"Employee Involvement" Plans

...In this way, the original insight that management needed to learn from workers was either lost or deemphasized in favor of helping workers and managers get along with each other...

...The focus of these shop-floor discussions varies...

...The problem is that the key to success in worker-management programs is never cooperation as such but always the genuine participation of workers in decisions from which they have been traditionally excluded...

...The vast majority of existing programs, whether in union or nonunion workplaces, are so heavily encrusted with protections to safeguard management's control and elf-esteem that little follows from them...

...Usually workers are given time off the job to assemble in a small group to discuss their ideas with management...

...Kelley-Harrison conclude: "the 'contentiousness' and give-and-take which characterizes the relationship between managers and workers in a unionized setting may actually be an advantage [for achieving productivity and efficiency...

...They argued: "Union-management cooperation tends to make management more efficient and unions more cost-conscious, thereby improving the competitive position of a business enterprise and increasing the earnings of both workers and owners" (Principle #35...

...One Blue Cross/Blue Shield office in Chicago calls its program "the Revolution...

...Auto and steel management saw "unionmanagement cooperation" as a Trojan Horse for "worker participation" and "worker participation in the creative phases of management" as a threat to their control not only of the workplace (which, of course, every word of any labor contract threatens some aspect of) but also of their business enterprise as a whole...

...Worker participation programs that do not challenge management's "right to manage" will not succeed in achieving what management itself says it wants—a more productive and efficient workplace producing better quality products and services...

...In these situations, union leadership has been able to mobilize workers to produce ideas to turn the situation around, and management is more likely to implement proposals for change coming from the shop floor...

...But they also advocated a "practical program that provides workers with effective direct participation (emphasis added) in the creative phases of management" (Principle #34...

...Though carrying on an important rearguard action around work rules and job classifications, unions accepted this trade-off and incorporated it into the "management clause" of most union contracts...

...In the typical success story, productivity and/ or product quality is dramatically improved (sometimes saving a plant that would otherwise have been closed), and workers and management both enjoy coming to work more than they ever did before...

...Also in the early 1970s, partly driven by a strike wave the likes of which the United States had not seen since the late 1940s and partly by academics' fascination with the young Marx's theory of worker alienation, many leftists drew on the academic critique of Scientific Management that had begun in the 1950s and advocated programs of "workplace democracy," "worker participation," and "workers' control...

...There's a basic gap between theory and practice, no matter which theory a union embraces on this subject...

...much more aggressive in pursuing "participation in the creative phases of management...

...Most of the institutions of workplace governance that unions have fought for (seniority systems, union shops, grievance procedures, and a wide array of workplace rights) have had beneficial effects on management practices—beneficial for workers, for customers or clients, and for the economic prospects of the enterprise— though they have clearly decreased management's discretion, its power to boss...

...This shift is most clearly seen in the federal government's role in encouraging these programs...

...Instead, the emphasis is now on how these programs can improve productivity and product quality in order to make American business more competitive...

...Thirty years later, in the early 1970s, businessschool academics had assembled a formidable body of evidence that supported Golden and Ruttenberg...

...Workplace democracy," like its predecessor "industrial democracy," made managers' teeth grind...

...Rare are either enthusiasts or resisters...

...On the subject of "employee involvement" or "labor-management cooperation," there is such a confusion of words (and initials) as to daunt even the most determined language analyst...

...Other important shifts occurred as these programs evolved from pilot projects in the early 1970s to proliferation in the 1980s...

...A public service is threatened with privatization by politicians looking for budget-cutting panaceas...

...Though consultants are often employed, urgency does not allow for a complete program of cooperationist training, and workers get more involved more quickly than in carefully prepared and planned EI efforts...

...As the first generation of consultants worked with unions and managements in developing pilot projects, it became clear that both sides had anxieties about where these programs would go in the long run...

...It is a position that the recently retired Machinist President William Winpisinger articulated forcefully for nearly two decades...

...I have had similar encounters with local leaders and staff from two other unions that had initially developed clear and well thought-out positions on this subject: the Auto Workers (UAW) and the Communications Workers (CWA...

...The UAW and CWA were not only supportive of these programs...

...Workers' control," for example, could not win management's ear...

...Increasing productivity is almost always a management goal...

