PS ignored,' Argus-Journal 16/5 (1981) 5. 4 Canada, Report of the Special Committee on the Review of Personnel Management and the Merit Principle (Hull: Supply and Services, 1979), 46. (hereafter D'Avignon Report). 5 Ibid. 77-8. 6 Ibid. 62, 81, 85. The committee refused to investigate these groundless employee 'perceptions.' Managers' perceptions would, however, continue to receive extensive consideration. 7 Ibid. 45, 47, 50-5. 8 Ibid. 88-9. 9 K. Kernaghan and D. Siegel, Public Administration in Canada: A Text, 3rd ed. (Toronto: Nelson 1995), 101; TJ. Peters and R.H. Waterman, In Search of Excellence (New York: Warner, 1982), 13-15. 10 Part 3, is titled 'Back to Basics.' See Peters and Waterman, xiii, 29, 87. 11 See Peters and Waterman, Chaps. 11 and 12, 59-63. 12 Ibid. 29. 13 A. Lennon, 'We're Here to Help You: The New Ideology of Management,' Our Times 2/4 (1983) 22-4. Lennon also has a PhD in political philosophy. 14 P. Aucoin, 105. The New Public Management: Canada in Comparative Perspective (Montreal: IRPP, 1995), 105. 15 J. Shields and B.M. Evans, Shrinking the State (Halifax: Fernwood, 1998), 71. 16 At the broader political level, nationalism, populism, 'family values,' and so on, were to replace material legitimation. See S. Hall, 'The Great Moving Right Show,' Marxism Today (Jan. 1979) 14-20. 17 J. Silver, 'The Ideology of Excellence: Management and Neo-Conservatism,' 5P£24(1987) 106. 18 Silver, 118-19. 19 C. Pollitt, 'Management Techniques for the Public Sector: Pulpit and Practice,' in B.G. Peters and DJ. Savoie, (eds.), Governance in a Changing Environment (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1995) 231; Lennon, 'We're Here,' 23.

270 Notes to pages 86-95 20 J. Andrew, formerly Ontario Regional Director of Employment Development Branch, EIC. Interviews 28 Nov. 1990 and 4. Dec. 1990. 21 See 'Lussier's "Philosophy"' in Chap. 4, below. 22 Silver, 'Ideology,' 107. 23 Ibid., 106, 126; Lennon, 'We're Here,' 24. 24 Poulantzas, SPS, 155-6. 25 Canada, Committee on Governing Values, Governing Values (hereafter Governing Values). (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1987), 7-8; emphasis in original. Members were deputy minister-level personnel from Employment and Immigration, Defence, Communications, Labour, Agriculture, Regional Industrial Expansion, External Affairs, the Privy Council Office, and the Public Service Commission. 26 Ibid. 8, emphasis in original. 27 Ibid., 9-11. 28 Ibid., 16. 29 Ibid., 12, 16. 30 Ibid., 15; emphasis in original; Canada, 1988-89Estimates: Part I, The Government Expenditure Plan (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1988), 41. 31 Governing Values, 20, 23; emphasis in original. 32 Ibid., 26-7. 33 Canada, OAG, Report 1983, 51-87. 34 Ibid., Report 1988, para. 4. The reliance on 'model' corporations has eroded ISOEs credibility, as many later engaged in massive layoffs or suffered huge losses. 35 Canada, OAG, Report 1988, paras. 4.51, 4.53. 36 Ibid, paras. 4.55, 4.61-3, 4.65. 37 Ibid., paras. 4.66-70. 38 Canada, OAG , Report 1990, 179-80. 39 Ibid. 183, Exhibit 7.2. 40 Ibid. 184—5. See M. Campbell, 'Management as "Ruling": A Class Phenomenon in Nursing,' SPE27 (1988) 29-51, for a study of de-skilling through documentation in nursing and similar dilemmas of caring. 41 Canada, OAG, Report 1990, 192. 42 Ibid. 1990, p. 191, Exhibit 7.9; Canada, OAG 'Efficiency in Government: A Special Study,' in ibid, 211. 43 See G. Swimmer, M. Hicks, and T. Milne, 'Public Service 2000: Dead or Alive?,' in S.D. Phillips (ed.), How Ottawa Spends, 1994-95: Making Change (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1994), 165-204. 44 Cited in RJ. Mclntosh, 'Public Service 2000: The Employee Perspective,' Canadian Public Administration 34/3 (1991) 504,506-7.

Notes to pages 95-100 271 45 Canada, Public Service Commission, Annual Report, 1987 (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1988). 46 V. Gait, 'Work as Miners or Face Layoff, Inco Women Told,' Globe and Mail 15 Dec. 1992, Bl, B4; L. Surtees, 'Bell Canada Shifts Employees,' Globe and Mail 15 Jan. 1993, B18; J. Tomaney, 'The Reality of Workplace Flexibility,' Capital and Class hereafter C&C40 (1990) 29-60; B. Rawson, 'Public Service 2000: Service to the Public Task Force-Findings and Implications,' Canadian Public Administration 34/3 (1991) 495. 47 Canada, PS 2000, Service to the Public Task Force Report (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1990); R.J. Mclntosh,'Public Service 2000,' 506; K. Kernaghan, 'Career Public Service 2000: Road to Renewal or Impractical Vision?' Canadian Public Administration 34/4, (1991) 557-8 nil; B. Rawson,'Public Service 2000,' 494. 48 S. Borins, 'The Meaning of Life in the Workplace,' Globe and Mail, 12 April 1991 A16. 49 M. Lipsky, 'Bureaucratic Disentitlement in Social Welfare Programs,' Social Service Review (March 1984) 8. 50 Ibid., 9. 51 E. Brodkin and M. Lipsky, 'Quality Control in AFDC as an Administrative Strategy,' Social Service Review (March 1983) 29-30. 52 F. Seguin, 'Service to the Public: A Major Strategic Change,' Canadian Public Administration 34/3 (1991) 465, 468; K Marx, Capital, vol. 3 (New York: International, 1981), 173-266. 53 F. Seguin, 'Service,' 469. Her piece, and this section, were written before Ontario Minister of Education John Snobelen was caught planning to 'create a crisis' in his ministry. His unguarded comments echoed this logic exactly. 54 F. 'Service,' p. 466. 55 Canada, PS 2000, Service to the Public, 78. 56 Ibid., 32-48, 78-81. 57 Kernaghan, 'Career Public Service 2000,' 556. 58 Rawson, 'Public Service 2000,' 491. 59 Ibid. 493. 60 Canada, PS 2000, Service to the Public, 9.1 have been told (half-seriously) by one corrections employee that prisoners do benefit from incarceration, in the sense that they are prevented from getting into further trouble while locked away. 61 Ibid., 52. 62 Ibid., 32,37-9. 63 Ibid., 25, 36, Fig. 4-1. 64 Ibid., 80.

272 Notes to pages 101-110 65 Ibid., 76. 66 Ibid., 38. 67. Ibid., 43. 68 S.D. Phillips, 'How Ottawa Blends: Shifting Government Relationships with Interest Groups,' in F. Abele (ed.) How Ottawa Spends, 1991-92: The Politics of Fragmentation (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1991), 196. 69 Mclntosh, 'Public Service 2000,' 506. 70 Canada, PS 2000, Service to the Public 42. Such exchanges have since been undertaken by braver U.S. managers. 71 Canada, PS 2000 Secretariat, 'Why Can't We Evaluate the Boss!' (May 1991, No. 91-5); 'Councils for Change,' (May 1991, No. 91-6). 72 On the progress of the service initiative throughout the government since 1990, see 'Service Quality' (Chap. 14) in Canada, OAG, Report of the OAGSeptember 1996 (http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/oag-bvg/rep96/1996e/html/ 9614e/mp9614e.html). On the progress of the 'governing values' debate, see Canada, Canadian Centre for Management Development, A Strong Foundation: The Report of the Study Team on Public Service Values and Ethics (Ottawa: CCMD, 1996) - discussed in Chap. 8, below. 73 See Public Service Alliance of Canada, Executive Committee, PSAC 2000: A Working Alternative (Ottawa, 1990), 3; and Chap. 5, below. 74 Brodkin, and Lipsky, 'Quality Control,' 3; Canada, PS 2000 Secretariat, 'PS 2000 and Auditing,' (May 1991, No. 91-3); Canada, OAG, Report of the Auditor General of Canada to the House ofCommons 1977 (229-30); 1978 (293-303); 1982 (534-8); 1983 (254-6); 1988 (paras. 18.9-18.34); 1989 (511-22). 4: External Pressures, Internal Needs 1 G. Kinsman, P. Gentile, H. MacDonnell, and M. Mahood-Grier, 'In the Interests of the State:' The Anti-Gay, Anti-Lesbian National Security Campaign in Canada A Preliminary Research Report (Sudbury: Laurentian University Press, 1998), 54. 2 See Canada, Employment and Immigration Canada, Annual Report 19891990 (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1990), vi-vii, 6. 3 Canada, 1988-89Estimates: Part I, The Government Expenditure Plan (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1988), 15-16, 19-40; EIC, AnnualReport 1989-90, 5, 13, 28; Canada, Department of Finance, The Budget (Ottawa: Finance, 20 Feb. 1990), 142. UI was renamed Employment Insurance (El) by the Chretien government. To avoid using another acronym, I refer only to UI below. 4 L. Pal, State, Class and Bureaucracy: Canadian Unemployment Insurance and Public Policy (Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1988), 92-3; C. Cuneo, 'State, Class and Reserve Labour: The Case of the 1941 Canadian Unemploy-

Notes to pages 110-14 273

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17

18

19 20 21

22

ment Insurance Act,' Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 16/2 (1979) 147-70; C. Cuneo 'Comment: Restoring Class to State Unemployment Insurance,' Canadian Journal of Political Science (hereafter CJPS), 19/1 (1986) 93-8. G.D. Finlayson, cited in Pal, State, Class, p. 104; emphasis in original. Pal, State, Class, 105, 108. Ibid., 100, 176. Ibid., 48, 102, 104-6, 108-9, 175-6. N. Poulantzas, State. Power, Socialism (hereafter SPS), (London: Verso, 1980), 32. Cuneo, 'Restoring Class,' 96-7. Ibid., 98; Cuneo, 'State, Class,' 157. Cuneo, 'State, Class,' 157, 164; Pal, State, Class, 50, 105. A.D. Watson, cited in Pal, State, Class, 106. Cuneo, 'State, Class,' 157; Cuneo, 'Restoring Class,' 96-7; emphasis in original. Cuneo, 'Restoring class,' 98; L. Pal, 'Reply: Restraining Class in Policy Explanations,' CJPS, 19/1 (1986) 99-102. Labour market policy remained controversial after the defeat of the federal Tories. See a week-long series of editorials called 'Liberating Labour,' Globe and Mail, 16-20 March 1993. Offe suggests that this dual focus is typical of all government decisions Tor what the state does if it works on a problem is a dual process. It organizes certain activities and measures directed toward the environment and it adopts for itself a certain organizational procedure from which the production and implementation of policies emerges.' C. Offe, 'The Theory of the Capitalist State and the Problem of Policy Formation,' in L. Linberg et al., (eds.), Stress and Contradiction in Modern Capitalism (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1975), 135; emphasis in original. G.B. Doern and R.W. Phidd, Canadian Public Policy: Ideas, Structures, Process (Toronto: Methuen, 1983), 488-90; L. Muszynski, 'The Politics of Labour Market Policy,' in G.B. Doern, (ed.), The Politics of Economic Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 251-5. S. McBride, Not Working: State, Unemployment and Neo-Conservatism in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 119. Ibid. 32, 56. Ibid. 120-1; G. Albo, '"Competitive Austerity" and the Impasse of Capitalist Employment Policy,' in R. Miliband, and L. Panitch (eds.), Socialist Register 1994 (London: Merlin, 1994) 159. Ibid., 146-7.

274 Notes to pages 114-18 23 Ibid., 148-9. 24 Ibid., 158. 25 McBride, Not Working, 121, 158; T. Dunk S. McBride, and R.W. Nelson, 'Introduction,' in T. Dunk, S. McBride, and R.W. Nelson (eds.), The Training Trap: Ideology, Training and the Labour Market (Halifax: Fernwood, 1996), 2. 26 McBride, Not Working, 158, 214-16; J. Swift and D. Peerla, 'Attitude Adjustment: The Brave New World of Work and the Revolution of Falling Expectations,' in Dunk et al., Training Trap, 29-51. 27 J. Pulkingham, 'Remaking the Social Divisions of Welfare: Gender, "Dependency," and UI Reform.' SPE56 (1998) 9, 20-4; A. Porter, 'Gender, Welfare State Restructuring and the Canadian Unemployment Insurance Program,' (paper presented to the Society for Socialist Studies, Sherbrooke, 1999), 6. 28 J. Brodie, 'Restructuring and the New Citizenship,' in I. Bakker (ed.), Rethinking Restructuring: Gender and Change in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 131. See also Dunk et al., 'Introduction,' 5. 29 Porter, 'Gender,' 7, 18; emphasis in original. 30 J. Shields, 'Flexible Work, Labour Market Polarization, and the Politics of Skills Training and Enhancement,' in Dunk et al., Training Trap, 69. 31 I. Bakker, 'Introduction: The Gendered Foundations of Restructuring in Canada,' in her Rethinking Restructuring, 10. 32 B. Cameron, 'From Equal Opportunity to Symbolic Equity: Three Decades of Federal Training Policy for Women,' in Bakker, Rethinking Restructuring, 76. 33 T. Dunk, 'Culture, Skill, Masculinity and Whiteness: Training and the Politics of Identity,' in Dunk, et al., Training Trap, 113. 34 Ibid. 103, 120. 35 R. Mahon, The Politics of Industrial Restructuring: Canadian Textiles (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984) 38; D. Ferguson, 'Skills Training Plans Come Up Short,' Toronto Star, 17 Aug. 1997, A12. 36 See Pal, State, Class, 179-81; G. Dingledine, A Chronology of Response: The Evolution of Unemployment Insurance from 1940 to 1980 (Hull: EIC, 1981); G. York, 'Valcourt Given Reform Mandate,' Globe and Mail, 26 June 1993, A4; R. Howard, 'Inclusion of Regions Part of Campbell Plan, Globe and Mail, 26 June 1993, A4. 37 See J. O'Connor, TheFiscal Crisis of the State (New York: St Martin's Press, 1973), 6-7. 38 See 'Public Service 2000: Empowering to Serve,' above; Canada,OAG, Reports 1976-1991; Canada, EIC, Annual Reports 1977-78 to 1990-91 (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1977-91), esp. financial statements enclosed by the OAG each year.

