Employees can become collateral damage

PBN Staff

08/09/2009

Recent developments in Washington, D.C., are compelling U.S. employers to make a critical strategic decision: on how high a priority to place on their employees.
Though many might decry the timing of this decision, the alignment of key political factors has set the stage for an epic struggle between management and labor. At the epicenter is the proposed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which purports to make it easier for workers to join unions.
If this desperate tug-of-war between unions and management continues, one thing seems clear: employees will become collateral damage. Here’s why: the on-going workplace warfare is not about making workers a priority; it’s about the relative power of unions and management in the United States.
By giving most employees the right to form and join unions, Congress added a third party to the labor relations process whose role is to help achieve a balance of power between employers and workers. More than 70 years later, that balance remains elusive, and employees have been downgraded from players in the process to spectators.
Because survival is the No. 1 priority for unions and management, at times their respective struggles take precedence over workers’ interests. The lack of an employee focus is exacerbated by a zero-sum perspective that causes the two sides to square off as adversaries, with each party demonizing the other.
Given that the management-union power struggle has eclipsed employees’ needs, it is clear that the United States labor relations process is in need of substantive reform. However, EFCA and piecemeal mechanisms such as reversible executive orders, politically driven National Labor Relations Board rulings, and “employer neutrality” requirements are not the ways to ensure balance. Employees must be allowed to participate fully in the labor relations process. Congress has an opportunity to improve the law rather than merely fix it, and should take the opportunity to do so. The labor relations process need not be adversarial. A recent opinion piece in this paper by Ted Almon characterized the relationship between The Claflin Co. and its union as “a most productive partnership.”
Unfortunately, this situation is the exception rather than the rule. More common is the confrontational approach embodied by the position taken by some labor leaders that unless future green jobs are union, they will be low-end, poverty-level jobs. This stance seems to preclude any possibility that the wages employers will offer for jobs created by projects like Rhode Island’s planned off-shore wind farm, for example, will compensate workers fairly for their value.
This perspective makes it clear that it is time to refocus attention on employees. When workers are a high priority, they provide excellent service, customers are satisfied, the company makes money, and stakeholders are well-served.
To make workers a high priority, I suggest organizations create employee-centered workplaces. Achieving this goal requires commitment and collaboration from all parties and from politicians. Here are a few concrete examples of the above suggestions for each of the parties involved:
Management:
&#8226 Assess the four areas that influence employees’ perceptions about how they are treated on a daily basis and take immediate action on areas that need improvement.
&#8226 Train all managers to act legally and ethically whether or not employees choose to seek union representation.
&#8226 Provide employees with factual information about their rights under existing labor laws.
Employees:
&#8226 Ask questions of employers and of union organizers. Get the facts about what each party realistically can and cannot do within existing economic constraints. &#8226 Learn employee rights under existing labor laws.
&#8226 Be clear about the consequences of your choice – i.e., how will union representation change the workplace?
Unions:
&#8226 Provide employees with realistic information about their return on union dues.
&#8226 Set and enforce high standards for organizers’ behavior.
&#8226 Avoid setting unachievable expectations. Disillusioned workers make dissatisfied union members.
Politicians:
&#8226 Make employees the priority instead of pay-back to management or unions for political contributions or other support.
&#8226 Improve the labor relations process by making it truly balanced.
&#8226 Pass legislation that is employee-centered – i.e., ensures procedural fairness and due process for all parties.
The strategic decision of how high a priority to make employees has implications beyond the current union-management power struggle and the debate about the Employee Free Choice Act. Of greater importance to all Rhode Islanders, the decisions organizations make informs the answers to questions such as these:
&#8226 How well are you able to prepare now for the economic recovery?
&#8226 How do organizations ensure that their workers can be fully successful?
&#8226 Once things turn around and people have alternatives, how do employers hold on to current workers?
&#8226 How can the state retain college-educated residents and younger people who enter the work force with high expectations of how they will be treated?
Without a common, employee-centered approach to the workplace, the very people the labor relations process purports to protect will become collateral damage.