...And the Philosophy of Labor At a recent educational conference of the Machinists union (IAM), I asked several groups of local officers and staff how many of their locals were involved in "employee involvement" (EI) or "labor-management cooperation" (LMC) programs...

...A series of safeguards and protections evolved to address management and union concerns...

...In an eighteen-month period, the Machinists came up with almost $80 million in cost savings that management, through a procedure established in the labor contract, had to implement...

...But the debate within the labor movement was a mere sideshow compared to the way managements reacted to the business-school critique (led by Harvard and M.I.T...

...In order to maintain both their control and self-esteem, American managements (first in steel and auto and then elsewhere) drew the line at Principle #32...

...The first generation of programs was usually called "quality of worklife" and the groups were instructed to talk about "anything and everything that comes up...

...Journalists, consultants, government agencies, and academics pick through a growing catalog of dramatic success stories, arguing about the importance of this or that aspect in achieving success...

...They were willing to pay a price for drawing the line there...

...Such training programs tend to become exercises in "unlearning" the collective bargaining experience...

...72 • DISSENT...

...Most unions have simply left their locals to respond to management initiatives as best they can...

...The whole experience is supposed to develop a cooperative atmosphere...

...of their fundamental practices...

...The adversarial system of bargaining and administering contracts was not attacked as such, but over time it came to be devalued...

...what in one place is "employee involvement" (EI) is at another "labor-management cooperation" (LMC...

...The consultants developed training programs where workers and managers got together to go through exercises to learn how to engage in "joint problem-solving...

...In these and other cases, the vast majority of savings are achieved outside of direct labor costs and as an alternative to cutting wages, standards, or jobs...

...Ironically, while this twisted evolution of what Golden and Ruttenberg initially saw as an important element in "industrial democracy" has successfully protected managements' control and self-esteem, it has made it almost impossible for these programs to increase productivity or improve competitiveness...

...The famous "cooperative period" between the Machinists and Eastern Air Lines (1984-85) was based on a unioninitiated and union-led EI-type program that the union forced from management as a condition for yet another round of wage concessions...

...Usually these groups generated ideas for improving the environment—painting the walls, better ventilation, keeping rest rooms stocked with paper towels...

...As the Reagan Department of Labor cut the budgets of the Occupational Safety & Health Administration, it gave increased support to the Bureau of Labor-Management Relations and Cooperative Programs...

...them" mentality that is essential to vigorous, militant unionism...

...In contrast to the official union position, local and regional leaders expressed a wide range of views about worker-management programs...

...This framework is controlled for the most part neither by managements nor by unions but by third parties—academics, journalists, and, above all, by EI/LMC "consultants" who are selling their services...

...The evidence that EI-type programs have great potential for improving productivity and/or product quality has always been anecdotal...

...Andy Banks and I have argued in several different forums that both these propositions are false, labeling them an "ideology of cooperationism...

...Management and union leadership each feared losing control as these small groups of workers and managers were encouraged to generate proposals for workplace change...

...Its position is to avoid them because even when not management scams they undermine the basic principles of unionism, blurring the "us vs...

...Others believed that some of the programs offered opportunities for the union to do things it couldn't do through traditional mechanisms...

...No matter how unionists worded it, this was "insulting" to management: "productive efficiency" is what managers are expected to be most expert in...

...Since then, programs have had endless variations...

...In the current context, it's hard to win a hearing for this view outside the labor movement...

...Various workplaces like to show their "creativity" by coming up with new names for standard programs...

...In this "win-win scenario," management gets improved productivity and/or quality...

...Although at some level management has to cooperate with its workers for one of these programs to be successful, the mere fact of cooperation by itself achieves nothing...

...The findings of the Kelley-Harrison study dramatically reinforce this argument that an aggressive union—not cooperation per se—is the key to successful worker-management programs...

...Thus, it is essential to begin with the history of today's worker-management programs...

...Nor are the conflicting views on this subject between left and right in the labor movement...

...What is essential is the participation of workers in management decisions from which they have been traditionally excluded...

...Irving Bluestone, a UAW vice president now retired, has been equally clear and forceful over the years in arguing this view...

...And both benefit from the increased competitiveness of their enterprise...

...In contrast, the real success stories tend to come out of crisis situations where the union is * Kelley and Harrison "Unions, Technology, and LaborManagement Cooperation," Unions and Economic Competitiveness (Sharpe Publishers, 1992...