Notes to pages 118-21 275 39 Pal, State, Class, 18-20. 40 See A. Noel, 'Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!: The Political Management of Unemployment,' in A.-G. Gagnon andJ.P. Bickerton (eds.), Canadian Politics: An Introduction to the Discipline (Peterborough: Broadview, 1990), 455-7; G. York, 'Lower Poverty Line Urged,' Globe and Mail, 9 June, 1993, and Al and A5, 41 M. Loney, 'Pricing the Poor Back to Work,' Policy Options 13/10 (1992) 22-3. 42 B. Jessop, 'Towards a Schumpeterian Workfare State? Remarks on Post-Fordist Political Economy,' SPE40 (1993), 9-10, 17-18. 43 Ibid., 10-24. 44 M.J. Prince and J.J. Rice, 'The Canadian Jobs Strategy: Supply Side Social Policy,' in K.A. Graham, (ed.), How Ottawa Spends, 1989-90: The Buck Stops Where1? (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1989), 256-7; R.M. Campbell, 'Jobs ...Job ...Jo ...J ... The Conservatives and the Unemployed,' in F. Abele (ed.), How Ottawa Spends, 1992-93: The Politics of Competitiveness (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1992), 30-1; Muszynski, 'The Politics of Labour,' 2524, 264. 45 Canada, EIC, Response of the Government to the Second Report of the Standing Committee on Labour, Employment and Immigration: A Review of the Canadian Jobs Strategy, (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1988), 13-16; Canada, EIC, 'Task Force Changes Introduce Flexibility,' Panorama (June 1988) 1-2; Campbell, 'Jobs,' 32-3; R. Mahon, 'Adjusting to Win? The New Tory Training Initiative,' in K.A. Graham (ed.), How Ottawa Spends 1990-91: Tracking the Second Agenda (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1990), 74. 46 Canada, Task Force on Program Review, Job Creation, Training and Employment Services (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1985), 17-20, 77-82; Canada, EIC, Task Force on Labour Market Development, Labour Market Development in the 1980s (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1981) (hereafter the Dodge Report), 76-8; Canada, OAG, Report 1983, 265-6; Report 1988, Chap. 186 Report 1989, 527-30. 47 Canada, Task Force on Program Review, 'Job Creation, 14; Canada, Commission of Inquiry on Unemployment Insurance, Summary Report, 34, 49, 73-4, 82-3; CEIU, 'Brief for the Commission of Inquiry on Unemployment Insurance' (Jan. 1986), 15. 48 CLMPC, Working Together to Manage Change: Report ofthe Business /Labour. Task Force on Adjustment (Ottawa: CLMPC, 1989), 10, 15; J. Andrew, formerly Ontario Regional Director of Employment Development Branch, EIC Interviews 28 Nov. 1990 and 4 Dec. 1990. The CLMPC is a joint project of the Business Council on National Issues and the Canadian Labour Congress. The former, and to a lesser extent the latter, are dominated by monopoly sector industries.

276 Notes to pages 121-3 49 This is perhaps why corporatist initiatives now tend to be 'sectoral.' 50 CLMPC, Waking Together, iii, 11; Campbell, 'Jobs,' 30-1; J. Peck, 'The Politics of Training in Britain: Contradictions in the TEC Initiative,' C&C44 (1991) 24. 51 Canada, EIC, Success in the Works: A Policy Paper (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1989), 5. 52 See below, and Canada, EIC, Success in the Works, 11; Canada, EIC, Annual Report 1990-1991, 15. 53 CLMPC, Report of the CLMPC Task Forces on the Labour Market Development Strategy (Ottawa: CLMPC, 1990); Campbell, 'Jobs,' 34-5; Mahon, 'Adjusting to Win?,' 90-3, 109 (nn52-6),lll n4. Business alternatives to mandatory training (a levy-grant system) are remarkably similar to market-friendly UI alternatives promoted in the 1930s. The common thread is that individuals or governments pay more, and business saves and/or makes money off the delivery systems. See Cuneo, 'State, Class,' 159-63. The politics of student loans, and the whole trend to privatization, offer similar parallels. 54 Campbell, 'Jobs,' 33; Mahon, 'Adjusting to Win?,' 85, 107 n38. In 1995, only 46 per cent of the unemployed received UI, compared to 87 per cent in 1989. See 'Latest Massive UI Cuts Will Hurt All Workers,' CCPA Monitor 3/2 (1996) 7. 55 See B. Hargrove, 'Whose Unemployment-Insurance Surplus Is It, Anyway?' Globe and Mail, 18 March 1996, A13; S. McCarthy, 'UI surplus a quandary for Liberals,' Globe and Mail, 30 June 1997, Al and A3; 'Payroll Deductions, The Friendly Job-Killer,' Globe and Mail, 12 July 1997, D6; T. Harper, 'El Premiums to Decrease Next Year,' Toronto Star, 22 Nov. 1997, A14; S. McCarthy, 'Liberals Criticized for Rising Surplus in UI Account,' Globe and Mail, 29 April 1998, A4; 'No UI Surplus, No Budget Surplus,' (editorial) Globe and Mail, 28 May 1998, A24; Anonymous, 'Harris Accuses Martin of Stealing,' Globe and Mail, 28 May 1998, A6. 56 A. Kroeger, (EIC's DM), as cited in Campbell, 'Jobs,' 36, 41; CLFDB, A Proposal to Establish Local Labour Force Development Boards (Ottawa: CLFDB, 1991). 57 If deficits disappear, the goalposts can be moved back - see S. McCarthy, 'Debt Burden Is Next Liberal Target,' Globe and Mail, 17 June 1997, Al and A2. Alternatively, fiscal crisis can be prolonged with tax cuts, or local crises can be 'invented' as a prelude to reorganization. The Ontario Tories have proven adept at both, but see also M. Lipsky, and S.R. Smith, 'When Social Problems Are Treated as Emergencies,' Social Service Review 63 /I (1989) 5-25. 58 See CLFDB, Report on the 1992 Budget for the Developmental Uses of Unemployment Insurance (Ottawa: CLFDB, 1991), 7; Campbell, 'Jobs,' 33, 36, 37; Mahon, 'Adjusting to Win?,' 73-4, 85-6. Riche was cited in S. McCarthy, Job Train-

Notes to pages 123-7

277

ing Programs Are Failing, Business and Labour Group Warns,' Toronto Star, 10 May 1994, C4. 59 McBride, Not Working, 158, 168. 60 N. Bradford and M. Stevens, 'Whither Corporatism? Political Struggles and Policy Formation in the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board,' in Dunk et al., Training Trap, 149; D. Wolfe, 'Institutional Limits to Labour Reform in Ontario: The Short Life and Rapid Demise of the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board,' in A. Sharpe and R. Haddow, Social Partnerships for Training (Kingston: Queen's School of Policy Studies, 1997), 181. 61 R. Miller, 'Education and Training in the Knowledge Economy: Prospects and Missed Opportunities,' in S.D. Phillips (ed.), How Ottawa Spends, 199495: Making Change (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1994), 352; K. Dehli, 'Subject to the New Global Economy: Power and Positioning in Ontario Labour Market Policy Formation,' SP£41 (1993) 93, 103. 62 Mahon, 'Adjusting to Win?,' 87; Campbell, 'Jobs,' 31. 63 Peck, 'Politics of Training,' 23-5. In Canada, training was part of a larger decentralization agenda. The Charlottetown Accord was ambiguous enough to suggest that the provinces might get UI itself, along with related training. See Canada, 'Consensus Report on the Constitution' (Charlottetown, 1992), 10-11. 64 Peck, 'Politics of Training,' 28. 65 Campbell, 'Jobs,' 36, 41. The defeat of the Charlottetown Accord lent impetus to devolution by other means. By 1997 the Chretien government had transferred training duties, 1,500 federal employees, and billions of (UI) dollars to four provinces - Alberta, Manitoba, New Brunswick, and Quebec. See K. Yakabuski, 'Severance Deals Set, But No Work Will Be Missed,' Globe and Mail 24 May 1997, A5. 66 B. Choiselat, 'Business May Quit Labour Force Board,' University Affairs (Feb. 1999) 25. 67 None of these conditions seems to have changed with the defeat of the Tories, although mandatory (or effectively mandatory) training is increasingly a part of both welfare and UI reform. 68 R. Miller, 'Education and Training in the Knowledge Economy: Prospects and Missed Opportunities,' 361, 373, n36. Miller has advised both the OFL, and Ontario's NDP Minister of Finance. PLA attempts to evaluate and reward unrecognized work experience. 69 R. Mahon, 'Adjusting to Win?,' 94; Dehli, 'Subject to the New,' 100; Wolfe, 'Institutional Limits,' 183. 70 See Albo,'"Competitive Austerity,"' 157-69. 71 Wolfe, 'Institutional Limits,' 182. Wolfe cites an 'intimate observer.'

278 Notes to pages 127-9 72 Dehli, 'Subject to the New,' 86. 73 L. Panitch and D. Swartz, The Assault on Trade Union Freedoms: From Wage Controls to Social Contract (Toronto: Garamond, 1993), 163. 74 Dunk, 'Culture, Skill,' 105. 75 See also, J. Swift, Wheel of Fortune: Work and Life in the Age of Falling Expectations (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1995). 76 As cited in C. Boyle, 'Who's on First? Labour and Economic Policy in Ontario,' Our Times 9 (1989) 32. 77 K.E. Ferguson, The Feminist Case against Bureaucracy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), 182-92. 78 Dehli, 'Subject to the New,' 91. 79 See, e.g., Conference Board of Canada, 'If You Think Finding Qualified Employees Is Tough Today, Just You Wait!' (advertisement) Globe and Mail, 20 March 1990, B8; R. Maynard, 'The Next Labour Crisis,' Report on Business Magazine, Globe and Mail, June 1990, 41-8; K. Kidd, 'Finding Good Help,' Globe and Mail, 30 July 1990, B4. 80 The temporary shift of most Immigration functions to a new minister of public security, on the other hand, seemed designed both to appease the xenophobes being courted by the Reform party, and to reassert control over a troublesome group of frontline workers - the immigration officers who will be discussed below. The latter were inserted into a department whose 'organizational culture' clearly stressed enforcement and control. 81 The Business Council on National Issues threatened to have its members create (and by implication, enforce) their own set of 'national standards' in education. See J. Lewington, 'Consortium Plans to Set Up National Education Council,' Globe and Mail, 19 May 1993, A3; J. Lewington, 'Ottawa Seeks Role in Guiding Education,' Globe and Mail, 13 April 1993, and Al and A5;J. Lewington, 'Business Calls for Standard Test,' Globe and Mail, 24 April 1993, and Al and A2. 82 J. Peck, and T. Rutherford, 'Tools for the Job? Decentralization, Partnership and Market Forces in British and Canadian Labour Market Policy,' in A. Sharpe and R. Haddow (eds.), Social Partnerships for Training, (Ottawa: Centre for the Study of Living Standards, Caledon Institute of Social Policy, ' Queen's University, 1997), 281. 83 G. Gherson and G. York, 'Tories Drafting Social Reform,' Globe and Mail, 12 July 1993, Al and A4; P. Mooney, 'Plan for Unemployed Has New Twist,' Globe and Mail, 7 July 1993; M. Mittelstaedt, 'Ontario to Overhaul Welfare,' Globe and Mail, 9 July 1993, Al and A2; W. Walker, 'Province's Job Training May Be Tied to UI: Rae,' Toronto Star, 6 Feb. 1994, A3; E. Shragge, (ed.), Workfare: Ideology for a New Under-Class (Toronto: Garamond, 1997).

Notes to pages 129-33 279 84 Cited in 'B.C. Acts to Overhaul System for Public-Sector Bargaining,' Globe and Mail, 10 July 1993, A3. 85 Similar dynamics can be seen in the evolution Ottawa's expenditure control system, from 'envelopes' to 'ops and chops.' See RJ. Van Loon, 'Ottawa's Expenditure Process: Four Systems in Search of Co-ordination,' in G.B Doern (ed.), How Ottawa Spends, 1983: The Liberals, the Opposition and Federal Priorities (Toronto: Lorimer, 1983), 97-8, 105-7; RJ. Van Loon and M. Whittington 'Kaleidoscope in Grey: The Policy Process in Ottawa,' in M. Whittington and G. Williams (eds.), Canadian Politics in the 1990s, 3rd ed. (Scarborough: Nelson, 1990), 453-5. 86 See P. Aucoin and H. Bakvis, The Centralization-Decentralization Conundrum: Organization and Management in the Canadian Government, (Halifax: IRRP, 1988), 75, 93. The authors note that DIAND, DRIE, and Fisheries and Oceans have similar structures. 87 Aucoin and Bakvis, Centralization, 93. 88 See 'The Case Study,' above. 89 A. Kroeger, 'Getting the Consent of the Governed,' Policy Options 13/10 (1992) 12. 90 S.D. Phillips, 'How Ottawa Blends: Shifting Government Relationships with Interest Groups,' in F. Abele (ed.), How Ottawa Spends 1991-92: The Politics of Fragmentation (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1991), 209-10. 91 K. Kernaghan, 'Partnership and Public Administration: Conceptual and Practical Considerations,' Canadian Public Administration 36/I (1993) 60-1. 92 Canada, EIC, Annual Report 1990-91, 9; emphasis in original. 93 See Canada, EIC, Natcon 8 (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1985), esp. D.S. Conger, 'The Anatomy of Employment Counselling,' 149-56. Conger was director general of EIC's Employment Support Services Branch when he wrote this. 94 All quotations cited in Anonymous, 'Job-Centre Survey Costs $20,000,' Globe and Mail, 12 Sep. 1994, A4. 95 J. Hearn, 'Studies in Life Skills - Two Unlike Groups,' in Canada, EIC, Natcon 8, 223-4; D.S. Conger, 'Educational and Vocational Counselling in Canada,' in Canada, EIC, Natcon 8, 279-82; B. Young, 'Counselling Dissatisfied Workers,' in Canada, EIC, Natcon 10. 96 P. Dodier, 'A Management Approach: Function and Counselling in Guidance Application in the Federal Penitentiary Environment,' in Canada, EIC, Natcon 9,1-2. 97 See P. Jean Jr. and B. Hiebert, 'The Evaluation of Counsellor Competencies,' in Canada, EIC, Natcon 10, 241-52.

