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How Many of These Are Anti-Union Practices? A US Perspective
George Strauss
| Until fairly recently Australian labour history and academic industrial relations (the two constituting almost a single field) focused almost exclusively on workers, unions, and the operation of arbitral tribunals. It was assumed that management's role was uniformly reactive and negative and therefore not worth studying. The recent broadening of the fields to include managers and management strategies represents a healthy development and a realistic recognition that today it is management which often has the upper hand. Only recently have Australian scholars become interested in deunionisation and this suggests an important difference between our two countries since union decline has been a major subject of scholarly interest in the United States (US) for many years. |
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The present symposium, with four very different cases, raises some interesting questions, especially as to what we mean by 'anti-union'. Do we approach this question from the perspective of unions or of management? Are anti-union strategies those which are designed with the intent of weakening unions or are they those which have the effect of doing so? 'Intent' is difficult to prove or even define, as any lawyer will tell you. As for 'effect', management strategies designed to weaken unions may backfire and actually strengthen them. On the other hand, those designed for other purposes, for example to facilitate recruitment of skilled workers in a tight labour market, may eliminate causes of worker dissatisfaction and so make them more resistant to unionisation. |
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For some Marxists and many economists, the sole goal of managers is to maximise profits. Further many of the same people believe that having a union automatically reduces profits. Thus for suspicious people almost everything management does in the broad human resources area is ipso facto anti-union. I think this conclusion overbroad. Management has other things to do besides fight unions. It needs to make and sell things, and faces a variety of pressures – not just from its employees, but from its customers, its stockholders, and the government. Thus – and this is my main point – management's motivation is often more complex than just anti-unionism, as the four articles in this collection illustrate. |
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The Four Cases | |
| The cases come from rather different industries and involve a variety of 'anti-union' techniques. Further they arose in a context quite different from the American one with which I am familiar. Thus for me they raise some interesting questions of the kind that labour historians might wish to consider. In particular they illustrate the problems in determining whether a particular management activity is 'anti-union'. |
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In the article by Peter Sheldon, was the Sydney Water Board anti-union in resisting mechanisation? Sheldon's article concludes:
The Water Board's strategic decision to embrace mechanisation belatedly thus had nothing directly to do with protecting its employees' health ... It responded to the Board's desire to re-shape the labour market so as to guarantee a fulsome, continuous supply of much more dependent labour and, at the same time, severely debilitate the RSMU [Rockchoppers' and Sewer Miners' Union of NSW].1
But if mechanisation weakened the union, why didn't management do this sooner? My guess is that the horrible conditions prior to mechanisation actually made the union more militant. Certainly that wasn't management's intent. Note that in bargaining both sides gave higher priority to higher pay than to safer work conditions. Delay in mechanisation may have been anti-worker but I don't see this as necessarily anti-union. In fact the effect of eventual mechanisation was to weaken the union. |
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Suppose the union had gone on strike with mechanisation as its single demand and had done so after publicising the nature of its problems? Would this have secured more public sympathy for their cause than did their actual demands for arguably exceptionally high wages? Would the Water Board, as a politically appointed public body, have been more sensitive to public opinion than a private firm would have been? Perhaps the real problem was an unimaginative leadership on both sides. Or was the real problem that neither side saw mechanisation as a solution to silicosis? Or perhaps for rockchoppers, risking one's life was an Australian 'manly' virtue? Or was the hidden issue management's prerogative, that is while management reluctantly accepted wages as an appropriate subject for bargaining, working conditions were not? And that the union implicitly accepted management's logic? These are the kinds of issues which might be explored in this and other cases. |
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Ray Markey and Greg Patmore deal with Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI)'s works councils. These could have played an important role during the time they existed (1942–75). This was a period when formal industrial relations in Australia were still highly centralised at the Arbitration Commission level. But there was also considerable highly informal workplace bargaining, with the unions (or at least the workers) utilising forms of 'industrial action', such as slowdowns, as bargaining weapons. As I saw it in 1986 when visiting Australia, this informal bargaining was more concerned with resolving specific grievances than in establishing general work rules. Workers' spokespersons in these negotiations often were their union stewards; in other cases they had no formal role at all; in either case shop-floor labour relations were often chaotic and unpredictable. As a result there was a representation and problem-solving gap which works councils potentially might have filled. Apparently at ICI this never happened. |