...Under the slogan of "quality of worklife," which the HEW report had focused on, these unionists helped implement programs that they hoped would help relieve workers of the terrible physical, psychological, and social effects the HEW report had shown Scientific Management, and "bossing" in general, to be responsible for...

...Other unionists, like Winpisinger, were skeptical of the humanitarian possibilities in management's allowing workers some input into workplace decision making...

...In more than a thousand plants Kelley and Harrison studied, EI programs are about one-third more effective when there is a union present than when there is not...

...This line has been subtly but routinely crossed, though not usually in ways that have major impacts on the union...

...What this means is that an adversarial form of employee involvement has much greater potential for improving productive efficiency than existing EI programs...

...What began as a biting critique of management has been transformed into a sideswipe at adversarial unionism...

...Get a dozen auto or telephone workers together, however— workers who have experienced these programs for more than a decade— and you'll get the same range of opinions that I found among the Machinists...

...Winpisinger and Bluestone were among the few labor leaders whose views were explicitly informed by democratic socialist traditions...

...Most common is a conflicted (and often confusing) recitation of pros and cons...

...As it becomes more available the KelleyHarrison study should cause a rethinking of this entire subject...

...they were enthusiastic and had initially demanded them from management at General Motors and (the former) A.T.&T...

...In the 1940s and early 1950s, unions forced managements in major industries to accept most of Golden and Ruttenberg's Principles 1 68 • DISSENT Employee Involvement through 31, which dealt with the mechanics of bargaining and administering contracts, including the establishment of steward systems...

...A bureau in the Reagan-Bush Department of Labor plays a role in managing this interpretive framework by providing funds for research and educational activities...

...But sophisticated social science is not what is driving the proliferation of these programs in one workplace after another...

...In this context, adversarialism was conceived of as "constant bickering and fighting," rather than as a formal system through which parties with opposing interests resolve their differences...

...In the branch plants of multiplant companies, those with unions and without EI programs are nearly WINTER • 1992 • 71 Employee Involvement twice as productive as those with Elf programs but without unions...

...In the EI/LMC world unionists were explicitly instructed on how to take off their "adversarial hat" and put on their "cooperative hat...

...But more startling is their finding that the presence of a union in a workplace is much more important in increasing productivity than the presence of an EI/LMC program...

...Though union experience with them has dulled both apprehension and enthusiasm, they continue to pose imporWINTER • 1992 • 67 Employee Involvement tant theoretical and practical issues...

...Called "quality circles," these focused on ways to improve product quality...

...What has caused all the excitement about EI-type programs is a number of success stories...

...The whole presentation had to both make the point embodied in Golden and Ruttenberg's Principle #32 —that management had to draw on the insight and knowledge of the people who actually do the work if it wanted to improve productivity and product quality—while at the same time making management feel comfortable that this could be done without its losing control or too much damage to its self-esteem...

...Most thought the programs were fairly harmless...

...Some felt the programs in their workplaces were undermining the union and they would get rid of them if they could...

...Many practical unionists like Irving Bluestone seized on this concern with "bluecollar blues" and "worker alienation" to revive an aspect of Golden and Ruttenberg's Principles...

...On most issues the Auto Workers and Machinists are clearly in the progressive wing...

...Vestiges of the early 1970s concern with worker dissatisfaction, and with the impact of management bossing on the nation's health and welfare, have disappeared...

...No matter how it was said, this business-school critique called for radical changes in management practices, but the words that were used in advancing the cause of "workplace reform" were important...

...Golden and Ruttenberg called for "unionmanagement cooperation [emphasis added] to reduce costs, eliminate waste, increase productive efficiency, and improve quality" (Principle #34...

...An overwhelming majority said they were...

...In the unkindest cut of all, the HEW report presented substantial evidence that top-down Scientific Management "bossing" was undermining productivity growth...

...Essential to these programs is some sort of small group talk process where management solicits workers' suggestions for improving the labor process...

...In the last decade worker-management programs have proliferated in both union and nonunion workplaces...

...On the other hand, substantially different programs are called the same thing...

...There is more here than just a healthy diversity of views...