280 Notes to pages 133-6 98 R. Ng, The Politics of Community Services: Immigrant Women, Class and State (Toronto: Garamond, 1988), 13. 99 Ibid., 12-13, 50-3, 75-8, 84-5, 98-9. 100 Ibid., 68; V. Gait, 'Agencies Willing to Block Non-Whites, Survey Finds,' Globe and Mail, 21 Jan. 1991, A7; V. Gait, 'Ontario to Curb Job Firms,' Globe and Mail, 22 Jan. 1991, A7; V. Gait, 'Two Employment Agencies Raided,' Globe and Mail, 1 Feb. 1991, A8; J. Armstrong, 'Job-Seekers Facing Silent Discrimination,' Toronto Star, 17 Feb. 1991, Al and A12; L. Priest, 'Agency Told to Educate Employees,' Toronto Star, 31 March 1991; V. Gait, 'Board Says Job Agency Filled Biased Requests,' Globe and Mail, 23 March 1991, A4; V. Gait, 'Discriminatory Data Found in Seized Files,' Globe and Mail, 29 March 1991, A5; M. Gibb-Clark, 'Manpower Sets Up Employment Equity Unit,' Globe and Mail, 2 April 1991, B5; 'Call for Action on Employment Agencies,' Globe and Mail, 4Junel991,A12. 101 N. King, '15th Annual NATCON a Success,' Panorama (April 1989) 6. 102 Canada, EIC, Employment Counselling Division, 'Employment Counselling in the CEIC,' (June 1980), 5. 103 Some of his clients did get new jobs. See K. Carter, 'Un conseilleur d'EIC organise un groupe de soutien pour les sans-emploi,' Panorama (Nov. 1988), 5. 104 Canada, EIC, 'Canadian Quality Month,' Panorama (Oct. 1990), 6-7; 'Outstanding CEC: Corner Brook, Newfoundland,' Panorama (Jan. 1989), 6-7; M. Gagnon, 'Quality of Service: When the Effort of Individuals Become the Success of the Team,' Panorama (Dec. 1990), 3. 105 C. Ptatschek, 'EIC Has a New Slogan,' Panorama (June 1989), 1-3; K. Carter, 'What Do Employees Think of EIC?' Panorama (June 1989), 3; L. Shelton, 'How Do We Feel about Quality of Service?' Panorama (May 1990), 6. 106 K. Carter, 'What Do Employees Think of EIC?' Panorama (June 1989) 3. 107 K. Carter, 'Telephone talk,' Panorama (Oct. 1989) 2; R. Stewart, (director, Controls Program), cited in Canada, EIC, 'Paving a New Direction,' Panorama (Oct. 1990), 5; A. Davis, 'New Unit to Improve Quality of Service to Immigrants,' Panorama (Dec. 1986) 2. See also Chap. 3 above. 108 R. Lodge, 'The Darker Side of Computerization,' Panorama (Dec. 1990) 8. 109 See 'EIC Workers and Refugees' below; J. Lakey, 'Immigration Officers Plan Job Slowdown over Workload,' Toronto Star, 31 Jan. 1989, A6; I. Hunter, 'Immigration Officers Begin Work Slowdown,' Ottawa Citizen, 27 Jan. 1991; E. Oziewicz, 'Coalition Attacks Proposed Immigration Policy,' Globe and Mail, 23 June 1992, A4; E. Oziewicz, 'Immigration Official Challenges Ottawa,' Globe and Mail, 23 Nov. 1992, A6; 'Immigration Workers Fighting Move to Vegreville,' Edmonton Journal, 18 Jan. 1993, A5; 'Immigration Offic-

Notes to pages 136-41 281 ers Stalling Refugee Claims, Says Lawyer,' Edmonton Journal, 21 Jan. 1993, All; CEIU, 'Open Letter to Hon. Bernard Valcourt Minister of Employment and Immigration,' Globe and Mail, 26 Jan. 1993, A6; 'Immigration Centres "Will Be Closed"' Edmonton Journal, 25 Feb. 1993, A6; 'Immigration Workers Halt Mail in Protest,' Edmonton Journal, 26 Feb. 1993, A12; E. Oziewicz and G. Abbate, 'Probe into Leak on Refugees Sought,' Globe and Mail, 29 Apr. 1993, Al and A7. 110 Canada, OAG, Report 1989, 525. 111 Ibid., 525; Canada, OAG, Report 1988, Chap. 18. 112 Canada, OAG, Report 1989, 525-7. 113 This is also true of workfare programs like Ontario's. See B. Trumpener, 'A Dance with the Devil,' This Magazine 31/6 (1998) 13-16. 114 Canada, OAG, Report 1989, 526; Report 1988, par. 18.95. 115 Canada, OAG, Report 1988, par. 18.96. 116 Ibid. pars. 18.100-18.114. 117 C. Sabiston, 'Communications and Teamwork Emphasized on LFDS Implementation,' Panorama (Dec. 1989) 4-5. 118 C. Sabiston, 'Testing Begins on the Claimant Re-employment Strategy,' Panorama (Nov. 1989) 1. 119 N. King, 'CRS Sites Taking the Lead,' Panorama (March 1990), 1-4. 120 Ibid., 4. 121 Cited in K. Carter, 'How Many Cultures at EIC?' Panorama (Jan./Feb. 1990) 4. 122 Ibid. 123 Ibid. 124 Cited in Canada, EIC, 'Gateway to Employment,' Panorama (July/Aug. 1990) 4. 125 See S. Delacourt, 'Campbell Offered Blueprint for Real Political Change,' Globe and Mail, 21 June 1993, A5; R. Howard, 'Panel Adds to Pressure on Campbell for Change,' Globe and Mail, 24 June 1993, Al and A2. 126 See Canada, EIC, 'In Search of a Vision,' Panorama (Jan./Feb. 1988) 1. 127 The 1980 clerks' strike and the imposition of '6&5' in 1982 ushered Lussier in, while Kroeger took office around the 'near strike' of 1989 and experienced the 1991 PSAC strike soon after. 128 Canada, EIC, 'Chairman Addresses CEIU Convention in Edmonton,' (Photo) Panorama (Dec. 1978) 2; J.L. Manion, 'Seasons Greetings,' Panorama (Dec. 1978) 1; Canada, EIC, Annual Report, 1981-1982, 41. 129 J. Andrew, Interview 4 Dec. 1990. 130 Compare Canada, EIC, Annual Report, 1982-1983, 1-3, with Annual Report

282 Notes to pages 142-8 1983-1984, 1-3; J. Tataryn, 'AConcrete Commitment to Change,' Panorama (March 1988) 3. 131 Canada, EIC, Our Philosophy of Management (Ottawa: EIC, 1985), 1; emphasis and quotation marks in original. 132 Canada, EIC,'DM Endorses Affirmative Action,'Panorama (March 1984) 1-2. 133 M. Hynna, cited in Canada, EIC, 'Accentuating the Positive,' Panorama (June 1987) 1-2. 134 J. Tataryn, 'A Concrete Commitment to Change,' 3. 135 Ibid. 136 Cited in Canada, EIC, 'Sweeping In Front of Our Own House,' Panorama (Dec. 1986) 5. 137 G. Lussier, 'IMAA: The Employment and Immigration Canada Perspective,' Optimum 18/4 (1987-8) 16-21; Canada, EIC, The Philosophy of Management in Fourth Gear,' Panorama (May 1988) 2; S.L. Sutherland, 'Responsible Government and Ministerial Responsibility: Every Reform Is Its Own Problem,' C/P524/1 (1991) 115. 138 J. Andrew, Interview 4 Dec. 1990. 5: Bargaining and Beyond 1 This argument is made from a variety of perspectives in C. Gonick, P. Phillips, andj. Vorst (eds.), Labour Gains, Labour Pains: 50 Years 0/PC1003 (Halifax: Fernwood, 1995). 2 See M. Walker, (ed.), Which Way Ahead ? Canada after Wage and Price Control (Vancouver: Fraser Institute, 1977); J. Finkelman and S.B. Goldenberg, Collective Bargaining in the Public Service: The Federal Experience in Canada, 2 vols. (Montreal: IRPP, 1983), 43-4, 259; L. Katz and D. McDermott, 'Looking Backward Moving Forward: The Attack on the Public Sector,' This Magazine 12 (1978) 5, 6, 8-12; G. Levine, 'What Is Average Comparability of Total Compensation?' Civil Service Review 51/2 (1978) 26-30. 3 For graphic depictions of these trends since 1990, see M. MacKinnon, 'Will Labour Costs Raise Prices?,' Globe and Mail, 19 July 1999, Bl and B4. 4 See L. Panitch and D. Swartz, The Assault on Trade Union Freedoms: From Wage Control to Social Contract (Toronto: Garamond, 1993). 5 A. Maslove and G. Swimmer, Wage Controls in Canada, 1975-78 (Montreal: IRPP 1980), 10. 6 On Canada's labour codes, see Panitch and Swartz, Assault, PSAC, 'Determination of Wages and Working Conditions' (policy paper no. 14), Civil Service Review 52/3 (1979) 6-10. 7 CEIU, '50,000 Strong: The Federal Clerks' Strike of 1980,' Paranoia 3/4 (1985) (special edition) 3.

Notes to pages 148-54 283 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Ibid., 3-4. PSAC's initial demands also included a 35-hour work week. Ibid., 7-8,12. Treasury Board's telex is reproduced on 8. Aileen Manion, cited in Ibid., 24. Ibid., 9-13. Cited in Ibid., 15. Trinette de Wijk, cited in ibid., 15. Brenda Roberts, cited in ibid., 16. M. Mironowicz, Tickets Timid, Feeling lonely,' Globe and Mail, 9 Sept. 1980, Al. Reproduced in CEIU, '50,000 Strong,' 11. 16 Louise Zola-Quittenton, cited in CEIU, '50,000 Strong,' 5. 17 de Wijk cited in ibid., 19. 18 Ibid., 16-28. 19 Ibid., 27-8, 35; R. Warskett, 'Women and Clerical Work: Revisiting Class and Gender,' Studies in Political Economy (hereafter SPE) 30 (1989) 167-8. 20 CEIU, '50,000 Strong,' 28-33. 21 de Wijk, cited in ibid., 38. 22 Warskett, 'Women and Clerical Work,' 168. 23 Cited in CEIU, '50,000 Strong,' 38. 24 Cres Pascucci, cited in ibid., 37. 25 CEIU, '50,000 Strong,' 37; CEIU, 'A Women's Committee in CEIU,' Paranoia 1/8 (1983) 10; CEIU, 'CEIU Women's Conference Receives Warm Response,' Paranoia 2/4 (1984) 5-6; CEIU, 'Women Gain New CEIU Executive Seats,' Paranoia2/6 (1984), 1; CEIU, 'CEIU Women,' Paranoia 4/4 (1986) 10. The victorious clerk was Louise Zola-Quittenton. 26 CEIU, 'Giampietri Wins PSAC Executive Hot Seat,' Paranoia 3/3 (1985) 1-4; CEIU, 'Surprise Win Puts Turmel on PSAC Executive,' Faranom9/2 (1991) 3; CEIU, 'Pascucci Wins Election for CEIU President,' Paranoia 8/5 (1990); CEIU, 'Election Battle Highlights CEIU Convention,' Paranoia 8/4 (1990) 3-12. 27 J. White, Sisters and Solidarity (Toronto: Thompson, 1993), 125, 130-3. 28 Ibid., 106, 115-17. 29 See, e.g., R. Warskett, 'The Politics of Difference and Inclusiveness within the Canadian Labour Movement,' Economic and Industrial Democracy 17 (1996) 608. 30 Finance Documents, 5 April 1982 to Stewart, 79-77; Canadian Labour Congress, 'Statement to the Honourable Marc Lalonde, Minister of Finance, Concerning the Expiry of Bill C-124,' (9 Feb. 1984), 4. The cabinet member was Donald Johnston. 31 Finance Documents, 18-ff; 16 April 1982 to Stewart, 118-17 (obtained through a 1983 Toronto Star Access to Information request, these consist of censored Finance documents from the first half of 1982, paginated in reverse order);

284 Notes to pages 154-5 A. MacEachen, The Budget,' House of Commons Debates, 28 June 1982, 18882; A. Freeman, 'Federal Deficit Understated by $2-Billion, Desautels Says,' Globe and Mail, 5 Feb. 1992. The quotation is Freeman's paraphrasing of what the comptroller general said. 32 MacEachen, 'The Budget,' 18882; Finance Documents, 5 April 1982 to Stewart, 80. 33 V. Gait, 'Pay Equity Battle Not Over, PSAC Says,' Globe and Mail, 4 Oct. 1991, Al and A2; 'Wages to Top Demands in Civil Service Contract Talks,' Globe and Mail, 4 Dec. 1996, A7; J. Travers, '65,000 Offered "Election" Pay Raise,' Toronto Star, 12 April 1997, Al and A30. 34 J. Sallot and E. Anderssen, 'Future of Pay Equity May Be Set by Tribunal,' Globe and Mail, 28 July 1998 A3; D. Leblanc, 'Civil Servants Win on Pay Equity,' Globe and Mail, 20 Oct. 1999, Al and A6; PSAC, 'Pay Equity Cheques Arrive, PSAC Works on Outstanding Issues,' PSAC Pay Equity Bulletin No. 41 (1 March 2000) (http://www.psac.com/payequity/new/bulletins.bull-41e.html). 35 B. Little, 'Pay-Equity Ruling Unlikely to Break Federal Piggy Bank,' Globe and Mail, 25 Oct. 1999, A14;J. Simpson, 'Dances with Taxpayers,' Globe and Mail, 30 July 1998, A16; (editorial) 'Don't Appeal, Abolish,' National Post, 1 June 1998, A15; P.S. Taylor, 'The Tortured Logic of Pay Equity,' National Post, 15 June 1999, A16; J. Baxter, 'Senators Deal Liberals Setback on Pension Law,' National Post, 18 June 1999, A7; J. Simpson, 'Apples, Oranges, and Pay Gasps,' Globe and Mail, 21 June 2000, A13;J. Saunders, 'Bell Strikes Deal to End High-Stakes Pay-Equity Fight,' Globe and Mail, 30 Oct. 1999, Al and A2. 36 P. Armstrong and H. Armstrong, 'Lessons from Pay Equity,' SPE 32 (1990) 29-54; R. Warskett, 'Wage Solidarity and Equal Value: Or Gender and Class in the Structuring of Workplace Hierarchies,' SPE 32 (1990) 55-83. 37 Panitch and Swartz, Assaults, 35-7, 70-7; G. Swimmer, 'Changes to Public Service Labour Relations Legislation: Revitalizing or Destroying Collective Bargaining?' 293-317 in MJ. Prince (ed.), How Ottawa Spends, 1987-1988: Restraining the State (Toronto: Methuen, 1987). 38 L. Slotnick, 'Government Workers Back Massive Strike,' Globe and Mail, 3 Dec. 1988,1-2; A. Pryde, 'Multi-Group Bargaining Heats Up,' Alliance 1/6 (1988) 4-7; Treasury Board Blows It,' Paranoia 6/3 (1988) 1, 7 (NB: Alliance is PSAC's official monthly; Paranoia is the semi-official newsletter of CEIU Ontario); CEIU, 'It's YES for A Strike Mandate,' Paranoia 6/4 (1988) 1, 12; 'It's A Dog But It's A Deal,' Paranoia 7 (1988) 10. Membership frustration and the Tories' unexpected 1988 win were factors here.

