Klarinet Archive - Posting 000246.txt from 1996/02

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: On the matter of labor unions
Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 16:37:14 -0500

About a year ago, I was asked to do a brief piece for the AF of M on
unions. They never used the piece. Perhaps it was too up front. One
never knows. But I left it laying around.

Then, this week, there were several postings speaking about the
matter of labor unions andso I took it out and looked it over again.

Seems to the point. Hope you enjoy it.

SOME BASIC LABOR THEORY
and
THE CO-OPTION PARADOX

>From time to time - generally when we pay our union dues - one asks
oneself serious questions about being a member of a labor
organization. These questions include, but are not limited to, "Of
what value to me is the union?," "What benefits do I get?," and "Are
my benefits worth the money I pay?". These are reasonable questions
and labor organizations have been derelict - foolishly so - for failing
to remind their constituency, in easy to understand terms, of some
important basic labor theory that is relevant to contemporary
American society. Furthermore, years of corruption in some segments
of the labor movement, perhaps even our own, have permanently
alienated many workers. It is because we have forgotten how and why
we took this road, that the purposes of the American labor movement
have become muddled and opaque. This, in turn, helps to maximize
confusion about its value to ourselves; i.e., what is the purpose of a
labor organization to one who no longer understands or has lost track
of its mission?

But, even for those interested enough to ask questions about the
purpose of a labor organization, what one gets in response are a lot
of war stories to which we can no longer relate. We are told about our
parents and grandparents, most of whom who came to America as
immigrants. Their despicable working conditions are described in
lurid detail. But we heard those stories long before union
management dressed in Brooks-Brothers suits told us about them. We
heard them as children. Besides, what do past management abuses
have to do with contemporary society? That was yesterday. Move
ahead! Stay with the times. We are no longer in sweat shops. We do
not toil under merciless supervision in unheated, third floor, back
rooms with poor sanitary facilities, insufficient light, unsafe
conditions. etc., etc., etc. (As a side issue, care to wager a little money
on that?)

Like every generation, we think of ourselves as being members of a
contemporary and enlightened society. Our management is different,
even progressive. Our working conditions are safe and secure. Our
health is protected by an infrastructure of medical geniuses who can
transplant livers, cure tuberculosis, change our sex, and even cure
stage fright. The horror stories of, for example, New York's Triangle
Shirtwaist fire where 100 women lost their lives, are things of the past
and, as such, are irrelevant to us. We are modern people living
modern lives in modern conditions with modern management, playing
modern music on modern instruments, and we dress spiffily, too.

But, you need to be unfortunate to discover that the
employer/employee relationship does not move with the deliberate
speed that we are conditioned - by our employers - to presume. I am
not going to regale you with contemporary horror stories of
management abuses in America's garment worker's industry, though
it is an easy task to find such anecdotes. I only hope that your
personal circumstances never require that you earn a living in that
segment of labor society, for you will be cheated, overworked,
underpaid, stolen from, even sexually compromised should you be so
employed. Instead, I am going to speak of a basic generic human
instinct, one that time has not diminished nor modified. It is not
greed, not lust, not even the universality of sex, food, or territory. It's
abuse.

Despite the fact that any sentence containing the word "always" has to
be looked at skeptically, I make such an assertion now: management
abuse of employees will always occur. There are no exceptions. No
matter how enlightened or responsible the management, this axiom
has no exclusions; it is the nature of the employee/manager
relationship, for only by abuse of labor can management succeed in its
goals.

How is it possible for anyone living in an epoch rapidly closing in on
the beginning of the third millennium to make such an outrageous
statement? Unfortunately such a view of the management/employee
bond is nothing more than a function of simple business economics.
Management practices an enlightened attitude to employees only when
they can afford to do so. When times are good, benefits are showered
on employees in order to reinforce the belief of the enlightened,
progressive nature of modern management. But when times become
hard and that supposedly enlightened nature needs to assert itself, the
first casualties are those benevolent labor practices previously put
forward as evidence of management's inherently compassionate nature.

