Richard B. Freeman and Joel Rogers's What Workers Want
Kornblum, William
WHAT WORKERS WANT is a sharply focused study of how American workers think about workplace participation. Its authors, Harvard economist Richard Freeman and University of Wisconsin...
...The unspoken lesson of the research, for this reader at least, is that despite their relative weakness, unions remain workers' best bet to win power and gain meaningful forms of cooperation in the workplace...
...Or perhaps the results would have been different if the Worker Representation and Participation Survey (WRPS), as it was called, focused on the public sector, where union membership is still rising...
...They desire a greater role in the workplace but doubt management's willingness to share power...
...Six percent of the respondents said they had taken their grievances before a governmental agency...
...It does, however, offer much to mull over for trade unionists and their allies...
...Here is how Freeman and Rogers sum up their study: "Our central finding in What Workers Want is that, given a choice, workers want `more'—more say in the workplace decisions that affect their lives, more employee involvement at their firms, more legal protection at the workplace, and more union representation...
...Seventy-five percent of the union members in the sample agreed...
...They found only very modest differences between public and private sector workers in the United States...
...It includes a national survey of more than two thousand workers, extensive focus groups with workers, and a variety of in-depth discussions of specific workplace issues...
...The evidence in the Freeman and Rogers survey is that it would not...
...they chose an organization run jointly by management and labor," and that their strong preferences are for worker representation by independent election...
...Worse still, about two-thirds of union members said they would prefer a weaker form of workplace cooperation approved by management over a more powerful form opposed by management...
...The carefully measured Dunlop Commission report made a plea for fairer rules governing union representation elections and more assurance of contracts to follow union victories...
...Notably, the workers surveyed flatly rejected such favorite management strategies as mandatory arbitration with company-appointed referees...
...Workers, in contrast, are willing to support many different types of workplace initiatives at cooperation...
...Once again, these survey results offer strong support for what unions traditionally stand for...
...They also encouraged similar surveys in Great Britain and elsewhere...
...Only 10 percent of American workers are in the public sector, and it was too costly to include them in the initial sampling plans...
...As with all sur120 n DISSENT / Summer 2000 BOOKS vey research, one would wish for a far larger sample to permit many more subgroups of workers to reliably speak their mind (minority group members, women and men, workers in different industries, and so on...
...But a high proportion were dissatisfied with their experience...
...Aside from the law's delay and related frustrations, part of the problem is that the majority of workers believe they have rights on the job that they simply do not possess...
...Workers' preferences, for independently elected worker representatives, for example, are essentially pro-union...
...Do these findings point to a pervasive timidity among American workers...
...Its authors, Harvard economist Richard Freeman and University of Wisconsin sociologist Joel Rogers, began releasing results of the survey on which the book is based in 1995...
...Most workers interviewed did not see their unions as involved enough in the daily round of workplace decisions...
...They write persuasively about the higher productivity and other business opportunities more worker participation on the job would yield...
...Behind the obsessively neutral language of survey research is the expression of old-fashioned class interests...
...Would more government regulation in areas of worker rights, safety, and antidiscrimination answer the desire for greater say at the workplace...
...But there is scant evidence in the research to suggest any change of heart in the ranks of capital...
...These results point again to the great unfilled need for progress in worker rights on the job...
...Perhaps we should not have been so surprised at worker sensitivity to management atDISSENT / Summer 2000 n 121 BOOKS titudes at the workplace," Freeman and Rogers admit...
...WILLIAM KORNBLUM is a member of the Dissent editorial board and professor of sociology at the City University of New York Graduate Center...
...Freeman and Rogers document the wide gap between workers' desire for meaningful power and their actual participation in workplace decisions...
...They embrace the idea of binding arbitration but only if they have full say, through their elected representatives, in choosing the arbitrator...
...More than anything, the authors find, workers want their voices to be heard...
...About 75 percent of management respondents said they strongly prefer to deal with workers as individuals rather than in groups...
...But they remind us that "workers did not choose an organization run by management...
...Throughout the book, managers are found to support cooperation in the workplace when it does not mean giving up any power whatsoever...
...Indeed, 32 percent of nonunion respondents said they would choose a union at their workplace if a vote were held tomorrow...
...Reports in the press at the time wrongly characterized the study's results as unfavorable to organized labor...
...And to check whether American workers are indeed more timid on these issues than their counterparts elsewhere in the world, they conducted a comparable survey in Canada, the largest survey of workers in that nation's history...
...Government agencies are not the route toward greater say on the job, even if legislation might be necessary for its eventual achievement...
...Eighty three percent believed, for example, that it was illegal for the boss to fire them for no reason or for refusing an assignment to hazardous work...
...But do unions actually stand for greater say for workers on the job...
...The new book presents the survey's findings with engaging analysis and unfailing clarity and in the main the news is quite favorable for the labor movement...
...But in an era of intensive use of opinion polls, this one is a model of careful questioning and even-handed analysis...
...Richard Freeman was a member, in the first Clinton administration, of the ill-fated Dunlop Commission on the Future of Labor-Management Relations...
...122 n DISSENT / Summer 2000...
...The authors' fine chapter on how workers judge government regulations only reinforces this point...
...Another 17 percent said they knew a colleague who had done so...
...And a central lesson of the study is that workers want more say in every aspect of their work lives, including their unions...
...Although this book does not go into comparative detail, the authors note that there were no significant differences between private sector workers in Canada or the United States, but that "British workers seem less cooperative and more aggressive in their attitudes toward management than either Americans or Canadians...
...They have strong ideas about how their genuine involvement could improve not just their private lot but also their companies' fortunes...
...Of course there is unlikely to be any kind of shift toward greater workplace democracy in the current political environment...
...This is a message about workplace democracy that union leaders would do well to build into their organizing strategies...
...And perhaps more of their fear of confrontation would vanish if unions could get a fair chance to make their case at the workplaces...
...Are workers so cowed by their employers that they fear conflict more than they want power or even a say in the workplace...
...If you are in a room with a 900-pound gorilla, better that it be good-natured and friendly than hungry and angry...
...Fortunately, Freeman and Rogers did get to address the question in a later survey of public sector workers...
...The vast majority of them also admitted it would hurt their careers "a great deal" if their workers decided to form a union...
...Most workers reported that existing institutions— from unions to EI (employee involvement) committees to government regulations— are either insufficiently available to them or do not go far enough to provide the workplace voice they want...
...For example, 73 percent of all workers surveyed felt that a workplace organization that represents their interests can only be effective if management cooperates...
...Dissatisfied with the absence of workers' voices during the insiders' deliberations, he and others convinced the managementoriented Sloan Foundation to "undertake as objective and scientific a survey as we could of worker views toward how workplaces operated and how their workplaces might be improved...
...For union leaders and their allies the news about workers' desire for cooperative representation on the job is more ambiguous...
...But the Dunlop Commission's mild recommendations in this direction were immediately bashed by the triumphant Republican congressional majority after 1994...
...The result is the most ambitious study of workplace democracy in the past generation...
...The Freeman and Rogers research reports on workers in the private sector...
Vol. 47 • July 2000 • No. 3
