tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-64933085280292986672024-03-07T00:53:49.153-06:00Whither Work?thoughts about work and work-related topicsJohn Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.comBlogger133125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6493308528029298667.post-19735012518464418752022-07-14T20:32:00.062-05:002022-11-29T07:37:46.100-06:00Homo Economicus Sings the Blues, And We All Suffer For It<p> <a href="https://whitherwork.blogspot.com/2022/06/the-divergence-between-work-songs-and.html" target="_blank">In
last month’s post</a>, I contrasted the positive, intrinsic view of work that
underlies high-road HR strategies with the negative, instrumental view of work
frequently seen in songs about work. Continuing with the theme of <a href="http://jbudd.csom.umn.edu/RESEARCH/thoughtofwork.htm" target="_blank">how we think about
work</a>, varying perspectives on work often correspond with assumptions about
work <a href="https://whitherwork.blogspot.com/2013/11/conceptualizing-work-history-of.html" target="_blank">embedded
in different academic disciplines</a>. In general terms, <a href="https://whitherwork.blogspot.com/2012/05/how-economics-thought-of-work.html" target="_blank">economics
treats work</a> as a commodity and as a lousy activity endured because of a
need for money, whereas psychology focuses on personal fulfillment, and
sociology on social norms.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Most songs on work are consistent with how most economists
think about work. And thus, work songs are a revealing way to illustrate the
dominant assumptions about work inherent in economic analyses<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">—</span>work as a commodity, as a pain cost, and as an opportunity cost.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In a <b>commodity</b> conceptualization of work, labor
is an abstract quantity of productive value governed by the impersonal forces
of supply and demand. We can see this reflected in songs that lament factory
closings due to cheaper labor elsewhere, such as Billy Joel’s <a href="https://youtu.be/BHnJp0oyOxs" target="_blank">Allentown</a> or Harry Chapin’s <a href="https://youtu.be/t-j9XVMnNRc" target="_blank">The Day They Closed the Factory Down</a>:</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><i>
So they're moving somewhere else now<br />
With their cloths and fabric press<br />
They found themselves another town<br />
Where they'll make shirts for less</i><br />
<p class="MsoNormal">In terms of the actual work experience, the mainstream
economics view of work is that it’s the opposite of something that brings you
positive utility. That is, the direct experience of work makes you worse off.
Traditionally this was seen as a <b>pain cost</b>. We can see this reflected in songs
about <a href="https://youtu.be/OwJNQnjHn80" target="_blank">long hours</a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/jcPQdMPVBLc" target="_blank">hot and dangerous working conditions</a>, or,
as in Dolly Parton’s <a href="https://youtu.be/UbxUSsFXYo4" target="_blank">9 to 5</a>, bad
bosses and disrespect: <o:p></o:p></p><i>
Workin' 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin'<br />
Barely gettin' by, it's all takin' and no givin'<br />
They just use your mind and they never give you credit<br />
It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it<br />
<br />
9 to 5, for service and devotion<br />
You would think that I would deserve a fair promotion<br />
Want to move ahead but the boss won't seem to let me<br />
I swear sometimes that man is out to get me<br />
<br />
They let your dream, just watch 'em shatter<br />
You're just a step on the boss man's ladder<br />
But you got dreams he'll never take away</i><br />
<p class="MsoNormal">In modern economic theorizing, work doesn’t have to be
inherently bad (a pain cost), but working can still make you worse off it
reduces the amount of time you can spend doing things that you find more
enjoyable (an <b>opportunity cost</b>):<o:p></o:p></p><i>
It's always better on holiday, so much better on holiday<br />
That's why we only work when we need the money<br />
It's always better on holiday, so much better on holiday<br />
That's why we only work when we need the money</i><br />
(from <a href="https://youtu.be/UFjg-RPafFQ" target="_blank">Jacqueline</a> by Franz Ferdinand)<br />
<p class="MsoNormal">So why work? To earn money to live. That is, <a href="https://youtu.be/lcIK3akktLU" target="_blank">Workin’ for a Livin’</a> in the words of Huey
Lewis & The News. But don’t oversimplify and take this to mean that
economics predicts that people won’t work hard. Rather, economics predicts that
people will work hard when the pay is worth it, as captured by Gretchen