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Based on the article it would seem that ICI's use of works councils was at most only slightly anti-union. Management was careful to exclude from works-council discussion matters appropriate for collective bargaining and worker representatives were selected by the workers themselves. Later, however, as the union became more militant, the union tried to get the councils to take up 'bargainable' matters. When management resisted, both parties lost interest. Even before that councils seem to have dealt only with trivial issues. I suspect few tears were shed when these councils disappeared altogether. |
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The third case in this collection, that by Naomi Segal on worker surveillance in the gold mines, is fascinating in its Wild West detail; however it suggests that blacklisting and the use of company spies for union prevention were less common in Australia in the early 1900s than they were at the time in the US and probably even now. Management's primary interest in this case was to prevent gold-dust thievery, not union prevention. |
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The final case (Hearn Mackinnon) describes Rio Tinto's carefully designed, successful deunionisation programs at four of its mines. One of the secrets of the company's success was patience. At first it dragged out the bargaining process till workers began to doubt the advantages of being unionised. Then it offered individual contracts which were more favourable to workers than the collective contracts which they replaced. Finally it took advantage of the law which progressively became more favourable to management. Additionally it had the advantage of some apparently rather passive unions, which of course had little experience in dealing with a militant management. In any case it would seem that Rio Tinto's motive was clearly anti-union, the only case of our four which was clearly so. |
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Works Councils: Are They Anti-Union? | |
| To what extent could the works councils at ICI be viewed as anti-union? Are all works councils or their equivalents anti-union? To be sure, sometimes they are, but not always. The last half-century saw a world-wide growth of alternative representational forms which supplement or take the place of traditional unions, especially with regards to workplace (as opposed to economic) issues. Elsewhere I have called these 'participatory bodies'.2 Here, to be consistent with the usage in other articles, I will call them 'works councils'. In any case their variety makes generalisation hazardous. Such bodies may be established unilaterally by management (as they were at ICI), by union-management agreement (which was typical in the US auto and steel industries), or by law (as in continental Europe). They may have narrow jurisdictions (eg the organisation of parking, safety, or merely the Christmas party) or they may cover every sort of human resource issue not subject to collective bargaining or not covered by the existing union contracts (or enterprise agreements and awards in Australia) although sometimes they seek to deal with these too. Their members may be appointed by management, selected by the union, or directly elected by the workers. Their decisions may be mandatory or advisory. Their jurisdiction may cover single departments, an entire plant or an entire multi-plant company. Their relations with management may be hostile or friendly. |
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US union attitude towards joint committees designed to deal with subjects normally considered within management's exclusive jurisdiction varies considerably among unions. During the 1980–90s several US unions, notably the Auto Workers and the Steel Workers, campaigned actively for the establishment of 'joint' bodies dealing with a broad range of subjects, from safety and alcoholism to quality and work flow. The Steel Workers succeeded in placing a union representative on the board of directors of every major steel company. Many joint committees had real power. Some committee assignments were fulltime plum jobs: their incumbents were relieved of other work but still received their regular pay. In some auto plants as much as one per cent of the workforce engaged in such full-time 'jointness'. Most of these schemes were designed to increase workers' influence or at least discretion, and generally to give them greater control over how they did their work. So if the union's influence was decreased (and that rarely happened), that of individual workers went up. Research suggests that many of the schemes (not all: many atrophied or were quickly abandoned) raised both productivity and job satisfaction and so were in the interests of management and workers alike. Despite this, in recent years, as a result of the economic crisis and concession bargaining, much of the 'jointness' structure has been dismantled. |
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Deunionising: US Compared with Australia | |
| How does deunionisation Australian style differ from its American counterpart? First it should be noted that American union decline is due largely to the decline in employment in industries, such as autos, steel, and railroads, which are already unionised, as well as union failure to organise employers such as Wal-Mart, and industries such as finance, which never have been unionised. So the US management's approach might better be called union prevention, not deunionising.3 |
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Another difference is in our laws. In the US unionisation is an all-or-nothing matter: either a union is the 'exclusive bargaining agent' for all of the employees in 'an appropriate bargaining unit' or it represents none of them.4 In Australia, at least until 2008, it was possible for two workers to work side by side doing the same job, yet one could be covered by an old-fashioned award or collective agreement and the other by an individual contract. So you can have situations, as in many of Rio Tinto mines, where an employer may be only partially unionised. |
