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PRINCIPLE FIVE: Redesigning Government Requires a Long-Term Commitment and Protections for Workers

Ongoing and genuine worker participation in the decision-making process is the central ingredient of redesigning government. Without worker involvement from day one, it will be difficult to win their approval and enthusiasm later on.

This does not mean worker involvement is required on issues that are only peripherally related to service delivery and work conditions. But it does mean that the labor-management partnership must go beyond lip service and good intentions. Redesigning government will fail if managers interpret it as nothing more than a sophisticated suggestion box for short-term fixes.

Labor unions provide workers with the best insurance that real and ongoing reform is not replaced by token measures. Unions give workers an independent source of power that is often necessary to bring about the "cultural" changes essential to continuous quality improvement. In companies that have developed dynamic labor-management partnerships, unions play a key role; indeed, executives cannot see the partnerships working without unions. A Levi Strauss manager told the New York Times: "The more workers in the union, the greater their voice, and that drives the process forward." Xerox's CEO told Business Week that under the new cooperative model, "the union movement will be sustained and the industries it's in will be more competitive."

For both labor and management, the concept of worker rights and protections will change with redesigning government. As in the past, workers and management will continue to negotiate over wages and working conditions. But just as important and inviolable, workers will be included in determining how the work gets done. Collective bargaining agreements in the future may well include provisions about labor-management partnerships.

If the old way was for clerical workers to negotiate over the health impact of new technologies, the new way will also include them in selecting and purchasing the computers with which they work. If the old way was for the union to insist on narrow job classifications, the new way will be to involve employees and their unions in designing a flexible work process. Indeed, institutionalizing this new relationship could free unions to modify a number of traditional demands and work rules that protect workers under the current system but would no longer be necessary in a redesigned government built on partnership principles.

The ultimate commitment front-line workers need is employment security. A partnership must be built on good faith. Employees who work with management to improve public services must know that the efficiencies they help create will not cost them their employment. Under Arizona's "reinventing government" initiative, SLIM, and Ohio's Quality Services through Partnership program, any restructuring initiative that reduces the number of jobs will not force layoffs; instead, workers are put into a reassignment pool and redeployed into other assignments.

Anything short of employment security destroys motivation and undermines the long-term goals of reform. In the private sector, according to U.S. News and World Report, companies that lay off workers to meet short-term financial goals usually face "downsizing's unintended consequences: low worker morale ... and, ultimately, disappointing financial results." That is the last thing the public sector needs.

Redesigning government also requires a long-term commitment from elected officials and their political appointees-and a recognition that even the most constructive changes take time to implement and work. As the Labor Department's SCANS report put it: "There is little incentive to institute changes that will cost money, slow things down and result in some missteps in the short run, and which may not bear fruit until their successor's term of office." As tempting as it may be, elected officials must resist the urge to apply short-term measures to what is really a larger, more systemic problem of workplace organization. Those politicians who contract out government services to firms that profit by hiring low-wage, inexperienced workers are merely privatizing the same inefficient, command-and-control system that is at the root of the problem.

At a time when both public and private sector leaders are recognizing that the best way to improve productivity is to empower front-line workers, it makes little sense to pursue a course that does just the opposite. Rather than pandering to public frustration, elected officials have a responsibility to explain why real and long-term reforms are beneficial and necessary.

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