Changing the Relationship in the Workplace
So Workers Deserve More, and Bosses, Less

For the entire 20th century, workers have been under the control of their employers, while the unions, for the most part, played along with this unfair arrangement. It was a far cry from earlier centuries when workers maintained independent control of their occupation through various trade guilds.

While there is much talk about maintaining the “partnership” between the employer and his workers, actually, they are in fundamental conflict. Consider these facts:

• Workers are completely dependent on the employer for their jobs, their livelihood. The employer can hire them if it is profitable to do so, or fire them, whenever he wants to.

• When they step into their workplaces, workers are controlled by the employer or his managers. Their job classification, shift status, starting and quitting time, rest periods, vacation schedule and other workplace matters are arranged at the convenience of the employer, with hardly any input from the workers, unless they have a strong union to modify some of the conditions.

• Workers have to comply with company rules about dress, proper behavior to superiors, absences, lateness and whatever else the employer insists on. Workers can be “written up” for failure to obey the rules; warning comments can placed in their personal files, causing considerable anxiety when that happens.

• The employers’ control over workers’ lives reaches beyond the workplace. They have been spending millions of dollars to deny workers the right to join a union, although employers can freely join any organization they choose to. They oppose legislation to raise the minim wage, improve health and safety laws, provide paid sick leave and other measures that would make life more tolerable for working people.

Unless they are self-employed, workers in private industry have become hostages to their employers. They have no choice but to accept the wages, benefits and working conditions of their employers. Even with a union to negotiate for them, hey have no job security, no matter now long and faithfully, they’ve worked for their employer.

What Changes Are Needed to Give Workers a Fair Deal?

We’d like to hear from our three AFL-CIO executive officers and any of the 51 members of the Executive Council about what course of action they favor in considering the economic future of workers and unions. .There are roughly three choices before us:

(1) We can continue to comply with the current labor-management relationship, which gives complete ownership, profits and control over the workplace to the employers, or

(2) Assuming significant growth in union membership and aggressive action, we can modify some of the lopsided features of the relationship in the workers’’ favor; or

(3) We can strive to make fundamental changes in the relationship, in which management and production policies, as well as the distribution of profits, are shared equally between workers and the employer..

In considering labor’s future, silence is not an option or a sanctuary from making a choice. We have to deal with the fact that layoffs are increasing, union membership is falling, bargaining strength has been weakened, wages are stagnant and the unorganized workers won’t be rushing to join unions, even with passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

If we stick to the status quo, we’re going to slide further down toward enfeeblement. We’ll lose the power and advantages that a union provides.

We think that union officers and members should express their views, since whatever course is adopted also concerns their future.

Article 3 of “Labor Talk” will continue the discussion of Labor’s future. It will be posted on Tuesday, October 6, 2009.