Look Before You Leap

The decision to participate in a redesign initiative can often be reduced to a single question:

Will AFSCME members be better served by participating in redesign or by refusing to participate?

Maintaining the status quo is usually not an option. In response to political and financial pressures, government employers will often seek to downsize, privatize, and otherwise change the way government works whether or not the union is involved.

What's in it for management?

When considering a joint initiative, it is important to realize that managers of different levels will have different interests and motives. For example, elected officials tend to adopt a short-run, quick-fix outlook. Since their term of office is limited, and they likely have been elected with a mandate to instantly cure the ills of government, they may favor actions that promise immediate, visible results. This presents a challenge for the union since quality efforts are inherently geared toward long-term, incremental change. Elected officials may be supportive if an immediate achievement can be identified. For example, the act of implementing a labor-management program itself can be publicized as evidence that the government is being redesigned, giving due credit to the elected official under whose watch this occurred. This momentum could be carried forward until the program shows visible results.

Career managers, especially middle managers and line supervisors, have different interests than elected officials. Their jobs security is not as tightly coupled with election cycles, so they can afford a more long-run view. These managers are also more likely to perceive a direct threat to their authority from worker participation in decision making, so they may try to undermine the whole idea. To increase the appeal of joint activities to this group, their "win-win" nature can be emphasized. Labor-management cooperation offers managers the opportunity to increase their effectiveness by working with front-line staff, unions, and other managers to eliminate bottlenecks, open communications, increase flexibility, and develop a well-trained workforce. In case this does not do the trick, a commitment from top management to deal with recalcitrant managers is helpful.

A major obstacle to achieving true partnership may be the management rights clause which, in most collective bargaining agreements, cedes to management considerable authority to manageday-to-day operations, reinforcing the "command-and-control" mode of work organization. Implementing joint quality initiatives involves modifying traditional management rights, a change that usually does not come easily. The union's ability to accurately represent workers' point of view to management, enlist worker support for workplace improvements, and provide continuity so that improvements survive in the long run, can provide management the incentive to consider this change.

What's in it for the union?

Aside from the opportunity for front-line workers to use the know-how they have developed over the years, participation in true quality efforts gives the union input on issues critical to workers but not usually covered in collective bargaining - issues of quality, cost, and timeliness of public services, which bear directly on workers' job security. Participation can also provide the union with access to strategic planning information not typically shared in a traditional bargaining relationship. Insight into those plans gives the union enormous leverage to protect members' jobs and enhance public services.

What's in it for the union is also the opportunity for members to become involved in a meaningful way in functions that are both productive and enriching - rede signing jobs so they make sense, serve the public, and give workers a secure future.

Not everyone will be comfortable with this new role. Very effective negotiators who have won hard-fought battles over the years may worry that they are not suited for participation in quality initiatives. In reality, only a strong unionist - one who truly speaks for the membership - can effectively engage in joint activities.

Conditions for meaningful participation

Participation is most successful when:

• the union and management acknowledge each other's legitimate roles and functions; 
  
  
• there are mutual interests and goals on which joint action is possible; 
  
  
• the parties recognize that conflicts will occur, that they are not inherently bad, and that joint initiatives should value resolution of conflict above avoidance of conflict; 
  
  
• there is an atmosphere of basic respect, trust, and value for all employees and the diversity they bring to the workplace; 
  
  
• information is shared openly and candidly; and 
  the parties exhibit patience and perseverance. 
  
  

Above all, though, in order for participation to succeed:

• the union and management must be committed to organizational success, and willing to assume responsibility for achieving it; 
  
  
• management must be willing to share authority, including strategic decision-making authority, and accept the union and front-line workers as valuable partners; 
  
  
• workers and the union must be ready to exercise authority responsibly and re-think long-cherished beliefs; and 
  
  
• workers must have employment security. No one can be expected to "cooperate themselves out of a job." 
  
  

The situation in many workplaces may be a far cry from those described above. The adversarial nature of traditional labor relations has conditioned both union and management to operate in a climate of low trust, withholding information from the other party and questioning the motivation and sincerity of their "opponent." Moreover, it would be naive to expect government managers and policy makers to be instantly comfortable with the notion of sharing power with the union.

In many cases, genuine worker participation is so alien to management's mind-set that the prospects for this avenue of change will appear dim or even non-existent, at least at the outset. Even in workplaces with good labor-management relationships, a cultural change is required in order to achieve true partnership. Genuine worker participation is a long-term proposition, which may not yield tangible results for years. The conditions for success need not exist before the parties enter into a joint initiative, but they are ultimately necessary for union-management cooperation to achieve results.

Alternatives to participation

In some situations, conditions may not be right for union-management cooperation. In the face of outright employer hostility to the union, or when the employer refuses to utilize the knowledge and expertise of the workforce, the union's participation in a redesign process may be inappropriate. In these cases, communication with the membership is essential to ensure that the employer does not successfully "bypass" the union and take its program directly to employees. Membership communication can stress the shortcomings of the employer's plan, and set forth conditions under which the union would participate in joint efforts to redesign government. When full-blown union-management cooperation is not feasible, the union may:

• initiate a limited cooperative effort, such as a labor-management committee devoted to workplace quality, before embarking upon a more comprehensive effort; 
  
  
• pilot the cooperative process on a limited basis, targeted toward agencies or divisions where it is most likely to succeed. Within this framework, the parties can gain experience with the process and the costs of failure are minimized; or 
  
  
• rely on the "traditional" tactics of hard bargaining, political action, and public relations in order to fight against undesirable forms of change. However, in today's political environment, simply opposing harmful proposals will rarely be enough. The union may need to also put forth an alternative model for change in order to gain respect and be taken seriously in the debate over how government needs to be redesigned. Proposing joint initiatives to improve the quality and effectiveness of public services is often the best counter argument in the union's arsenal.