Notes to pages 156-8 285 39 See, e.g., 'Is This Still ANation of Laws?' (editorial) Ottawa Citizen, 4 Oct. 1990, A10; F. Howard, 'Bean Sounds Like Saddam in Request to Block Bridge,' Ottawa Citizen, 2 Oct. 1990, A4. For a full invocation of the majesty of parliament, from an academic who should know better, see W. Christian, 'Who Does Daryl Bean Think He Is?' Globe and Mail, 13 Sept. 1991, A17. 40 In the end, however, Bean did obey. Ottawa had promised that every 1 per cent wage gain would result in 2000 layoffs. See CEIU, 'PSAC Members Take on Mulroney,' ParanoiaV/Z (1991) 1; D. Pugliese, 'PSAC Strike Starts Monday,' Ottawa Citizen, 7 Sept. 1991 Al-2. 41 A. Pryde, 'Tories Gambled and Lost in PSAC Strike,' Briarpatch 20/10 (19912), 4; R. Howard, 'PSAC Claims Major Victory,' Globe and Mail, 23 Nov. 1991; R. Mclntosh, 'Civil Servants Get "Iron-Clad" Job Protection,' Edmonton Journal, 23 Nov. 1991, A3. These concessions looked less impressive after the 1995 budget, which guaranteed job security only to those who did not need it (i.e., workers in departments not scheduled for major cuts and layoffs). 42 CEIU, 'CEIU Ontario Is Ready to Walk,' Paranoia 9/3 (1991) 12. See also Panitch and Swartz, Assault, 93; J. Routledge, 'We Will Never Forget, We Will Never forgive,' 34; J. Lang, 'A Striking Difference at PSAC,' This Magazine 25/S&6 (1991-2) 45; CEIU, (editorial), 'A Work Freeze for A Wage Freeze,' Paranoia9/4 (1991) 2; D. Pugliese, 'Federal Workers Can't Forgive Those Who Crossed the Line,' Edmonton Journal, 8 Dec. 1991 Dl. F. Loyie, 'Civil Servants Will Discuss Strike Stress: Some Refuse "de-briefings,"' Edmonton Journal, 5 Oct. 1991 Cl. 43 Miscellaneous Estimates Committee, 19 July 1982, 88:15; House of Commons Debates, 5 July 1982, 18983-4; MacEachen, The Budget,' 18882. 44 C. Offe, and H. Wiesenthal, 'Two Logics of Collective Action,' in Offe's Disorganized Capitalism, 170-220. 45 In the late 1970s, PSAC's leadership consistently emphasized the constraints imposed by limited political rights and PSSRA restrictions. See PSAC News Release (17 April 1980); 'Personnel Management in PS Ignored,' Argus-Journal 16/5 (1981) 5. See 'Compare our Rights! Federal Public Employees Set The Record Straight,' Civil Service Review 54/3 (1981) 5. 46 'Members Don't Support CLC's Day of Protest,' Argus-Journal 11/9 (1976) 13. State officials' concern with public sector wages in particular is demonstrated in Maslove and Swimmer, Wage Controls, 10. The quote is from CUPW's Joe Davidson cited in CEIU, '50,000 Strong,' 2. 47 See McElligott, G.,'Mundane Resistance: State Workers and Neoconservatism in Canada (PhD Thesis, York University, Toronto, 1995) 446-48. 48 Legal restrictions on bargaining outcomes, or bargaining itself, have included Anti-Inflation Board controls (1975-8); '6&5' controls (1982-4); three years

286 Notes to pages 159-64 in which PSAC gave up the right to strike on non-monetary items in order to secure a 'master agreement' covering them (1985-8); and seven years after 1991 in which back-to-work legislation extended existing contracts, limited wage gains, and was extended twice itself by the Liberals (who pioneered the use of this 'cynical device' in 1982). See Panitch and Swartz, Assault, 94. 49 CEIU, 'Statement of Bargaining Unit Designators Appearing in CEIU, June 1988' (Ottawa, 1988). 50 CEIU, 'The Fight Continues' (Ottawa, 1986) 11. 51 Ibid., i. 52 Ibid., 11,14. 53 Compare CEIU, 'The Fight Continues,' 11, to CEIU, 'The Fight Continues, Our Direction' (Ottawa, 1986) 17. The latter document retained another sentence which promised to 'continue thinking' about separate unions based on bargaining units, and the legality of such unions 'breaking away' (27). 54 CEIU, 'The Fight Continues, Our Direction,' 20, 27. 55 CEIU, 'The Fight Continues,' 5. 56 B. Fisher, 'The Right to Strike: The Labour Movement's Sacred Cow?' Paranoia 6/3 (1988) 9. 57 Fisher, The Right to Strike,' 9. 6: Clients and Consciousness 1 This chapter was published as 'Clients and Consciousness: Drawing Resistance from Confusion on the Front Lines of the State,' Labour /Le Travail 40 (Fall 1997) 171-98. 2 Cited in CEIU, 'Sydney CEC Survives Siege,' Paranoia 12/1 (1994) 10. The Canada Employment Centre in Sydney, N.S., had been invaded by about 200 'quite rowdy' members of a larger demonstration protesting high unemployment. Paranoia is the semi-official newsletter of the Ontario section of PSAC's employment and immigration component, the CEIU. 3 On the tension between these two roles, see J. O'Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York: St Martin's Press, 1973), 241-2. 4 See Chap. 1, above. One recent addition to the limited literature on state worker-client coalitions is Paul Johnston's Success While Others Fail: Social Movement Unionism and the Public Workplace (Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 1994). 5 Bryan Palmer, Working-Class Experience: Rethinking the History of Canadian Labour, 1800-1991 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1992), 370-7, 405-16. 6 In 1993 EIC joined the 'super-department' of Human Resources Development. CEIU continues to represent most PSAC members there.

Notes to pages 165-70 287 7 See above, Chap. 3. 8 G. Albo, D. Langille, and L. Panitch, A Different Kind of State? (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1993). 9 CEIU, 'C.E.I.U. Holds Employment Counsellor Meeting,' Paranoia 1/3 (1983) 5. 10 CEIU, 'The Employment Counsellor Position: Whither and Why?' Paranoia 1/7 (1983) 14. 11 CEIU, 'C.E.I.U. Holds Employment Counsellor Meeting,' Paranoia 1/3 (1983) 6. 12 Ibid., 5. 13 Interview with Harvey Linetsky, Toronto, 1990. Linetsky is an EIC employment counsellor in Toronto. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 CEIU, 'Scarborough E&IOs Bail Out,' Paranoia?/7 (1984) 10. 17 Interview with Renaud Paquet, Ottawa, 1990; interview with Alan Lennon, Toronto, 25 July 1990 and 1 August 1990. Lennon is a former employee of the employment development branch. 18 CEIU, 'A Proposal to Take Effective Action on Unemployment,' Paranoia I/ 5 (1983) 5. 19 CEIU, Tort Apache and the CEIU,' Paranoia2/l (1984) 16. The reference is to EIC minister John Roberts. 20 CEIU, 'Fort Apache,' 16. 21 J. Andersen, 'Victories Out of Unity: Caseworkers and the Unemployed,' Our Times 3/4 (1984) 24. 22 Ibid., 25. 23 Ibid., 24. 24 See Paranoia 2 (1984), nos. 4 and 3. 25 Interview with Cres Pascucci, Ottawa, 1990. 26 CEIU, 'Brief for Commission of Inquiry on Unemployment Insurance,' (Jan. 1986), 2-3. 27 Ibid., 18. 28 Ibid.; CEIU, 'As You Like It,' Paranoia 4/3 (1986) 6; Interview with Renaud Paquet, Ottawa, 1990. 29 CEIU, 'Brief for Commission,' 12-13. 30 See'Having an Interest in UI Hysteria' (editorial), Globe and Mail, ISJuly 1992. 31 Interview with Renaud Paquet, Ottawa, 1990. 32 See above, Chap. 4. 33 See 'Booklet by Union at UIC Offices Coaches Jobless on New Rules,' Edmonton Journal 12 March 1993, A10; R. Warskett, 'Democratizing the State: Chal-

288 Notes to pages 170-4

34 35 36 37 38 39

40 41

42 43 44

45

46

lenges from Public Sector Unions,' Studies in Political Economy (hereafter SPE) 42 (1993) 136-7. See above, Chap. 3. SeeJ. Prottas, People-Processing: The Street-Level Bureaucrat in Public Bureaucracies (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1979), 91-3. Interview with Renaud Paquet, Ottawa, 1990. CEIU, 'November 1988 Strike Vote: Message from the CEIU National President,' Internal union video, CEIU, Nov. 1988. CEIU, 'The Fight Continues,' 11, 14; CEIU, The Fight Continues, Our Direction,' 20, 27. About 50,000 clerks struck in 1980, whereas in 1991 about 110,000 'nonessential' workers went out, and 45,000 designated 'essential' workers were forced to remain at work. The Liberals' 1995 budget unilaterally modified the Tories' 1991 job security agreement so that it applied only in departments not scheduled for major layoffs. See CEIU, '50,000 Strong'; Panitch and Swartz, Assault 94; B. Fisher, 'The Right to Strike: The Labour Movement's Sacred Cow?' Paranoia 6/3 (1988), 9; A. Pryde, 'Tories Gambled and Lost in PSAC Strike,' Briarpatch 20/10 (1991-2) 4. CEIU, 'The Fight Continues,' 18-20. Interview with Renaud Paquet, 28 Dec. 1990; L. Shelton, 'How Do We Feel about Quality of Service?' Panorama (May 1990) 6. Panorama was EIC's official staff newsletter, and one impetus for the creation and naming of the union alternative, Paranoia. See above, Chaps. 3, 4; CEIU, 'The Fight Continues,' 13. CEIU, 'By-Laws, Regulations, Policies,' 1; Anonymous, 'Delegates Prepare for CEIU Triennial Convention,' Paranoia 2/5 (1984) 10. CEIU, 'Election Battle Highlights CEIU Convention,' Paranoia8/4 (1990) 3; CEIU, 'CEIU Locals Can Be the Tie that Binds,' Paranoia 6/4 (1988) 3. As prospects for EIC devolution or privatization increase, there have also been more frequent attempts to merge with other components, but none of these has yet been consummated. See CEIU, 'CEIU Shops around for a Marriage Partner,' Paranoia 10/3 (1992) 1-12. This cynicism is especially warranted in the case of federal public servants, who used their new political rights to help defeat the Tories in 1993, only to see the new Liberal government adopt and extend the Tories' bargaining stance. Interview with Alan Lennon, Toronto, 19 Oct. 1990; Interview with Renaud Paquet, Ottawa, 1990. CEIU's exceptionally decentralized structure deals with appeals and grievances that other components leave to PSAC, and there are about 2000 of these a year in Toronto alone. See 'Canada

Notes to pages 174-8 289

47 48

49

50 51 52 53

54

55 56 57 58

59 60 61

62 63

Employment and Immigration Union,' 7; CEIU, 'CEIU: A Short History,' (no date). CEIU, Tascucci Gets Cold Shoulder from Management,' Paranoia 8/2 (1990) 5. CEIU, 'Trail Blazers,' Video, (Ottawa: CEIU, 1990) 1990; CEIU, Trail Sit-In,' (Fact sheet distributed to 1990 Convention, Montreal); Anonymous, 'CEIU Ontario Joins LMCC [Labour Management Consultation Committee] Boycott,' Paranoia1!'/4 (1989) 1. On the 'service point rationalization' which was meant to follow the Campbell government's reorganization of federal departments, see 'Federal Ministers Told to Slash Regional Offices,' Toronto Star, 15 Aug. 1993, A2. Interview with Joe Szajbely, Montreal, 1990; CEIU, 'Trail Sit-In,' 1; CEIU, 'Management Wins Friends and Influences People,' Paranom8/2 (1990) 11. CEIU, 'Trail Sit-In, 2; CEIU, 'Management Wins Friends,' 11. Interview with Joe Szajbely, Montreal, 1990; CEIU, 'Trail Sit-In,' 1; CEIU, 'CEIU Ontario Joins LMCC Boycott,' 1. CEIU, 'Talks Are Cheap,' Paranoia/tf (1989) 2. CEIU Ontario national vice-president Erna Post, as quoted in CEIU, 'CEIU Ontario Joins LMCC Boycott,' 1. Such claims were prescient - see 'Employment Centres Being Gutted, Bloc Says,' Globe and Mail, 11 July 1995. CEIU, 'Report of the National President to the Triennial Convention of the Canada Employment and Immigration Union, September, 1990,' 6.; Interview with Joe Szajbely, Montreal, 1990. CEIU, 'Trail Sit-In,' 1,3; CEIU, 'Trail Blazers,' CEIU, 'Trail Blazers,' CEIU, 'Trail Sit-in,' 3; emphasis in original. CEIU, 'Trail Sit-In,' 2; CEIU, 'Report of the National President to the Triennial Convention,' 6; CEIU, 'CEIU Ontario Nears $15,000 Goal for Trail Fund,' Paranoiac/2 (1990) 1. CEIU, 'Trail Sit-in,' 3. CEIU, 'Report of National President from April 1, 1987 to November 30, 1987,' 79. CEIU, 'Brief on Bills C-55 and C-84, August 28, 1987,' 4; CEIU, 'Presentation to the House of Common's [sic] Committee, Labour, Employment and Immigration,' (No date), 1, 2, 4. E. Oziewicz, 'Immigration Workers Split on Changing Refugee Rules,' Globe and Mail 22 April 1992 A6. Ibid.,A6.