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Another example of the all-or-nothing basis of American labour law involves works councils. In the US, the ICI works councils would have been considered 'company unions' and therefore illegal since they apparently were established without obtaining union approval. In the US workers have the choice of an independent union or no union at all. Historically the reason for this is that in 1935, when the National Labor Relations Act or Wagner Act was being considered, many companies installed 'company unions' as a means of defeating the organising drive led by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). In 1996 a Republican Congress sought to lift all restrictions on participative plans, management controlled or not, but President Clinton vetoed the proposed act. |
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Another difference, of course, is that American employers are well prepared to deal with unionisation efforts and most unions today are reasonably well prepared to deal with management's resistance. The problem is that so far managements' weapons are generally more effective. In any case, the legal battlefields in the two countries are quite different. |
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Managerial Motivation and Culture | |
Managerial strategy depends partly on its 'culture', a set of values typically determined by top management. My comments here are inspired in part by Jonathon Rees, who is critical of the 'new labor history'. Rees argues that
too many practitioners of the new labour history treat management as robotic, profit maximizing entities. When new labour historians consider the culture of workers, they do so to help explain their economic decision making because they recognize that individual workers and groups of workers are interested in more than just money. Yet they refuse to attribute to management the same cultural complexity they attribute to labor.5
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Years ago I interviewed the owner of the sole remaining non-union firm in a highly competitive industry. I asked him how he kept the union out. 'Simple', he said, 'I pay 10 per cent more than the union scale'. 'But why do you do that?' I asked. 'Because it is my firm and it was my father's firm before me. I spent my life building it up. I don't want any union interfering. Money isn't that important to me. Being my own boss is'. His motives were clearly anti-union. Presumably other managers in his industry had other motivations. |
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Just as it would be a mistake to assume that profit-maximising is management's sole objective, so it would be an oversimplification to assume that union avoidance is. Managers have multiple motivations and these differ among managers. |
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As Rees points out, during the early 1900s many US steel companies were highly paternalistic. They offered a variety of benefits, such as stock purchase plans, pensions, employee cafeterias, elaborate accident prevention programs, and the like. They did this, Rees argues, despite there being little evidence that offering these schemes helped reduce the considerable labour unrest (unionism) which marked this period. Instead (this is my argument, not that of Rees) their behaviour reflected the general values of the progressive period in US history. Andrew Carnegie, for example, was a major philanthropist. As Rees notes, 'These programs had a greater effect on management's feelings of noblesse oblige than they did on individual employees'.6 But which particular benefits they offered reflected their particular values. As Rees argues: 'Steel firms would likely have been anti-union no matter what cultural factors influenced them but the particular cultural factors that influenced them helped determine which anti-union policies they followed'.7 Stock purchase plans were entirely consistent with management's attitudes toward the free enterprise system. On the other hand, US steel companies persisted into the 1920s in requiring workers to work a 12-hour day, despite considerable evidence that such lengthy workdays contributed to accidents and even reduced productivity. Why? As Rees says, many managers themselves had worked long hours in their youth. As one top executive put it, he was 'brought up on a farm and has himself worked long hours ... The important thing in the world is achievement. America is in danger of being ruined by prosperity and relaxation'.8 So from his perspective working long hours was morally good.9 |
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In contrast with steel, the US garment industry was dominated by small firms with most owners and workers being recent Eastern European Jewish immigrants who in varying degrees were sympathetic to socialism. Understandably these firms were easily unionised and their unions provided 'paternalistic' benefits such as medical clinics and summer camps. |
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Though managerial cultures differ among industries and companies, they do also among countries and times. Phelps Brown (1983) ascribed differences among US, British and Australian industrial relations systems in large part to history which contributes to national character and values. Thus the legitimacy of unions was more accepted in Australia than it was the US.10 As a visiting American in 1986 I was amazed how supine many Australian employers seemed to be. I asked an Australian employers' association official why his employers didn't resist unions more vigorously. 'What would be point?' he said, 'the Commission would knock us down'. I wonder whether my association official would have taken the same defeatist position in 2006 during the Howard administration that he took in 1986. But even in 1986 there were American transplants in Australia which were willing to take a tough anti-union stand. |
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Historians may well wish to examine the determinants of changing management attitudes towards unions over time. |
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Tavistock | |
| As a final comment, I found it very interesting that in both the ICI and Rio Tinto cases consultants connected with the Tavistock Institute in London played a role: Fred Emery at ICI and Elliott Jaques at Rio Tinto. During the 1940–50s Tavistock was a pioneer in the study of socio-technical systems and various forms of participation. The Glacier Company in London was a laboratory for Tavistock; at least it was for Jaques who made it the subject of two books11 and numerous articles. Jaques – an MD and psychoanalyst – designed a complex representational structure for Glacier (too complex to describe here) which was intended to maximise participation and improve communications, especially among the various levels of the organisation. All this was quite unorthodox, as the following story illustrates. |
