De re/De dicto ambiguities and the class struggle

If you follow the news in Ontario, you likely heard that our education workers are demanding an 11.7% wage raise in the current round of bargaining with the provincial government. If, however, you are more actively engaged with this particular story—i.e., you read past the headline, or you read the union’s summary of bargaining proposals—you may have discovered that, actually, the education workers are demanding a flat annual $3.25/hr increase across the board. On the surface, these seem to be two wildly different assertions that can’t both be true. One side must be lying! Strictly speaking, though, neither side is lying, but one side is definitely misinforming.

Consider a version of the headline (1) that supports the government’s line.

(1) Union wants 11.7% raise for Ontario education workers in bargaining proposal.

This sentence is ambiguous. More specifically is shows a de re/de dicto ambiguity. The classic example of such an ambiguity is in (2).

(2) Alex wants to marry a millionaire.

There is one way of interpreting this in which Alex wants to get married and one of his criteria for a spouse is that they be a millionaire. This is the de dicto (lit. “of what is said”) interpretation of (2). The other way of interpreting it is that Alex is deeply in love with a particular person and wants to marry them. It just so happens that Alex’s prospective spouse is a millionaire—a fact which Alex may or may not know. This is the de re (lit. “of the thing”) interpretation of (2). Notice how (2) can describe wildly different realities—for instance, Alex can despise millionaires as a class, but unknowingly want to marry a millionaire.

Turning back to our headline in (1), what are the different readings? The de dicto interpretation is one in which the union representatives sit down at the bargaining table and say something like “We demand an 11.7% raise”. The de re interpretation is one in which the union representatives demanded, say, a flat raise that happens to come out to an 11.7% raise for those workers with the lowest wages when you do the math. The de re interpretation is compatible with the assertions made by the union, so it’s probably the accurate interpretation.

So, (1) is, strictly speaking, not false under one interpretation. It is misinformation, though, because it deliberately introduces a substantive ambiguity in a way that, the alternative headline in (3) does not.

(3) Union wants $3.25/hr raise for Ontario education workers in bargaining proposal

Of course (3) has the de re/de dicto ambiguity—all expressions of desire do—but both interpretations would accurately describe the actual situation. Someone reading the headline (3) would be properly informed regardless of how they interpreted it, while (1) leads some readers to believe a falsehood.

What’s more, I think it’s reasonable to call the headline in (1) deliberate misinformation.

The simplest way to report the union’s bargaining positions would be to simply report it—copy and paste from their official summary. To report the percentage increase as they did, someone had to do the arithmetic to convert absolute terms to relative terms—a simple step, but an extra step nonetheless. Furthermore, to report a single percentage increase, they had to look only at one segment of education workers—the lowest-paid segment. Had they done the calculation on all education workers, they would have come up with a range of percentages, because $3.25 is 11.7% of $27.78, but 8.78% of 37.78, and so on. So, misinforming the public by publishing (1) instead of (3) involved at least two deliberate choices.

It’s worth asking why misinform in this way. A $3.25/hr raise is still substantial and the government could still argue that it’s too high, so why misinform? One reason is that puts workers in the position of explaining that it’s not a bald-faced lie, but it’s misleading, making us seem like pedants. but I think there’s another reason for the government to push the 11.7% figure, it plays into and furthers an anti-union trope that we’re all familiar with.

Bosses always paint organized labour as lazy, greedy, and corrupt—”Union leaders only care about themselves only we bosses care about workers and children.” They especially like to claim that unionized workers, since they enjoy higher wages and better working conditions, don’t care about poor working folks.^[1]Indeed there are case in which some union bosses have pursued gains for themselves at the expense of other workers—e.g., construction Unions endorsing the intensely anti-worker Ontario PC Party … Continue reading The $3.25/hr raise demand, however, reveals these tropes as lies.

For various reasons, different jobs, even within a single union, have unequal wages. These inequalities can be used as a wedge to keep workers fighting amongst themselves rather than together against their bosses. Proportional wage increases maintain and entrench those inequalities—if everyone gets a 5% bump, the gap between the top and bottom stays effectively the same. Absolute wage increases, however, shrink those inequalities. Taking the example from above a $37.78/hr worker makes 1.33x the $27.78/hr worker, but after a $3.25/hr raise for both the gap narrow slightly to 1.29x, and continues to do so. So, contrary to the common trope, union actions show solidarity rather than greed.^[2]Similar remarks can be made about job actions, which are often taken as proof that workers are inherently lazy. On the contrary, strikes are physically and emotionally grueling and rarely taken on … Continue reading

So what’s the takeaway here? It’s frankly unreasonable to expect ordinary readers to do a formal semantic analysis of their news, though journalists could stand to be a bit less credulous of claims like (1). My takeaway is that this is just more evidence of my personal maxim that people in positions of power lie and mislead whenever it suits them as long as no one questions them. Also, maybe J-schools should have required Linguistics training.