290 Notes to pages 178-81 64 CEIU, Fifth National Convention, Montreal, 19 Sept. 1990 (author's notes). This in turn echoed similar events within PSAC prior to the 1980 Quebec referendum. 65 CEIU, Fifth National Convention, Montreal. 66 N. Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism (hereafter SPS), (London: Verso, 1980), 155. 67 C. Pascucci, election speech to the CEIU Fifth National Convention; Interview with Cres Pascucci, Ottawa, 1990. 68 Interview with Cres Pascucci, Ottawa, 1990; M. Prue, 'Introduction' (to the first Immigration Training Weekend), (March, 1990), 1-2. 69 Prue, 'Introduction,' 3; CEIU, 'Immigration Workers Join Forces in Coalition,' Paranoia 7/1 (1989) 11. 70 This policy change was later codified and made explicit by the Chretien government, but the coalition seems to have achieved it on an informal basis under the Tories. 71 Prue, 'Introduction,' 3; CEIU, 'Immigration Workers,' 11. 72 Prue, 'Introduction,' 3. 73 Michael Prue, cited in J. Lakey, 'Immigration Officers Plan Job Slowdown over Workload,' Toronto Star, 28 Jan. 1989 A6; 'Immigration Officers Protest "Burn-Out,"' Toronto Star, 31 Jan. 1989 A6. Toronto workers often saw 25 clients a day - about three times the national rate. 74 Prue, 'Introduction,' 4. 75 I. Hunter, 'Immigration Officers Begin Work Slowdown,' Ottawa Citizen, 27Jan. 1991; Anonymous, 'Immigration Workers Go for It,' Paranoia9/l (1991) 1-10. 76 Interview with Alan Lennon, Toronto, 13 Sept. 1990; background documents for immigration training weekend, Toronto March, 1990. One attempt to deal with the refugee backlog was struck down by the courts largely because its guidelines 'unduly fettered' the discretion of immigration officers. See K. Makin, 'Ruling Kills Refugee System, Lawyers Say,' Globe and Mail, 7 March 1990, A12. 77 See T. Appleby, 'Immigration by Mail Started in Ontario,' Globe and Mail, 28 March 1991, A4; 'Immigration Workers Fighting Move to Vegreville,' Edmontonjournal, 18Jan. 1993, A5; CEIU, 'Open Letter to Hon. Bernard Valcourt, Minister of Employment and Immigration' (advertisement), Globe and Mail, 26 Jan. 1993, A6; 'Immigration Workers Halt Mail in Protest,' Edmonton Journal, 26 Feb. 1993, A12; CEIU, 'Feds Make Big Change to Vegreville Decision,' Paranoiall/6 (1993) 1; A. Thompson, 'Immigration Paperwork Overwhelms New Centre,' Toronto Star, 15 Aug. 1994, A32; L. Sarick, 'Delays Plague Immigration Centre,' Globe and Mail, 13 Jan. 1995, A4.

Notes to pages 181-6

291

78 E. Oziewicz, 'Coalition Attacks Proposed Immigration Policy,' Globe and Mail, 23 June 1993, A4. 79 Background documents for immigration training weekend, March, 1990. 80 'A Federal Ministry out of Control' (editorial), Toronto Star, 5 July 1994, A16; 'Task Force Pleases Immigration Officers,' Globe and Mail, 12 July 1994, A4; A. Noorani and C. Wright, 'They Believed the Hype,' This Magazine, 28/5 (1994) 32. 81 M. Welsh, T Released Gayle Official Admits,' Toronto Star, 30 June 1994 Al-11; R. Howard and L. Sarick, 'Numbers Game Led to Deportation Lapse,' Globe and Mail, 29 June 1994, A4; 'Immigration Department a Mess, Reviews Reveal,' Toronto Star, 4 July 1994, Al; 'A Federal Ministry out of Control.' 82 As cited in Howard and Sarick, 'Numbers Game,' 83 See Chap. 4, above. 84 See Chap. 7, below. 85 Interview with Alan Lennon, Toronto, 25 July 1990. A former employee in EIC's old job creation section (the employment development branch), Lennon's firing in 1986 prompted a union sit-in that saved his job. Lennon also has a PhD in philosophy. 86 Interview with Cres Pascucci, Ottawa, 1990. Pascucci is a former UI agent. 87 Interview with Renaud Paquet, Ottawa, 1990. Paquet worked in employment services in Quebec. 88 R. Edwards, Contested Terrain: The Transformation of the Workplace in the Twentieth Century (New York: Basic Books, 1979), 21 ;J. Shields, 'Flexible Work, Labour Market Polarization,' 62; 'Dubious Rewards of Public Service,' Globe and Maz'UOJuly 1998, A14;J. Coutts, 'Ontario Civil Service in Crisis Situation, Ombudsman Warns,' Globe and Mail, 17 June 1999, A8;J. Gadd,J. Shields, 'Flexibile Work, Labour Market Polarization, and the Politics of Skills Training and Enhancement,' in T. Dunk, S. McBride, R.W. Nelsen (eds.), The Training Trap: Ideology, Training and the Labour Market (Halifax: Fernwood, 1996), 62; 'Who's Got the Jobs from Hell? Statscan Reveals All,' Globe and Mail, 13Jan. 1999, Al andA10;M. Gee, 'Inside a Head Hunter's Paradise,' Globe and Mail, 28 Aug. 1998, Al and A13; M. Gibb-Clark, 'Female Civil Servants Seen Facing Hurdles,' Globe and Mail, 25 Jan. 1999, B15. 89 The union's role in PSAC, cross-cutting bargaining units, government cutbacks, and departmental reorganizations all create obstacles here. 90 For alternatives in this regard, see 'Strike at Rich, Unions told,' Toronto Star, 14 May 1975 (interview with PSAC activist Bill Fisher); C. Lipsig-Mumme, C., 'The "Positive Strike": Union Strategy and State Control,' 5P£31 (1990) 181-4.

292 Notes to pages 187-93 91 CEIU, 'Components Get It Together in Ontario,' Paranoia 12/1 (1994) 9; CEIU, 'PSAC Convention to Test Evolutionary Theory,' Paranoia 12/1 (1994) 9. 7: Front-Line Workers and Public Policy 1 An earlier version of this chapter was presented to the Society for Socialist Studies at St John's in June, 1997, under the title 'Resisting to Serve? Discretionary Power and Public Service.' 2 E. Goffman, Asylums (Toronto: Anchor, 1961), 304-5. 3 Unnamed source at 1992 seminar, cited in D. Savoie, Thatcher, Reagan, Mulroney: In Search of a New Bureaucracy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994) ,283. 4 James O'Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York: St Martin's Press, 1973), 240-2. 5 Ibid., 242-56. 6 See, e.g., S. Pile and M. Keith (eds.), Geographies of Resistance (London: Routledge, 1997); R. Hodson, 'Worker Resistance: An Underdeveloped Concept in the Sociology of Work,' Economic and Industrial Democracy 16 (1995) 79-110. 7 See Chap. 1, above. 8 Lipsky distinguishes between 'errors of liberality' and 'errors of stringency.' In the human services, the former tend to be much more closely monitored than the latter. See his 'Bureaucratic Disentitlement in Social Welfare Programs,' Social Service Review (March 1984), 3-26. 9 Canada, Auditor General (OAG), 'Study of Key Federal Social Programs,' in Report 1994 (http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/oag-bvg/rep94/1994e/html/9406e/ mp9406e.html), 1,3. 10 Canada, OAG, Report 1978, 297. 11 Ibid., 298. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., Report 1977, 230; Report 1978, 295-6; Report 1982, 535; OAG's financial statements in Canada, EIC, Annual Report, 1985-86-1990-91. 14 Cited in Canada, OAG, Report 1977, 72. 15 Ibid., Report 1978, 296. 16 Ibid., p. 297. 17 L.A. Pal, State, Class and Bureaucracy: Canadian Unemployment Insurance and Public Policy (Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1988), 51, 86. 18 Ibid., 118. The acronyms are confusing here because UI is administered by the Unemployment Insurance Commission (UIC), which existed prior to EIC. Both now are part of HRDC.

Notes to pages 193-8 19 20 21 22

23

24 25 26

27 28 29 30

31

32 33

293

Compiled from Canada, OAG, Report 1983, 256; Report 1988, Exhibit 18.2. Calculated from Canada, OAG, Report 1983, 254. Canada, OAG, Report 1982, 536-8; Report 1988, paras. 18.35-46. Since 1971 employers have paid premiums 1.4 times those of employees. The government share varied but generally totalled less than either until 1991, when it ended entirely. See G. Dingledine, A Chronology of Response: The Evolution of Unemployment Insurance from 1940 to 1980 (Hull: EIC, 1981), 69. See Canada, EIC, Task Force on Unemployment Insurance, Unemployment Insurance in the 1980s (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1981) (the Gershberg Report); Canada, Commission of Inquiry on Unemployment Insurance, Summary Report (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1986) (the Forget Report). Canada, OAG, Report 1988, para. 18.51. Cres Pascucci, Interview, 16 Aug. 1990; C. McLaren, 'Tempers Flare at Centres for Jobless,' Globe and Mail, 2 Nov. 1990, Al and A6. P. Facey, 'The Organization and Control of the White-Collar Labour Process: A Case Study of a Canada Employment Centre' (MA thesis, University of Warwick, 1987), 80-1, 92-6, 97-108. In 1996, in response to calls for explicit, public, service standards, Employment Insurance (UI's new name) posted a national 'turnaround target' of 28 days for first El cheques. See hCanada, OAG, Report... September 1996, para. 14.34 (http://www.oagbvg.gc.ca/oag-bvg/rep96/1996e/html /9614e/ ch96143.html). Facey, 'Organization and Control,' 98-101. Ibid., 87. Ibid., 88. See Chap. 4, above. More generally, the trend to service quality initiatives (TQM, etc.) can be seen as a response to front-line alienation and disruption. See Chap. 3, above. Facey, 'Organization and Control,' 100. Recent communication with EIC (now HRDC) employees suggests that this verification stage has now been completely eliminated, at least in Toronto offices. UI investigators are left to deal with what inconsistencies they can, much later in the process. The latter task will increasingly involve computerized database-matching (comparing UI data from employee and employer sources, or UI data and provincial welfare rolls, e.g.), and coordination with provincial investigators. Ontario welfare officials can now access the federal UI database to ensure welfare applicants have tried UI first, and all Metro applicants are digitally fingerprinted to facilitate data collection and control. See I. Ross, 'Ottawa, Provinces Consider Single ID Card,' Globe and Mail, 26 May 1997, Al and A7. Facey, 'Organization and Control,' 101. Ibid., 101-2.

294 Notes to pages 198-200 34 35 36 37

38 39 40

41 42 43

44 45

Ibid., 102. Ibid., 103. Ibid., 102-3. Ibid., 103. It is interesting to note that what the OAG considers errors in this department may be de facto policy in others. Senior officials in Ontario's Ministry of Environment and Energy, apparently concerned about the growing discrepancy between their ministry's formal goals and the resources allocated to fulfil them, drew up a secret list of 'enforcement priorities for its rules and regulations, much the same way police rank crimes.' The intent was to defend the ministry and its officials against lawsuits based on 'claims of regulatory negligence.' See M. Mittelstaedt, 'Ontario Prepares Negligence Defence,' Globe and Mail 18 Feb. 1997, Al and All. OPSEU, the local union, had been pointing out these discrepancies for some time. See OPSEU, 'Nothing Left to Cut,' 2nd ed. (North York: OPSEU, 1997) (13/2/97). Facey, 'Organization and Control,' 103. Ibid., 104; M. Loney, 'Pricing the Poor Back to Work,' Policy Options 13 (1992) 21-3. Anecdotal evidence, as well as an article by P.M. Blau suggest that familiarity with rules offers front-line workers more opportunity to evade them. See P.M. Blau, 'Orientation toward Clients in a Public Welfare Bureaucracy,' in E. Katz and B. Danet (eds.), Bureaucracy and the Public (New York: Basic, 1973), 229-44. See Chap. 3, above. Facey, 'Organization and Control,' 106. The link is made most explicitly in Canada, OAG, Report 1982, 536-8, and in Report 1989, 521. Less direct references which support Facey's data can be seen in Report 1978, 69-70; Report 1978, 299, 301. See Chap. 4, above. See D. Zussman and J. Jabes, The Vertical Solitude: Managing in the Public Sector (Halifax: IRPP, 1989). This influential study documents widespread alienation among the lower management ranks of the entire public service, and demonstrates that front-line managers and head office executives tend to have very different views of their department's goals and environment. B.W. Carroll and D. Siegel produced similar findings in their recent study of front-line offices entitled Service in The Field: The World of Front-Line Public Servants (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1999). As has been noted by other management theorists interested in internal communications, senior managers are often insulated from reality by flattery: subordinates tend to overemphasize good news when conveying information upward.

Notes to pages 200-3 295 46 See Chap. 6, above. It should be noted that this fiddle was initiated by local managers, although front-line workers clearly participated in it. 47 Renaud Paquet, Interview, 28 Dec. 1990. 48 See, e.g., M. Drohan, 'UI Policy Fuels Joblessness, Analyst Says,' Globe and Mail, 11 May 1990, Bl and B4. 49 Cited in G. Fraser, 'Tories Relent on UI Changes,' Globe and Mail, 17 Feb. 1993, A3. 50 Canada, EIC, Task Force on Unemployment Insurance, Unemployment Insurance in the 1980s (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1981), 63. 51 Ibid., 64. 52 Ibid., 63; L. McQuaig, 'McDougall Calls UI Moves "Pretty Severe,"' Globe and Mail, 21 April 1989, A13; S. Erwin, 'Jobless Workers Feel Handcuffed by New UI Rules,' Edmonton Journal, 4 Dec. 1992, A3. 53 'No More Pogey If You Quit or Get Fired,' The EdmontonJournal, 3 Dec. 1992, A3. 54 See H. Lingley, 'State of the Art Technology Helps All Branches Deliver Quality Service,' Panorama (May 1988), 4; 'OCR Report Forms Replace Traditional UI Punch Cards,' Panorama (March 1983), 7. Panorama is EIC's official staff newsletter - not to be confused with Paranoia, the semi-official union version. 55 K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (New York: International, 1982), 167-8. 56 H. Winsor, 'Civil Service Shakeup Signals Inner Troubles,' Globe and Mail, 12 Dec. 1993, A9. 57 J. Beltrame, and S. Aikenhead, 'Revised UI Bill Cushions Blow to Some Quitters,' Edmonton Journal, 18 Feb. 1993, A3; J. Beltrame, 'UI Claimants May Not Get Benefit of Doubt,' Edmonton Journal, 10 Feb. 1993, A3; G. Mclntosh, 'Job Quitters Must Justify UI Claims, Globe and Mail, 22 June 1993, B5. 58 See PSAC/CEIU, 'For a Just Cause, A UI Handbook Produced by Workers for Workers' (1993); 'Booklet by Union at UIC Offices Coaches Jobless on New Rules,' Edmonton Journal, 12 March 1993, A10. 59 'Business Leader Supports Gov't Move to Tighten Rules Governing UI Benefits,' The Edmonton Journal, 3 Feb. 1993, A3. 60 J. Beltrame, 'Valcourt to Modify Controversial UI Bill,' Edmonton Journal, 17 Feb. 1993, Al. 61 P. Doyle, 'Be Proud to Fight Deficit, Valcourt Tells Unemployed,' Edmonton Journal, 4 Dec. 1992, A3; 'Snitch Line Goes Dead,' Globe and Mail, 12 Feb. 1993, Al and A2; J. Beltrame, 'Snitch Line to Catch UI Cheats Proposed,' Edmonton Journal, 11 Feb. 1993, Al. 62 Canada, EIC, Annual Report 1981-2 - 1990-1, UIC financial statements;