Espousing such a philosophy anytime between 1920 to at least the
middle of the 1960s invariably resulted in the accusation of "that's
communism, pure and simple." The use of the term "managers" (or
"bosses") in the same sentence with "employees" (or, God forbid, "the
proletariat" or "the working classes") has a ring of Karl Marx about
it. But the paradox of the perpetual saga of management abuse
derives from the fact that the objectives of management are inherently
in conflict with those of the workers; i.e., while both desire to make a
good product, management must maximize corporate profit while
employees must maximize personal income. Any well-run business is
a compromise of these two conflicting ideologies. It is the inevitable
abuse that arises out of management's need to reach its objective that
illuminates the need for a self-protecting bond, namely a union of
workers.

Management abuse of employees ranges from the trivial to the
egregious. To offset the abuse as much as it is possible, various
mechanisms are set in place by both parties. In the early days of
labor organizations, the implementation of these mechanisms was
often resisted by management, and sometimes physical violence was a
part of the alteration process, so strong were the feelings of both sides.
Legions of stories exist about management "goons" or strong-arm
thugs battling with labor organizers resulting even in the tragedy of
fatalities on both sides.

The establishment of a union of workers is, perhaps, the most
important step that can be taken to minimize management abuse of
its work force, though it will never eliminate it. And within the
provisions of union-sanctioned employment contracts, one finds
committees whose purpose is to be the watchdogs over management
practices.

However, as time passes, an unusual and paradoxical phenomenon
occurs. Slowly, but inexorably, both the union and the committee
workers begin to be co-opted by enterprise management. The outlook
of the committee begins to change until, eventually, the committee
members see problems through the eyes of management. Before long,
they see management solutions as superior to employee proposals (and
some may very well be, though not automatically). The committee may
express management views and minimize employee grievances. Such
committees begin to see themselves as explainers of management
policy, not as protectors of abused employees.

And that this happens should not come as a surprise. Labor behavior
is a complex event. The people involved are employees first, and
committee members second. Their ability to maintain their income
and retain a measure of social stability for themselves and their
families is held in the hands of the very people whose abusive behavior
they are, theoretically, set it place to monitor. At some deep level
arises the natural fear, "I could be next so perhaps making no waves
is the best course of action. Give a little. Live and let live.
Compromise. We can get ours in the next round."

None of this occurs at a conscious level and most committee members
would vigorously deny any such accusation. But that it occurs is a
universal law and is, perhaps, the main reason why committee
members should not retain their positions perpetually.

Any committee must guard against the inexorable pressure to act as
an agent of management. They are not elected to see management's
point of view. They are not even elected to be neutral. In fact, the
election to such a post compels a committee member to presume that,
in an alleged case of abuse, the employee is right and that
management is wrong; i.e., management must be prepared and willing
to defend its action and the committee must be prepared to inquire
vigorously on the employee's behalf. For a committee to stand aside
during this process under claims of neutrality is corrupt and venal.

A committee must continue to protect employees from management
abuse provided they agree that such abuse exists. How can they
determine this when all the facts are not only not available, but not
likely ever to be available? First, the automatic presumption should
be that the employee is right and the management wrong. Second, the
committee must become an investigative body and ask two critical
questions: is the evidence credible?; are the events probable? If not,
then the employee's grievance must be rejected. If so, then the
employee must be protected since he or she has lost the ability to
protect him/herself.

And now the hard part of the whole theory: if management is always
abusive, and if committees are set up to balance that abuse, and if
those committees have a natural tendency to get co-opted into acting
like management and eventually seeing things in their way, how does
one prevent the entire system from becoming cyclicly corrupt? What
is that cycle time?

The easiest and fastest way for the entire process to become corrupt
is for you to be perpetually uninvolved yourself. When that happens,
the corruption sets in right before your eyes. But since one chooses
to be uninvolved, the corruption simply grows.

The lack of involvement in the collaborative process of mutual self-
protection from abusive management is like a fierce and malignant
cancer. So one should not think of one's participation as an act of
protecting their brethren - though that certainly occurs. Taking part
should be proudly viewed as a supremely selfish act. In effect, one
participates because, by doing so, the fundamental goal of PTA occurs.
Those letters, in case you do not recognize them, mean "Protect Thy
Ass."

At least that is the way it is supposed to work!
====================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
(leeson@-----.edu)
====================================
====================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
(leeson@-----.edu)
====================================