Unionbusting 101
In These Times gives us this inside look at a seminar on how to prevent your workers from unionizing. (HT Kevin Drum) Here’s a sample:
Once the seminar got underway, I learned that all of us were doing
the right thing in resisting unions. “We believe that the union is
irrelevant for the 21st century,” declared Lotito. Unfortunately,
“unions have new weapons.” To make his point, he waved a clipping from
the New York Times describing some recent public relations woes
of Wal-Mart. “The risk for some organizations is not that you’re going
to be organized from within,” he advised us. “It’s that you’re going to
be organized from without.”
My fellow students, of whom there were about 20, came from various
parts of the country. We got to know one another a little when Lotito
invited us to share our reasons for taking the course. It became like a
support group. “We want to go to union-free, but we’ve got a bullseye
on our back,” explained Martin, a tough-looking distribution supervisor
for a food services company. “It’s a big threat.”
Donna, a human resources manager for a discount chain store with a
gung-ho manner, was more upbeat. “I’ve never dealt with unions, and I’m
dedicated to making sure that we keep them out of our distribution
center,” she vowed. “It’s my mission!”
Back in the day I supervised a group of Teamsters. In this particular place (a hospital), the stewards were surly and arrogant and were frequently unreasonable as well.
But I know without a shadow of a doubt that if the workers had not been unionized, we would have exploited and run over them without mercy. Looking back at that experience, I learned how to really look at things from the workers’ side and it helped me subsequently.
(Treating workers with respect is also good business.)
Although my background is in federal sector HR, I never worked in LMR per se, but I dealt with union reps not a few times in staffing and less so in classification and training.
I knew instinctively that, as unagidon notes, “treating workers with respect is…good business.” Regrettably, I too often worked for management that didn’t give a damn for unions.
Years ago while still employed by the Office of Personnel Management, I heard a union president tell me how surprised he was at the respect our area manager showed the rep on visits to our office. We gave him honest answers to questions of a general nature and treated him as a fellow human being. We didn’t try to “bs” him. He apparently did not get such treatment from his agency’s LMR folks.
One of the federal installations in our area, in fact, had the highest number of unresolved ULPs of ANY federal facility/office within the entire federal government — and this sad fact was a matter of record!!! (It was a Navy facility.) Upper management made life hell for the union, and the union retaliated by doing everything it could to hamstring ALL of management. Upper management — especially the “4-striper” — was his own worst enemy, and repercussions reverberated all the way down to the shop floor!
I’ve always believed there’s been a proper place for both management and labor, and we should expect each side to try to safeguard its interests. However, we also know that management almost always has the upper hand. How it treats labor, organized or otherwise, goes a long way in determining the future viability of an enterprise.
Instead of learning how to resist and oppose unions and unionization, management likely would be better off learning how to work with its employees — and learning how to bargain in good faith!
Management without organized and happy workers looks a whole lot similar to a 20th century socialist “republic.” Henry Ford and a lot of other big bidness bosses didn’t look a whole lot different from the Soviets in terms of how they treated the common worker.