296 Notes to pages 203-8

63 64

65

66 67 68 69 70 71

A. Yalnizyan, L. Ritchie, M. McBane, 'Rewriting UI Rules Doesn't Make Sense,' Globe and Mail, 1 Feb. 1990, A7. Yalnizyan et al. 'Rewriting,' A7. See Canada, Commission of Inquiry on Unemployment Insurance, Summary Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Unemployment Insurance (the Forget Report) (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1986), 73-4. Billions of UI/EI dollars and thousands of federal employees have now been transferred to Alberta, British Columbia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Manitoba, and Quebec, but so far the administration of UI/EI itself remains in federal hands. CEIU expects that many of the training and employment counselling activities downloaded to the provinces will soon be hived off to the private sector. See 'Job-Training Deal Reached,' Globe and Mail, 26 April 1997, A4; E. Greenspon, 'Quebec Gets Job-Training Role,' Globe and Mail, 21 April 1997, A7; CEIU, 'CEIU Members Resist Devolution in Metro Toronto,' Paranoia 14/3 (1997) 3. The commission said that the major problem with UI delivery was that it was 'not directed or controlled by the premium payers. Employers and employees are viewed as special interest groups, not as proprietors of the program.' Moreover, EIC's other duties (e.g., immigration, job creation, training) were said to detract from its administration of UI. Canada, Forget Report, 49. See Chap. 4 above on the links between consultative arrangements and EIC's own internal legitimation crisis. S. Torjman, 'Plain Talk? Not when Ottawa Has Its Way,' Globe and Mail, 2 Feb. 1993, Al 7. CEIU, 'Bafflegab Obscures Threat to CECJobs,' Paranoia9/l (1991) 5. Alan Lennon, Interview, 1 Aug. 1990. CEIU, 'Employment Service Bled White,' Paranoia 10/4 (1992) 1. Ibid., 1, 10.

72 Ibid., 10. 73 Ibid., 74 CEIU, Training Cuts Produce Feelings of Betrayal,' Paranoia 8/4 (1990) 5. 75 CEIU, 'Demo Targets CEC Cutbacks,' Paranoia 8/6 (1990) 10. 76 Ibid., 10. 77 CEIU, 'Smart Cards Threaten Uljobs,' Paranoia 8/4 (1990) 1-12. 78 CEIU, 'CEIU to Fight Labour Force Destruction Strategy,' Paranoia 8/6 (1990) 1-12. 79 Harvey Linetsky, cited in ibid., 12. 80 Cited in G. Cooly, 'Public Sector Union Assails Overhauled UI Regulations,' Now, 22 Nov. 1990, 20.

Notes to pages 208-11 297 81 CEIU, 'CEIU to Fight,' 12. 82 Ibid. 83 Ibid., G. Cooly, 'Public Sector,' 17; PSAC/CEIU, 'For a Just Cause'; 'Booklet,' A10. 84 CEIU, 'CEIU to fight,' 12. 85 CEIU, 'Summary Report of the Conference on the Labour Force Development Strategy' (Ottawa, May, 1990), 1. 86 C. Pascucci, Letter to Participants of Employment Services Conference, 19 June 1990; CEIU, 'The LFDS Survival Kit' (flyer distributed to 1990 convention, Montreal). 87 CEIU, 'The LFDS Survival Kit' (flyer). 88 CEIU, Fifth National Convention, Montreal, 20 Sept. 1990 (author's notes). 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid. 91 CEIU, 'Employment Counsellors to Face Extinction?' Paranoia 9/4 (1991) 3. 92 M. Bellemare, in CEIU, Fifth National Convention. 93 Fisher, in ibid. 94 See resolutions D-24 ('LFD - Campaign to Expose Shortcomings') and D-25 ('Coalition Building') in the Convention Kit, CEIU, Fifth National Convention. 95 V. Carrington, in CEIU, Fifth National Convention. 96 CEIU, 'CEIU to Give Guiding Light to Training Boards,' Paranoia9/6 (1991) 5. 97 'Empowerment' and 'deregulation,' e.g., promise freedom from rules, but deliver freedom to serve and/or more management power. 98 R. Howard, 'Wage Freeze Imposed on Federal Employees,' Globe and Mail, 3 Dec. 1992, A6. PSAC members' wages were still frozen in 1998 - although managers had been awarded increases, and MPs had rewarded themselves. See 'Bosses' Raises Anger Federal Workers,' Toronto Star, 23 Feb. 1998, A6. 99 Reform had been promoting a radical cutback agenda since its inception, but only got around to specifying its targets after Don Mazankowski's December 1992 statement. See K. Makin, 'Reform Urges Massive Cuts,' Globe and Mail, 30 March 1993, Al and A2. Business had consistently complained about premium increases during the recession. See K. Hewlett, 'Business Dismayed by UI Bite,' Globe and Mail, 28 Feb. 1991, Bl and B7. The IMF had secretly called for 'maximum restraint' on all public sector wages and further UI cuts just weeks before the bargaining impasse that led to the 1991 strike. See E. Beauchesne, 'IMF Tells Canada What to Do,' Edmonton Journal,

298 Notes to pages 211-18 27 Nov. 1991, Al. Ottawa and the provinces clearly followed this strategy in the years thereafter. 100 M. Loney. On 'enduring' as a form of resistance, see S. Pile, 'Introduction: Opposition, Political Identities and Spaces for Resistance,' pp. 1-32 in S. Pile, and M. Keith, (eds.), Geographies of Resistance, (London: Routledge, 1997), 14. 101 See Chap. 6, above. 8: State Workers and Democratic Administration 1 An earlier version of this chapter was published under the title 'An Immodest Proposal, or, Democracy Beyond the Capitalist Welfare State,' in Socialist Studies Bulletin 57-8 (July-Dec. 1999): 5-24. 2 Canada, Canadian Centre for Management Development (CCMD), A Strong Foundation, The Report of the Study Team on Public Service Values and Ethics - Consultation Draft (Ottawa: CCMD, 1996), 19. 3 The process began with Canada, Committee on Governing Values, Governing Values (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1987). Key documents thereafter included Canada, PS 2000, Service to the Public Task Force Report (1990); and Canada, Public Service 2000: The Renewal of the Public Service of Canada (Synopsis) (Ottawa: Supply and Service, 1990). See also Chap. 3, above. 4 Public Service 2000 aimed at 'empowering Public Servants to serve Canada as effectively as possible.' See Canada, PS 2000, 13. Proponents of TQM were influential here, but they found it difficult to transpose market-based notions of service for use in the public sector. See Chap. 3, above. 5 Canada, CCMD, A Strong Foundation, 11-13, 20, 24-34. These views reflect those of the dominant public administration text in Canada, and a leading discussion of public service ethics. Kenneth Kernaghan co-authored both books, and was a member of the study team that produced A Strong Foundation. See K Kernaghan andj. Langford, The Responsible Public Servant (Halifax: IRPP/IPAC, 1990); K. Kernaghan, and D. Siegel, Public Administration in Canada: A Text, 3rd ed. (Toronto: Nelson, 1995). 6 See Chap. 3, above. 7 This may be closer than we expect - the post-Keynesian era (1975-on) has now lasted nearly as long as its predecessor (1945-75). If earlier estimates for the demise of Keynesianism are accepted (1969? 1970?), then we have been 'post' longer than we were 'Keynesian.' 8 See, e.g., Workers' Councils and the Economics of a Self-Managed Society, Solidarity, Pamphlet 40 (London: Solidarity, 1972). 9 See Chap. 6, above.

Notes to pages 218-21 299 10 M. Mackintosh and H. Wainwright (eds.) A Taste of Power (London: Verso, 1987) ,400, 404. 11 See T. Benn, 'Obstacles to Reform in Britain,' in R. Miliband, L. Panitch, andj. Saville (eds.), Socialist Register, 1989 (London: Merlin, 1989), 130-45. 12 Canada, CCMD, A Strong Foundation, 20, 69. This phrase is repeated often. 13 See Panitch and Swartz. Federal employees waited over twenty years before a truncated version of the postwar compromise was offered to them. Within seven years these terms were overridden by a the shift to coercion that Panitch and Swartz describe. NDP provincial governments had a marginally better record here - the Douglas government in Saskatchewan was the first to allow bargaining in the public sector. Lately, their enthusiasm has waned Rae's government finally gave Ontario public servants the right to strike in 1993, but did so on the same day that it suspended bargaining and strikes for three years under the 'social contract.' See Panitch and Swartz, The Assault... (1993) 175. 14 RCMP fishing expeditions for criminal 'breach of trust' have also been used to keep public servants in line, and control leaks that have not been authorized by senior officials. See J. Sallot, 'RCMP Investigate Government Leaks on TAGS Program,' Globe and Mail, 12 May 1998, A2; J. Sallot, 'Mounties Called in to Plug Second Leak,' Globe and Mail, 13 May 1998, A6. 15 T. Claridge, 'School-Trustee Eligibility Rule Challenged,' Globe and Mail, 30 July 1997, A3. 16 Panitch and Swartz, The Assault (1993) 27. 17 Defence Minister David Collennette resigned long after the scandal broke, and nominally for another reason. His senior officials blamed their subordinates, and the inquiry that might have challenged these claims was shut down in an exceptionally cynical pre-election move by the Chretien government. Similar stonewalling in the tainted blood scandal, and in the Westray mine disaster, has led even the mainstream press to wonder whether senior officials in any large organization can be trusted to take responsibility for their actions. See L. Scrivener, '"Sorry" - the Hardest Word,' Toronto Star, 26 May 1996, A2. 18 This is the starting point for Poulantzas's analysis of representation within the capitalist state - one which Mahon applied in Canada. See N. Poulantzas, Classes in Contemporary Capitalism (London: NLB, 1979; hereafter CCQ, and Political Power and Social Classes (London: Verso, 1987; hereafter PPSQ; R. Mahon, The Politics of Industrial Restructuring: Canadian Textiles (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984). These points are also clearly recognized by introductory texts in Canadian politics and public administration, but their implications are rarely pursued. The approach generally is to normal-

300 Notes to pages 221-4

19 20

21

22

23 24

25

ize hierarchy and suppress democratic expectations. See esp. Kernaghan and Siegel, Public Administration, Chaps. 15, 17. See Chaps. 3, 5, 6 and 7 above. For more geographic metaphors, see S. Pile and M. Keith (eds.), Geographies of Resistance (London: Routledge, 1977); V. Chouinard, 'Challenging Law's Empire: Rebellion, Incorporation, and Changing Geographies of Power in Ontario's Legal Clinic System,' SPE55 (1998) 65-92. On social movements and new forms of representation, see B. Sheldrick, 'Welfare Reform under Ontario's NDP: Social Democracy and Social Group Representation,' SPE55 (1998) 37-64; D. Pilon, 'Democracy, Social Movements and the State: Toward an Interactionist Mode of Representation' (paper presented to the Canadian Political Science Association, Ottawa, June 1998). Arguments against some varieties of worker control do not make this distinction. Arthur Scargill and Peggy Kahn argue that workplace control is meaningless without larger control over policy. They cite the example of Britain's nationalized coal industry, where local participative experiments did little to arrest state-sponsored 'rationalization' of the industry. See A. Scargill, and P. Kahn, The Myth of Workers' Control (Wombwell: University of Leeds and Nottingham, 1980), 11. It is clearly true that central control of decisions regarding funding and structures pose the greatest threat to local democratic experiments - to the extent that those experiments rely on government funding and resources. But it is not so clear that, politically or economically, coal consumers can be equated to clients in the human services. Enhanced worker control in the latter field is likely to have a much more direct and dramatic influence on those clients, who are more clearly part of a 'counterhegemonic' project. This approach was most persuasively articulated in the Glassco Commission of 1962. Its recommendations became the touchstone of future studies, so I refer to the three principles as 'Glassco's common sense.' See Chap. 2, above. See Chap. 6, above. This point is made convincingly in the London Edinburgh Weekend Return Group, In and Against the State (London: Pluto, 1980). Its implications have long troubled radical social workers; see R. Mullaly, Structural Social Work, Ideology, Theory and Practice (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1993), Chaps. 9, 10. Mullaly, Structural Social Work, 174-5, 179; J.Jordan, 'Framing Claims and the Weapons of the Weak,' in D. Drove and P. Kerans (eds.), Nerv Approaches to Welfare Theory (Brookfield, Ver.; Edward Elgar, 1993) ;J.C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).

Notes to pages 224-7 301 26 Michael Lipsky uses this phrase to describe the powers of front-line workers. See his Street-Level Bureaucracy (New York: Russell Sage, 1980) 23-5. 27 See Chap. 6, above. 28 Frances Fox Piven has been consistently suspicious of welfare workers, and of efforts to decentralize power towards them. See her 'Militant Civil Servants,' R. Cloward and F.F. Piven (eds.), The Politics of Turmoil (New York: Vintage, 1975, 226-38); and her 'Reforming the Welfare State: The American Experience,' in G. Albo, D. Langille, and L. Panitch (eds.), A Different Kind of State? Popular and Democratic Administration (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1993), 66-74. She does, however, credit radicalized state personnel for their contribution to the welfare rights movement of the 1960s. See F.F. Piven and R.A. Cloward, Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (New York: Vintage, 1979), 273-5. 29 See P.Johnston, Success While Others Fail: Social Movement Unionism 13, 51. 30 J. White, Sisters and Solidarity (Toronto: Thompson, 1993), 187. She describes the efforts of a coalition involving the ILGWU to organize homeworkers in Toronto. 31 See Chap. 6, above. 32 On mutual aid, see S. Tillotson, '"When Our Membership Awakens": Welfare Work and Canadian Union Activism, 1950-1965,' Labour / Le Travail 40 (1997) 137-69. On offloading, see D. Osborne and T. Gaebler, Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit Is Transforming the Public Sector (New York: Penguin, 1993). 33 Panitch, 'A Different Kind of State?' 5. 34 Ibid., 6. 35 Notable among these is C. Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). See esp. her discussion of the sources of 'political efficacy' in Chap. 3. 36 J. Rothschild and A. Whitt, The Cooperative Workplace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 76-84. On related problems, see C. Pollitt 'Democracy and Bureaucracy,' in D. Held and C. Pollitt (eds.), New Forms of Democracy (London: Sage, 1986), 158-91. 37 L. Ames, 'When Sense Is Not Common: Alternatives to Hierarchy at Work,' Economic and Industrial Democracy 16 (1995) 553-76. 38 See R. Ng, The Politics of Community Services: Immigrant Women, Class and State (Toronto: Garamond, 1988); E. Shragge, 'Community Based Practice: Political Alternatives or New State Forms?' in L. Davies and E. Schragge (eds.), Bureaucracy and Community (Montreal: Black Rose, 1990), 137-73. 39 See J.W. Rinehart, The Tyranny of Work, 3rd ed. (Toronto: Harcourt Brace, 1996), Chap. 6.