...some "team concept" programs are just like the vast majority of "employee involvement" or "quality of worklife" (QWL) programs, while others are nearly the exact opposite of EI and QWL...

...Phrases like "going beyond collective bargaining," which had originally meant adding something to collective bargaining, came to mean "overcoming the debilitating effects of adversarialism...

...What's important here is the interpretive framework for explaining why these programs succeed when they do succeed...

...The overall record of EI-type programs in achieving their goals is unimpressive...

...But in a highly class-conscious way, Big Business management drew the line at Principles #32 through 35, declaring a "right to manage" that they said the Steelworkers, Auto Workers, and other industrial unions were trying to undermine...

...Wage increases, cost-of-living adjustments, pensions, and health insurance—these could be granted (when workers were mobilized to struggle for them), but only if unions would cede any claim to management's right to "sole responsibility for productive efficiency...

...The key idea behind the employee involvement programs was articulated in 1942 by Steelworker staffers Clinton Golden and Harold Ruttenberg...

...Faced with a management threat to outsource an entire department, for example, UAW Local 686 at Harrison Radiator in Lockport, New York, needed only three weeks to develop more than twenty proposals for cost savings—only three of which were needed to save the department...

...What is unusual about the Machinists and the Auto Workers is that their leaders have taken clear, though opposing, positions on this subject...

...Another group of early programs was adapted from the Japanese...

...The same program can be called by four different names...

...70 • DISSENT Employee Involvement The majority of existing EI-type programs achieve little or nothing...

...In 1972 the Nixon administration's Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW), in its report Work in America, even argued that Scientific Management and its fanatical attempt to control workers' every move was a main culprit in undermining the "health, education and welfare" of all Americans...

...In their classic The Dynamics of Industrial Democracy, the "Principle of UnionManagement Relations #32" is "Management's assumption of sole responsibility for productive efficiency actually prevents the attainment of maximum output...

...To protect the union contract, something called "the collective bargaining line" was drawn, prohibiting any discussion or action on any subject covered in the contract...

...Though often exaggerated, particularly in journalistic accounts, these success stories are genuinely moving...

...Unions, even where they were not skeptical of management's motives (which they usually were), feared that workers in these small groups would accidentally give away pieces of the contract, establishing new precedents on work practices that it had sometimes taken decades to win...

...A plant or a department within a plant is threatened with being closed...

...With wages, standards, and jobs threatened, unions focus on forms of mismanagement they had previously tolerated...

...they were sure that management would inevitably use QWL to undermine other rock-solid aspects of unionism like the steward system, work rules, and job classifications...

...And there's a fundamental confusion in what used to be called the philosophy of labor...

...Workers get treated like intelligent human beings...

...Some dramatic exceptions aside, managements will not stop their bossing—they will not learn to manage better—unless and until unions organize their members to make them...

...This is remarkable because the IAM is one of the few unions that has had a clear, well thought-out position on these kinds of programs...

...But there are a growing number of cases where an EI-type program has achieved dramatic results, sometimes saving a plant that had faced extinction...

...Their official positions were that these programs could benefit both workers and management by winning new levels of dignity for workers while producing shop-floor ideas that would improve the functioning of the business...

...The critique was, essentially, that management's fanatical attempt to control every aspect of work was actively suppressing the insights and knowledge of WINTER • 1992 • 69 Employee Involvement workers doing the work...

...This finding is largely consistent with other empirical surveys that attempt to measure the relation between EI/LMC and productivity...

...But they all seem to agree on two propositions: 1. Whatever else is involved in a successful program, the necessary condition of success is that labor and management cooperate with each other instead of fighting each other...

...As important as what these programs are actually doing is the interpretive framework through which they are viewed...

...Such training is weighted toward management perspectives while engaging in many exercises designed to break down lack of trust between the parties...

...A recent study by Maryellen Kelley and Bennett Harrison—the most sophisticated and rigorous evaluation of these programs so far—found that most EI-type programs actually reduce productivity...

...2. To fully benefit from EI-type programs, both sides have to overcome the debilitating effects of adversarialism and therefore substantially transform labor relations as they have traditionally been practiced in the United States...

...And although the terms are often used as though they are synonymous, the overall emphasis has shifted from "employee involvement" to "labor-management cooperation...

...A company is seeking one more round of concessions from the union in order to avoid bankruptcy...