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A friend of mine from my graduate school days later became Glacier's Personnel Director (and later still a California labour lawyer). When I was in London in 1957 I called him up to see whether we might lunch sometime. 'Not this week,' he said, 'I'm in the midst of negotiations'. I asked, 'With what union?' 'No' he replied, 'This is Glacier. I represent Senior Level Managers in our negotiations with the Board of Directors'. |
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Actually blue-collar Glacier workers were represented by five different unions even though only about half of these workers were union members. Jaques' unusual representation plan had been discussed ('negotiate' may be too strong a term) with these unions which agreed it might be implemented subject to certain conditions. These conditions were that a majority of the workers were required to vote for it in preference to conventional shop steward representation (in the end 60 per cent did) and that worker membership on key committees be confined to union members.12 Only two topics were not to be discussed in the representational system: wages (which were set by national union agreements) and the national union policy that in case of redundancy married women are laid off before men.13 Clearly in Jaques' scheme union-management participation in determining wages was less important than individual worker participation in such things as determining production methods. Wages were set on the national level by top-level officials, production methods in the shop by workers themselves. |
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Over the years Jaques' interests changed and so did Tavistock's and it is unlikely that Jaques wanted to replicate Glacier at Rio Tinto. However the Glacier experience (as described by Jaques) suggests that there are other and perhaps more effective ways of representing workers' interests besides conventional union-management bargaining, especially if the union is undemocratic or ineffective, as are some US unions. The danger is that these unconventional systems may be appropriated by a management more concerned with the needs of the organisation as a whole than those specifically of workers. |
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Conclusion | |
| My main point here is that no clear distinction can be drawn between managerial activities which are anti-union and those which are not. Most managerial activities are multi-motivated: to help solve real problems, to raise morale, to develop loyalty and also perhaps to keep out unions. Indeed labour historians might be better advised to study the determinants of specific human resource practices rather than attempting to distinguish between those which are anti-union and those which are not. A second comment: management anti-unionism in Australia is rather weak tea compared with its counterpart in the US. |
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George Strauss is a retired Professor of Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley and past Director of the Berkeley campus's Institute of Industrial Relations. He is also Past President of the (US) Industrial Relations Research Association. His research and writings have involved broadly industrial relations, organisational behavior, and human resources management with a special emphasis on workers' participation in management and the internal life of unions.
<Strauss@Haas.Berkeley.edu.>
Endnotes
1. Peter Sheldon, 'Silicosis, mechanisation and the demise of Sydney's Rockchoppers' Union, 1908–18', Labour History, no. 97, November 2009, p. 31.
2. G. Strauss, 'Collective bargaining, unions, and participation', in F. Heller, E. Pusic, G. Strauss, and B. Wilpert (eds), Organizational Participation: Myth and Reality, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998, pp. 97–143.
3. Since 1947 American law has provided for the decertification of which have previously been certified (the rough equivalent of Australian registration). This is by secret ballot with the process started by a petition signed by 30 per cent of the relevant workforce. Such decertification elections are not very common. A considerable proportion occurs because a union has in effect abandoned a group of workers or another union seeks to displace the incumbent.
4. Some lawyers, eg Charles Morris, The Blue Eagle at Work: Reclaiming Democratic Rights in the American Workplace, ILR Press/Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2005, argue that the present law gives 'minority unions' – that is unions whose members include only a minority of bargaining unit in a situation where there is no certified exclusive bargaining agent – the legal right to bargain on behalf of its members. So far this is a minority position among lawyers.
5. J. Rees, 'John Fitch, David Brody, and the culture of management', in D. Lewin and B. Kaufman (eds), Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations, JAI, Kidlington, UK, 2003, p. 199.
6. Ibid., p. 211.
7. Ibid., p. 200.
8. Ibid., pp. 212–13.
9. Probably the main reason motivating management was that steel mills had to be operated on a 24-hour basis. So management's main choice was between 12 and 8-hour shifts. Management was not prepared for the latter.
10. H.P. Brown, The Origins of Trade Union Power, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1983.
11. W. Brown and E. Jaques, Glacier Project Papers, Heineman, London, 1965; E. Jacques, The Changing Culture of a Factory, Tavistock Publications, London, 1955.
12. Later the workers voted to return to something like a more traditional representational system with the main difference being the role of first line supervisors and administrative staff in the overall system of organisational governance, see Jaques, The Changing Culture of a Factory, p. 152.
13. Some Tavistock workers opposed the Jaques system on the grounds that it would weaken class solidarity with workers in other companies; see Jaques, The Changing Culture of a Factory, p. 43.
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