302 Notes to pages 227-30 40 Two American exceptions are S. Martin, Managing without Managers (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1983); M.P. Smith, 'Barriers to Organizational Democracy in Public Administration,' in F. Fischer and C. Siriani (eds.), Organization and Bureaucracy (New York: Chandler, 1984), 453-72. On changes in the state labour process in Britain, see B. Carter, 'Restructuring State Employment: Labour and Non-Labour in the Capitalist State,' Capital and Class (hereafter C&Q 63 (1997) 65-84. 41 See J. O'Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York: St Martin's Press, 1973), 236-46. 42 See N. Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism (London: Verso, 1980; hereafter SPS), esp. Part Five. I am trying to contribute to what Sam Gindin has called (in a complementary analysis of workers' democratic capacities) a 'political economy of transition,' which would be appropriate to the 'long march within capitalism.' S. Gindin, 'Socialism "with Sober Senses'": Developing Workers' Capacities,' in L. Panitch and C. Leys (eds.), Socialist Register 1998 (London: Merlin, 1998), 87; emphasis in original. 43 It is the topic of a later study, begun with G. McElligott, 'Coercive Power and the Limits of Workplace Democracy,' Paper presented to the Society for Socialist Studies, Edmonton, 2000. 44 A. Bayat, Work, Politics and Power (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1991), 24-7. A macroeconomic variation on the 'efficiency' approach can be found in K. Bradley and A. Gelb, Worker Capitalism: The New Industrial Relations (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), 1-11. Here employee ownership is defended as a convenient means of industrial adjustment. 45 G.A. Lewis, G.A., News From Somewhere: Connecting Health and Freedom in the Workplace (New York: Greenwood, 1986), 164. 46 For a more positive view, see P. Warrian, Hard Bargain: Transforming Public Sector Labour-Management Relations (Toronto: McGilligan, 1996), 129. 47 J. Rusk, 'Union Wants to Buy Bruce Nuclear Plant with Hydro Pension Funds,' Globe and Mail 30 April 1998, A12. 48 N. Carter, 'Worker Cooperatives and Green Political Theory,' in B. Doherty and M. de Geus, Democracy and Green Political Thought (London: Routledge, 1996), 56-75. 49 M. Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy (hereafter SLB) (New York: Russell Sage, 1980),xviii. 50 See e.g., R.E. Morgan (Lefty), Workers Control on the Railroad: A Practical Example 'Right Under Your Nose' (St. John's: CCLH, 1994); D. Frank, 'Contested Terrain: Workers' Control in the Cape Breton Coal Mines in the 1920s,' in C. Heron and R. Storey, On theJob: Confronting the Labour Process in Canada (Kingston: McGill-Queen's, 1986) 102-23; G. Kealey, "The Honest Working-

Notes to pages 230-3 303

51

52 53

54 55 56

57 58 59

60

man" and Workers' Control: The Experience of Toronto Skilled Workers, 1860-1892,' Labour / Le Travailleur 1 (1976) 32-68. H.D. Thoreau, Walden and Civil Disobedience (New York: Penguin, 1985); E. Goffman, Asylums (Toronto: Anchor, 1961); E.P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act (London: Allen Lane, 1975) ;J.C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Havens: Yale University Press, 1990); Don Nonini, 'Everyday Forms of Popular Resistance,' Monthly Review 40/6 (1988) 25-36. See Chaps. 6 and 7, above. See P. Facey, 'The Organization and Control of the White-Colour Labour Process: A Case of a Canada Employment Centre' (MA thesis, University of Warwick, 1987). W.U. Cotton, cited in Frank, 'Contested Terrain,' 116. Panitch, A Different Kind of State? 8. See J. Rothschild and A. Whitt, The Cooperative Workplace (Cembridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); J. Rothschild, The Collectivist Organization: An Alternative to Rational-Bureaucratic Models,' in Fischer and Siriani, Critical Studies, 448-75. Related studies include P. Bart, 'Seizing the Means of Reproduction: An Illegal Feminist Abortion Clinic - How and Why it Worked,' Qualitative Sociology 10/4 (1987) 339-57; K. lannello, Decisions without Hierarchy (New York: Routledge, 1992); H. Wainwright, Arguments for a New Left (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), Chap. 5. Rothschild, 'Collectivist Organization,' 461-2. Lighthouse keepers and home-based 'telecommuters' offer illustrations of decentralization taken to extremes. The rules to these games are partly codified in Canada's patchwork system of labour law, but they are flexible rules. Relying on collective bargaining to create 'industrial democracy' has failed not only because of huge initial concessions to 'management rights,' but also because of this flexibility. Ultimately arrangements that deliver too much can be withdrawn - as state workers are only too aware. Solutions based on varieties of federalism and increasingly indirect representation seem singularly unappealing in the Canadian context. Solutions based on any kind of planning are hard to reconcile with continuing community control. The problem with planning raises all sorts of questions about whether current levels of technological development are democratically (much less environmentally) sustainable. If there is a trade-off between democratic control and the standard of living, at what level should it be made? Should communities sitting on top of crucial natural resources be allowed to opt for non-development, or should they be despoiled for 'the greater good'?

304 Notes to pages 234-5 61 The experience of collectivist organizations is particularly relevant here, but drafters might also consider the proposals for 'group government' put forward by Canadian farmers' movements earlier in this century. See esp. W. Irvine, The Farmers in Politics (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976); C.B. Macpherson, Democracy in Alberta (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977). 62 Rothschild and Whitt, Cooperative Workplace, 138 (Table 5.1). 63 Robert Michels, Political Parties (New York: Free Press, 1964). 64 Rothschild and Whitt, Cooperative Workplace, 139 (Table 5.1). 65 London Edinburgh Weekend Return Group, In and Against the State (London: Pluto, 1980), 42. 66 The physical and mental dangers of 'workaholism' have begun to be recognized in the union movement, along with its contribution to oligarchic tendencies (favouring those without family responsibilities, for example). But little consideration has been given to its implications for longer-term struggles. Can work ever become liberating and non-exploitive if new labour processes are built by activists who take fanatical self-sacrifice for granted? 67 The Ontario Tories' attempts to sell workfare as a solution to cutbackinduced staff shortages in community agencies is particularly cynical in this regard. Using forced labour to attack poverty poses the resource dilemma in stark terms. But opposition to workfare has been strong among these agencies' unionized workers, and they have been able to block its penetration into the volunteer sector. See B. Trumpener, 'A Dance with the Devil,' This Magazine31/6 (1998) 13-16. 68 The experience of the Paris Commune, Italian factory councils, council communism, anarcho-syndicalism, guild socialism, and of course the Russian Soviets, might be raised here. On these (in various combinations), see: Workers' Councils and the Economics of a Self-Managed Society (London: Solidarity, 1972); Bayat, Work, Politics and Power, Chap. 1; G.A. Lewis, News From Somewhere: Connecting Health and Freedom in the Workplace (New York: Greenwood, 1986), Chaps. 5-7; C. Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), Chap. 2; D. Schecter, Gramsci and the Theory of Industrial Democracy (Aldershot, UK: Avebury, 1991); C. Sirianni, Workers Control and Socialist Democracy: The Soviet Experience (London: Verso, 1982). 69 The latter proviso is intended to bridge gaps like the one between employed workers and unemployed or retired workers. Employed workers need to see themselves as potential members of those other groups. Similarly, immigrants and refugees, or their representatives, have a legitimate claim to input into decisions affecting them before they are granted formal citizenship

Notes to pages 235-52 305 rights. One way to defend this claim is to view them as 'displaced workers' and underline the possibility that Canadian workers might someday fall into this category. 70 R. Groff, 'Class Politics by Any Other Name: Organizing the Unemployed,' Studies in Political Economy 54 (1997) 91-117;J. Swanson, 'Resisting Workfare,' pp. 149-70 in E. Shragge (ed.), Work/are, Ideology for a New Under-Class (Toronto: Garamond, 1997). 71 See the alternatives to workfare 'newspeak' cited in Swanson, 'Resisting Workfare.' Conclusion 1 See 'Is This Still a Nation of Laws?' (editorial) Ottawa Citizen, 4 Oct. 1990, A10; F. Howard, 'Bean Sounds Like Saddam in Request to Block Bridge,' Ottawa Citizen, 2 Oct. 1990, A4. The Citizens longtime public service columnist Frank Howard was virulently anti-union, and his regular attacks on PSAC rivaled the Globe's Terence Corcoran in their thoughtfulness and moderation. His was the only regular newspaper column covering Ottawa public servants. Earlier, reputable academics had also been drawn into the fray, and some, like William Christian, tried to deploy the conventions of responsible government and the majesty of Parliament against PSAC. Christian's arguments appeared naive, complacent, and elitist at a time when popular respect for both conventions was at a historic low. See W. Christian, 'Who Does Daryl Bean Think He Is?' Globe and Mail, 13 Sept. 1991, A17. 2 See 'Strike at Rich, Unions Told,' Toronto Star, 14 May 1975, E13 (interview with PSAC activist Bill Fisher); London Edinburgh Weekend Return Group In and Against the State (London: Pluto, 198). 3 See G. McElligott, 'Coercive Power and the Limits of Workplace Democracy' (paper presented to the Society for Socialist Studies, Edmonton, 2000); or the shorter version, 'Police and Politics: Lessons from 'True Blue,"' Canadian Dimension 34/4 (2000) 25-8. 4 See G. Therborn, What Does the Ruling Class Do When It Rules ? (London: Verso, 1980), 59-62, 279-83. 5 Ibid., 62.

6 Ibid., 279.

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Index

A Strong Foundation, 217

accountability, 3, 165, 177, 185, 243. See responsible government actuarial ideology, 109-13, 116, 119, 120,125,137, 138, 169-70,189-96, 194 table 7.1, 203-4, 211-13, 244, 293n22 administrative debility, 58 Albo, Greg, 114-15,127 altruism, 38-42, 134-5 Ames, Lynda, 46 Andersen, John, 168 Andrew, Joan, 86, 144 Anti-Inflation Program (AIP), 57, 146-7, 153, 157 attitude adjustment, 115, 127-8 Aucoin, Peter, 63-4 audit revolution, 74—80 Auditor General, Office of the (OAG), 66-7, 74-80, 137 automation, 136, 166-7, 202, 206-7, 293n31 autonomy, 196-9, 202 Average Comparability of Total Compensation (ACTC), 146-7. See also collective bargaining

Bank of Canada, 74, 76 Bayat, Assef, 228 Bean, Darryl, 156, 158 beggar-thy-neighbour resistance, 18, 189 benefit of the doubt principle, 198-9 Bill C-21, 121-2 Blau, Peter, 20 boundary-spanning, 22-7, 29-30, 35, 59. See also Lipsky, M. Boyle, Chris, 60 Braverman, Harry, 30, 60, 63, 67-8 Brenner, Johanna, 48 bureaucracy, 7, 59, 157-8, 231 bureaucratic: personality, 19-20; disentitlement, 96-7 Burowoy, Michael, 63 Business Council on National Issues (BCNI),76, 128, 278n81 cadre role, 251-2 Cameron, Barbara, 116 Campbell, Kim, 140 Campbell, Marie, 67 Canada Labour Force Development Board (CLFDB), 122-5, 130-1

332 Index Canada Employment and Immigration Union (CEIU), 5, 145, 151, 163-5, 170-1, 173-7, 182-3, 185, 187, 218, 247-8 Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), 34 Canadian Chamber of Commerce, 203 Canadian Comprehensive Auditing Foundation (CCAF), 75-6, 78 Canadian Health and Social Transfer (CHST), 128-9 Canadian Jobs Strategy (CJS), 120, 130. See also labour market policy Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), 158, 209, 246 Canadian Labour Market and Productivity Centre (CLMPC), 101, 121-2, 125, 204, 209, 275n48 Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), 148, 150, 160, 171, 243 careerism, 51, 127-8, 184 caring work, 38-9, 46 chain of accountability, 220-1 Chorney, Harold, 58 Chretien, Jean, 250 citizenship, 224, 226 Civil Service Commission (CSC). See Public Service Commission Claimant Re-employment Strategy (CRS), 122, 138-9, 204-11. See also Canada Labour Force Development Board; consultation; labour market policy Clark, Joe, 81, 220 Clark, Glen, 129, 220 Clarke, Simon, 55 class, 25-31, 60, 259; location of state workers, 7, 28-9, 31, 60-1 clerical workers, 43

Clerical and Regulatory (CR) strike 1980, 145, 147-53,160, 242 clerks, 42-52, 147-53, 160, 242 client, 26-7, 39, 40-2, 98, 124, 129, 257n32,257-8n40: advocacy, 134-6, 167; service, 163-5, 170-1 client-centred organizations, 98-101, 100 fig. 3.1, 124. See also PS 2000 client-worker coalitions, 223-5, 230, 233, 235, 247-8. See also democratic administration; public service councils coalitions. See CEIU; democratic administration Cohen, Sheila, 32 collective bargaining, 12-13,33-4,37, 39, 56, 94, 95, 140-9, 150, 153-8, 159-61, 242, 285-6n, 297n98, 303n59. See also CEIU; pay equity; PSAC collectivist organizations, 226-7,231-6 common sense (respect, deference, faith) 8, 53, 68-9, 70-2, 94, 222 community: coalitions, 173-7, 182-3, 185,187,218,247-8; influence, 233, 303n60 company welfare, 262nl26 comprehensive (value for money) auditing, 66-7, 75-6 Comptroller General, 75 compulsory welfare, 179 consciousness, 9, 65-7 consultation. See PS 2000; labour market policy contradictions, 8, 94, 243; of Keynesianism, 7, 56 cooperation, 223 coping mechanisms, 24, 136, 163-4. See also employment counsellors; immigration officers; UI Agents

