REVIEWS:THE VICIOUS CIRCLE:CONTROL & ANTI-UNIONISM
Grenier, Guillermo
INSIDE THE CIRCLE: A UNION GUIDE TO QWL by Mike Parker. Boston: Labor Notes-South End Press. 154 pp. $10. Since 1973, when the government report Work in America officially proclaimed the...
...Parker briefly mentions the Hawthorne Studies of the 1920s and 1930s as well as quickly reviewing social science research into QWL...
...The pride unionists have traditionally expressed in their work, for example, the QWL program manipulates into a misplaced loyalty to the corporation and a destructive competition with fellow workers...
...The five major goals of QWL, according to Parker, are: (1) benefiting from the workers' knowledge about the labor process, (2) achieving greater cooperation from unions in introducing new technology, (3) acquiring new flexibility and greater control over production decisions, (4) contract concessions, and (5) undermining unions...
...Today well over a million problem-solving groups of one kind or another meet regularly in the United States as small-group QWL techniques become the leading human relations strategy of managers...
...He calls ours the age of "improved Taylorism," since now managers often achieve their interests with the support of workers...
...The issues affecting daily work are discussed regularly at QWL meetings while most unions interpret bargaining in its narrowest sense of yearly contract negotiations...
...New strategies are needed to combat the erosive effects of QWL, and Parker suggests a few, ranging from the general necessity for increased solidarity among unionists to a detailed eleven-point outline for the development of a union-run QWL program...
...Since 1973, when the government report Work in America officially proclaimed the American worker to be unhappy, unwilling and unproductive, managerial ideologues have concentrated on the development of a control strategy grounded in the liberal concept of "worker participation...
...So while he is critical, he is also realistic...
...He recognizes the split in the labor movement concerning QWL and tactfully refuses to blame anyone for the official AFL-CIO position supporting QWL in unionized shops...
...Seemingly overnight thousands of Quality Circles and other Quality of Worklife programs have sprung up...
...Unionists are up against decades of managerial expertise in manipulation and control...
...This workplace humanism emphasizes the uniqueness of the individual, the legitimacy of managerial prerogatives, and the importance of worker contributions to the stable operation of the enterprise while carefully avoiding discussion of power-sharing or worker control of production or investment decisions...
...Due to this capacity to humanize coercion, QWL programs are now "the instrument of choice for achieving or restoring workplace control...
...Parker insists that managerial interests have not changed since the days of Taylorism...
...These goals are attained, at the expense of union power and the solidarity of their members, by picking apart the "way of thinking that makes unions possible in the first place...
...Both unionists and managers boast that through QWL training not only do workers and managers begin to see the problems of the enterprise through a single lens, but the casual observer will be unable to tell them apart...
...These interests remain constant: an increase of managerial control over the production process...
...This reinforces one of the major arguments of anti-unionism: the "old way" of doing things (unionism) is anachronistic in today's fastchanging work environment...
...Quality of Worklife (QWL) has become a hot topic in labor relations and management schools...
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...Drawing heavily from his experience as a unionist involved with UAW/QWL programs, Parker guides us through the mine field of managerial control in the ostensibly neutral, treacherously seductive world of consultant-designed human relations techniques...
...What makes these programs effective is how they build on concepts and emotions familiar to unionists in order to redefine their perception of the nature of work...
...This equality, like most of QWL dynamics, is an illusion...
...For Parker, QWL is an acronym for Qualitatively Weaker Labor...
...While it would help to know a bit about the QWL battles fought during the last decade to appreciate the book fully, Parker's argument is simple and convincing: where unions exist, QWL programs will weaken them and where unions do not exist, QWL will be used to keep it that way...
...From this orgy of success Mike Parker dissents...
...Not only is this futile in practice, Parker argues, but it weakens unions...
...Instead, he argues that those who support QWL know little 380 not only about the long-range results of such programs, but also how the very design of the program serves to coopt and coerce workers into viewing the experience of work from the managerial perspective...
...While he sees some potential for turning QWL programs against management, Parker sees no organized attempt by labor in that direction...
...Consultants wax lyrical with stories of how workers become leaders and leaders become workers...
...Consultants have started dusting off their "small group dynamics" manuals and, looking to Japan 379 for counsel, gainfully marketing them as the cureall for American industry...
...He also packs several appendixes full of resource materials for unionists interested in or forced to work with QWL programs...
...For unionists, and anyone interested in detailing how the modern class struggle is waged inside workers' minds, this is an important book...
...He argues that what we have here is not the overcoming of traditional failures to communicate, but rather a calculated attack on unions by managers and consultants who have finally learned how to combine the subtle powers of small group dynamics with anti-unionism...
...United for the common good, goes the story, managers and workers are finally discussing mutual problems, each bringing to the meeting bits of the puzzle that, when solved, promises to make American industry whole again...
...It revives the old "human relations" approach to curtail the destructive effects of worker alienation and restore productivity...
...If the "we-they" mentality is the root of unionism, as Parker explains, the gist of the QWL mentality is the acceptance of a monolithic "we...
...Equality at last...
...By most accounts QWL is really an acronym for Quasi-Worker Liberation...
...In fact, the only identifiable strategy unions have is to keep the QWL program separate from the collective bargaining process...
...In fact, he attributes the best intentions to pro-QWL unionists like Irving Bluestone who support QWL in behalf of democracy and dignity, not productivity...
Vol. 33 • July 1986 • No. 3
