THE TRADITIONAL IR
SYSTEM
|
THE
ASSUMPTIONS UNDERLYING
|
References
Barbash, Jack. 1980. "Collective Bargaining and the Theory of Conflict." British Journal of Industrial Relations, 18: 82-90.
Barbash, Jack.
1981. "Values in Industrial Relations: The Case of the Adversary
Principle." Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Industrial
Relations Research Associations. Madison: IRRA: 1-7.
Edwards, Richard and Michael Podgursky. 1986. "The Unraveling Accord: American Unions in Crisis." In, Richard Edwards and Michael Podgursky (Eds.), Unions in Crisis and Beyond: Perspectives From Six Countries. Dover, MA.: Auburn House: 14-60.
Kerr, C. 1954. "Industrial Relations and the Liberal Pluralist." Proceedings of the 7th Annual Meeting of the Industrial Relations Research Association, Madison: IRRA: 2-16.
Murray, A.I. and Y. Reshef. 1988. "American Manufacturing Unions' Stasis: A
Paradigmatic Perspective." Academy of Management Review, 13:
639-652.
Job Control Unionism
The following is adapted fromKatz differentiates between business unionism and job control unionism. Business unionism conveys a union's political platform and refers to labor's general acceptance of the capitalist system and rejection of a more radical and broader political platform. Job control unionism refers to the particular form of union participation in decision making and the scope of that participation. Although the North American unions' job control focus is strongly supported by and consistent with their business unionist philosophy, it is possible for a union to follow business unionism and not be job control oriented.
Job control unionism has produced a unique
industrial relations system that is characterized by the three basic elements.
First, the labor relations system relies
heavily on formal, written, and legalistic procedures.
Traditional collective
bargaining agreements are voluminous and specify employment terms and conditions
in fine detail. The operation of the grievance procedure with its formal four
steps in which higher levels of management and the union are called in to settle
a dispute and quasi-judicial opinions are issued by third-party
arbitrators contributes to the legalistic and formal nature of the system.
A second aspect of the job control orientation is the large role played by the detailed job classification system, which includes specification of the exact requirements of each job. These detailed job classifications are the basic ingredients of the complicated seniority bumping rights, shift preferences, and other job rights regulated by the national and local contractual agreements. An important feature of the job classification system is the fact that wages are tied to each classification, not to the worker.
A third defining attribute of the job control system is the limited involvement of workers in production or business decision making. Clearly through collective bargaining, workers and their unions significantly affect employment conditions. Yet the workers have little, if any, involvement in ongoing production decisions. The system is one where management pays for the workers' hands but is not interested in use of the workers' minds.
Why Job Control Unionism?
Management. For management the job control focus served the important function of containing the union's and worker's penetration of issues deemed to be managerial prerogatives. Containment of the union was a central objective for management in the postwar period. The labor relations system that emerged largely resolved this concern by limiting the bargaining agenda. Furthermore job control unionism meshed well with management's adherence to scientific management, which professed the advantages of supervisory authority and a clear definition of workers' responsibilities.
For many years, this system has served well corporate interests. During negotiations over wages adherence to the wage rules led the parties away from any discussion of either company profits or prices. For example, why should the parties discuss corporate profits since whether profits were drifting up or down had little impact on either wage changes or the negotiated fringe benefit package? Nor was there much reason for negotiators to debate broad corporate concerns such as investment planning, parts outsourcing, and problems associated with the introduction of new technologies.
Workers. At the local level the job control focus similarly discouraged worker involvement in business and production decision making. The resolution of disagreements through the grievance procedure and the reliance on the detailed local contract as a guide to worker responsibilities left little room for alternative forms of worker participation in decision making.
Unions. For the unions, notwithstanding their limited bargaining agenda, this system did produce satisfactory outcomes. Job control unionism helped to bring about a production system that generated high rates of growth in workers' real compensation and long-run growth in employment.
The limited bounds of collective bargaining also were consistent with the economic paradigm of the unions. This paradigm had helped to create in labor an acceptance of private property and a general acceptance of the capitalist system. Labor's limited involvement in business decision making was highly compatible with this framework and its voluntarist traditions.
Adversarial Labor Relation
Labor's business unionism and broad acceptance of the capitalist system did not preclude the emergence of adversarial relations on the shop floor. The central element of this adversarial pattern is the low trust with which labor and management view each other. From labor's side a lack of trust in management in part springs from the ever-present fear that management will use any available opportunity to remove the union from the plant. On management's side the low trust seems to arise from the fear that labor will utilize its representation rights and bargaining power to press unwarranted and damaging demands. Nonetheless, in the presence of low-trust relations, it makes sense for both sides to seek protection in the legalistic and formal adjudication of disputes and work rules. By regulating work conditions through legalistic documents and focusing their fights over narrow interpretations of the terms of the collective bargaining agreement, both sides were protected from the possibility that more free-for-all bargaining would jeopardize their security. In that way job control unionism was very compatible with business and adversarial unionism.