Index 333 corporatism, 113-14,121, 123-4 counter-management, 37,46,159-61, 164,165-71,171-4,177-87,205-11, 218-19, 222-4, 226-37, 242, 243, 246, 250-1, 300n21, 304n61, 3045n69, 304n66. See also CEIU; clerks; employment counsellors; immigration officers; UI agents counterpolicy, 229 craft unions and masculinity, 48 Cuneo, Carl, 111-13,124,212-13,244 D'Avignon Committee, 81-3 deal making, 36,157-8 deficits, artificial, 276n57 Delhi, Kari, 127-8 demand management, 130-2 democratic administration, 6, 244-5 dependency, 115 deportations, 182 deskilling, 67 Diefenbaker, John, 68 discretionary power, 136, 166-7, 171, 180,186, 202, 206-7, 211-12, 219, 229-30, 301n28 discretionary effort, 10, 94, 131, 137 divisions, 9, 294n45 Doherty, Bill, 149, 150 Drucker, Peter, 69 Dunk, Thomas, 116-17, 127 economic: demands, 32; compulsion, 58 Edwards, John, 94, 130 efficiency standards, 79, 137. See also productivity effort bargains, 11, 32, 36, 180 Eisenhower, Dwight, 69 electoral misrepresentation, 220 elite-focused methods, 8-9, 246

employee theft and tax evasion, 37-8 employment counsellors, 92, 132—40, 165-71,205-11 employment insurance. See labour market policy; unemployment insurance Employment and Immigration Canada (EIC), 5,76,86,107-9,117,11929,130-6,138-44, 204-5, 288n41 empowerment, 94-104, 125, 131 enforcement mentality, 135-6,163-5, 168,177-83,185,188, 251, 278n80 errors of stringency vs liberality, 103, 136, 191-2, 292n8; vs discretionary enforcement, 294n37. See also Auditor General; labour market policy; UI errors and abuse; unemployment insurance essential workers (designations), 150, 155-6, 242, 288n39 Evans, B. Mitchell, 85 Facey, Paul, 190, 196-201 fact-finding, 198, 200 Ferguson, Kathy, 4, 40, 124, 127 Finance, Department of, 73 fiscal crisis, 55-8, 94, 145-7, 157, 297n98 Fisher, Bill, 160 flexibility, 95 focus groups, 102 Forget Commission, 120,169-70,204. See also labour market policy; unemployment insurance Foucault, Michel, 251 Fraser Institute, 76 front-line decision-making, 18-22,24, 85,183-7,189,257n29,290n76. See also democratic administration; street-level bureaucrats

334 Index front-line workers, 19, 22-5,101, 164, 188-90, 200, 211-13, 219-20, 228, 250-1, 260n80, 288n45. See also democratic administration; responsible government; street-level bureaucrats functionalism, 245 Gaebler, Ted, 65-6 gatekeeping, 136-7, 139-40, 265n28 gender, 42-52, 115-17, 151-2, 249, 251 general strike (1991), 154-7, 243, 285n40-l, 288n39, 305nl Giampietri, Susan, 151 Giddens, Anthony, 59 Gindin, Sam, 301n42 Glassco Commission, 43, 74-6, 79-80, 82-3 Glassco's 'common sense,' 8, 53, 6874, 98, 240 Goffman, Erving, 19, 188-9, 230 Governing Values, 46, 86-90, 100, 130, 240 Gramsci, Antonio, 68 Greater London Council (GLC), 218 Green, Mendel, 179 grievances, 173-4, 288n46 group government, 304n61 Guard, Julie, 44 Hansen, Philip, 58 Harris, Mike, 126 hegemony, 178 hidden transcripts, 18, 153. See also Scott, James C. hierarchy, 46, 226-7. See also bureaucracy Hoover, Herbert, 69 Human Resources and Development

Canada (HRDC), 108, 117, 128, 232, 286n6 Hyman, Richard, 32, 36 ideology, 28, 87-8, 164, 249 illegal strikes, 47, 285n39 immigration officers, 35-6, 38, 46, 177-83, 234, 278n80 In and Against the State, 35-6, 38, 234 In Search of Excellence (ISOE), 63-4, 836, 140-4 Increased Ministerial Authority and Accountability (IMAA), 143 individualization, 26, 28, 30, 31, 62-3 industrial citizenship, 234 involuntary unemployment, 118 iron law of oligarchy, 226, 234 irresponsibility, of ministers and senior bureaucrats, 217-18, 221, 299nl7-18 Jessop, Bob, 28, 57,119 job classification system, 43 Job Information Centres (JICs), 2067 Johnston, Donald, 157 juries, 19, 255n6 Kerekes, Barb, 207 Kernaghan, Kenneth, 131, 298n5 Keynesian Welfare State, 7, 54-6, 58, 145-7. See also neoconservatism; labour market policy. Keynesianism, 7, 54-9 Krieger, Joel, 57 Kroeger, Arthur, 130-3, 140-1 LaReleve, 10,64,240 labour market policy 113-19, 120-2, 122-6, 130-1, 137-40, 204-11, 241

Index 335 Labour Force Development Strategy (LFDS), 120-1,137-40, 205-11. See also labour market policy Lambert Commission, 10, 81-2 legitimation 11,41,58,81-3,115,127, 142-3, 241 Lennon, Alan, 84, 86, 183, 208 limits in public sector, 12-13, 33-4, 140-7, 153-7 Lipsky, Michael, 7, 20-7, 35, 38, 61-2, 87-8, 96-8, 100, 118, 124, 145 local action strategies, 172 Local Advisory Councils (LACs), 120. See also consultation; labour market policy Loney, Martin, 119,212 Lowe, Graham, 43, 44 Lussier, Gaetan, 86-7, 130, 140-4 Luxemburg, Rosa, 32 Macdonnell, JJ, 74-6 MacEachen, Allan, 157 macho management, 12, 57, 153, 157-9 MacLennan, Carol, 69 Mahon, Rianne, 27, 40, 60, 245-6 management 8,9,10, 41,43-5, 53-80, 85,94, 101, 143, 217, 222, 240, 2467, 251-2, 294n45. See also Auditor General; D'Avignon Committee; Glassco Commission; Governing Values; In Search of Excellence, PS 2000; scientific management; Total Quality Management/Movement managerial Holy Grail, 85 managerialism, 66, 85 ManionJ.L., 140 Marchi, Sergio, 181 Marx, Karl, 58, 97 Marxist value theory, 76-7

Maslove, Allan, 57 mass processing, 24-5, 93, 195-6 Matas, David, 182 McBride, Stephen, 114-15, 123 McNamara, Robert, 84 merit system, 82 Michels, Robert, 234 Miller, Riel, 126 mission statements, 103, 141 mobilization, 36, 157-8 Mondragon cooperatives, 232 monetarism, 55, 74, 76 Mulroney, Brian, 64, 201, 203, 221 multiskilling, 95 mutual aid, 224-7 mythical scrounger, 119, 212, 201-5 neoconservatism, 6-8, 12, 34, 39, 52, 54-9, 63, 66, 74, 76, 78, 85, 94, 11323,126, 129, 136-41, 153, 162,211, 212, 223, 240, 241, 243, 296n64 neoliberalism, 7-8 new public management, 63 New Democratic Party (NDP), 34, 218, 221, 246-7, 250, 299nl3 Ng, Roxana, 133 Nielsen Task Force (on Program Review), 120 Nonini, Don, 18, 37, 189 nurses, 46-8, 67 O'Connor, James, 7, 22-3, 29, 56, 58, 93, 164, 188-9, 238, 245 occupational segregation, 43 Offe, Glaus, 7, 36, 56, 60, 98, 157-8, 273nl7 Office of the Auditor General (OAG). See Auditor General Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL), 126,211

336 Index Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), 250 Ontario Training and Adjustment Board (OTAB), 124, 126, 130-1 organization theory, 18-22, 59-60 organizational culture, 95-6,103,136, 139-40. See also PS 2000 Orwell, George, 84 Osborne, David, 65 Our Philosophy of Management, 141-4 Pal, Leslie, 110-13, 118, 125, 212-13, 244, 246 Palmer, Bryan, 164 Panitch, Leo, 33, 36, 58, 146, 220, 226 Paquet, Renaud, 159-60, 170-2, 184, 201 Pascucci, Cres, 173, 176, 178-80, 184, 196 paternalism, 7-8, 52 pay equity, 72, 154-5 Pay Research Bureau (PRB), 71 Peavy, R.V., 139 Peck, Jamie, 124-5 permanent exceptionalism, 158 Peters, Tom, 63, 83-6 petty bourgeoisie / new petty bourgeoisie, 5-6, 29,53, 59,61-2,81, 89, 110-11, 222, 239-49, 273nl7. See also policy making; street-level bureaucrats placement agencies, 133-6 police discretion, 24 policy making, 20, 27, 61, 200, 239, 273nl7 political rights, 220, 285n45 Poulantzas, Nicos, 7,28-31,35,37,56, 58, 60-3, 87-8, 111, 164, 178, 239, 245-6

Power Workers' Union, 228 Prior Learning Assessment (PLA), 126, 277n68. See also labour market policy; training prison privatization, 223 productivity, 5,11,57,70,77-8,81. See also Auditor General; unemployment insurance proper channels, 5, 153, 171-4, 177, 185, 222 Prottas, Jeffrey, 24, 171 public interest, 165, 220, 243. See also responsible government Public Sector Compensation Restraint Act (6 & 5),153, 160 Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), 37,82,94,102,120-1,14560, 173, 220, 242, 243, 285n40-l, 285n45, 288n39, 305nl Public Service Commission (PSC), 72-3, 108 public service councils, 235-7. See also democratic administration Public Service Staff Relations Act/ Board (PSSRA/PSSRB), 146-8. See also collective bargaining. Public Service 2000 (PS 2000), 10, 64, 82, 94-104, 120 Pulkingham,Jane, 115 quality, 103. See also service; Total Quality Management Quality of Working Life (QWL), 94 race, 24, 133-6, 177-83, 249 racism, 178 Rae, Bob, 221, 250 rationing, 24, 163-4, 196 Rawson, Bruce, 98 Reagan, Ronald, 64

Index 337 Reaganism, 63 reference groups, 24-5, 31 refugee coalitions, 177-83 Reinventing Government 65-6, 224, 225 Renaud,Judy, 151 representation and hegemony, 178 resistance, 4,5,9-12,18,19, 30-1, 368, 42-52,187, 189-205, 224, 230, 238,244,245,248-9,255n4, 255n6, 257n33, 285n39, 298nlOO responsible government, 33, 165, 217-22, 243, 299nl7, 299nl8 revitalization of employment services, 141 Riche, Nancy, 123 Roberts, John, 168-9 role confusion (and fiscal crisis), 19, 22-5,46,93,188-90. See also O'Connor, James Rothschild, Joyce, 231-2, 234 safety and weaponry, 181-2 Sampson, Pierre, 141 Savoie, Donald, 64 Schumpeterian Workfare State, 119 scientific management (Taylorism), 43, 46, 50, 82. See also management Scott, James C., 18, 189 security classifications, 50 Seguin, Francine, 97 self-management, 229-30, 236, 300n21 service, 10-11, 40-2, 89-90, 96-100, 102-3,131, 135-6, 163-5,168, 1701,177-83,185-6,188,230,239,251; to business, 133. See also PS 2000; state, as service organization Service to the Public Task Force, 96, 240. See also PS 2000 Shields, John, 85, 116

Silver, Jim, 63, 85-6 skills crisis, 124-5, 127. See also labour market policy, training. social contradictions, 25-7 social policy myths, 96, 98, 118 social-industrial complex, 164, 238. See also O'Connor, J. Special Operating Agencies (SOAs), 64 specialization and job ghettoes, 43 state, 22-3,27-38,59-68,89-90,98-9, 109-13, 163, 245; restructuring, 34, 39, 119, 223, 233. See also Reinventing Government state workers, 7, 28-9, 31, 33, 60-1, 217-22, 243; and unions, 162, 212 steering vs rowing, 65 strategic workers, 23, 59, 244, 247, 264nl8 strategic jobs. See Wright, Erik Olin street-level bureaucracy/bureaucrats (SLBs), 20-8, 30-1, 61, 93, 136, 163-4,195-7, 200, 239,247,256nl3 strikes, deferred, 95. See CEIU; collective bargaining; PSAC structuralism, 245-6 structure-function discrepancies, 98 surveys, 97 survival projects, 48 Sutherland, Sharon, 77-8 Swaggart, Jimmy, 144 Swarbrick, Anne, 149 Swartz, Donald, 146, 220 Swimmer, Gene, 57 Szajbely,Joe, 174—5 Task Force on Labour Market Development, 120 Task Force on Unemployment Insur-

338 Index ance, 114-17, 124, 126-8, 130-2, 137, 201, 276n53, 277n65 Thatcher, Margaret, 63-4, 67, 124 theory and policy process, 59-68, 109-13 Therborn, Goran, 251-2 There Are Real Alternatives (TARA), 224 There Is No Alternative (TINA), 218, 223-4 Thompson, E.P., 19 Thoreau, Henry David, 230 Toronto Union of Unemployed Workers (TUUW), 168-9 Total Quality Management/Movement (TQM), 33, 64, 96-9, 189 Trail, B.C. S^CEIU; community coalitions training consensus, 123-9 Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs), 121-9. See also labour market policy Treasury Board/Secretariat, 68, 73, 74, 78, 171 Turmel, Nicole, 151 two cultures, 138-9, 141 UI agents, 196-211, 293n31 UI enforcement, 137-8 UI errors and abuse, 103, 118, 136-9, 190-6, 194-5, 198-9, 207. See also Auditor General; labour market policy; unemployment insurance unemployment, 7-8, 58, 114, 118, 211; insurance. See also Auditor General; Canada Employment and Immigration Union; Employment and Immigration Canada; labour market policy

unions, 22-3, 31-8, 157-8, 225, 245, 251-2; power of, 36,157-8 Urwick, Lyndall, 69 Valcourt, Bernard, 182, 203 value for money (VFM). See Auditor General 'Values, Service and Performance,' 91-4 Vanderbilt, Amy, 135 victimization, 3-6, 44 voluntary quits, 201-5 wage controls (1976), 158. See also fiscal crisis; pay equity Waterman, Robert, 63, 83-6 weapons of the weak, 4 Weatherley, Richard, 25 Weber, Max, 20, 59, 231 welfare state expansion, 45 Whitt, Allen, 234 work fiddles, 196-205, 230 work to rule, 179-80 workaholism and oligarchy, 304n66 worker control, 32, 41, 251-2 worker-client coalitions, 22-3,58,164, 189 workfare, 129, 304n67 workload issues, 177, 179-80 Wright, Erik Olin, 23, 59, 244, 247, 264nl8 Yalnizyan, A., 127 zones of relative indifference, 24,171, 196 Zussman, David, 97