Wilson’s <a href="https://youtu.be/EflVJA6kKf0" target="_blank">Work Hard, Play Harder</a>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">While songs can usefully illustrate these perspectives on
work that underlie economic approaches to work, perhaps they run the risk of
normalizing these approaches. If the nature of work is seen as beyond our
control, then instead we might just focus on <a href="https://youtu.be/dsgBpsNPQ50" target="_blank">Working for the Weekend</a>. But there
ought to be better ways. Partly this entails increasing our demands for better
work. But we also need to dig deeper. In particular, making work into a commodity
in our collective imaginations dehumanizes it, reducing workers to productive
inputs tracked in headcount analyses and income statements. This sterile
conceptualization is not innocuous—in contrast, it’s a key conceptual step
towards exploitation. That is, it’s harder for leaders to exploit workers who
they see as human rather than as numbers in spreadsheet.<o:p></o:p></p><i>
I work my back till it's racked with pain<br />
The boss can't even recall my name<br />
I show up late and I'm docked, it never fails<br />
I feel like just another, spoke in a great big wheel<br />
Like a tiny blade of grass in a great big field<br />
<br />
To workers I'm just another drone<br />
To Ma Bell I'm just another phone<br />
I'm just another statistic on a sheet<br />
To teachers I'm just another child<br />
To IRS I'm another file<br />
I'm just another consensus on the street</i><br />
(from <a href="https://youtu.be/XA1LJ3blITU" target="_blank">Feel Like a Number</a> by Bob Seger)<br />
<p class="MsoNormal">Also, economics perspectives on work implicitly or
explicitly emphasize individual free choice. If you don’t like your job, tell
your boss to <a href="https://youtu.be/EzGoDtmTllg" target="_blank">Take this Job and Shove It</a>,
and then find something better. But we need to recognize that labor markets
don’t always work as nicely as mainstream economics wants to assume. There can
be power differential in societal institutions and discrimination. Not everyone
has the same options. Not everyone is rewarded fairly. Economic theorizing on
work (e.g., personnel economics), and mainstream economics more generally,
often sanitizes this by ascribing different outcomes to different personal
choices or productive characteristics rather the systemic inequalities. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Unsurprisingly given their roots in real life experiences, there
are songs that can remind us of the imbalances that workers must navigate. Class-based
inequalities are evident in <a href="https://youtu.be/cYK-FemEnnA?t=57">Worker's
Song</a> by Dropkick Murphys:</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><i>
We're the first ones to starve, we're the first ones to die<br />
The first ones in line for that pie in the sky<br />
And we're always the last when the cream is shared out<br />
For the worker is working when the fat cat's about</i><br />
<p class="MsoNormal">Margo Price’s <a href="https://youtu.be/8s5p38y2XBw" target="_blank">Pay Gap</a>
and Cher’s <a href="https://youtu.be/ZdQ14ZoLjwg" target="_blank">Working Girl</a> address
gender inequality. And Nina Simone’s <a href="https://youtu.be/SxX6pYrvGy4" target="_blank">Backlash
Blues</a> starkly reminds us of race-based inequalities and discrimination
which must not be overlooked:<o:p></o:p></p>
<i>You give me second class houses<br />
And second class schools<br />
I know you think that all colored people<br />
Are just second class fools<br />
Mr. Backlash, I’m gonna leave you<br />
With the blues, yes I am<br />
<br />
When I try to find a job<br />
To earn a little cash<br />
All you got to offer<br />
Is your mean old white backlash<br />
But the world is big<br />
Big and bright and round<br />
And it’s full of other folks like me<br />
Who are black, yellow, beige, and brown<br />
Mr. Backlash, I’m gonna leave you<br />
With the blues, yes I am</i><o:p></o:p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In conclusion, then, the economics assumption about work
being lousy is richly illustrated in a wide range of songs about work. But as
a society, we should challenge why work is so lousy while also questioning the
implications of other longstanding hallmarks of traditional economic
thought—seeing work as a commodity, defaulting to assumptions of competitive
markets, and embracing self-interest as the fabric of societal interactions.
Homo economicus has many reasons to be singing the blues, and we all pay the
price. <o:p></o:p></p>John Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6493308528029298667.post-15041257132470155182022-06-27T14:07:00.004-05:002022-11-29T07:37:54.539-06:00The Divergence Between Work Songs and High-Road HR Strategies<p>Different HR strategies for managing people are founded, at
least in part, on different ways in which we <a href="http://jbudd.csom.umn.edu/RESEARCH/thoughtofwork.htm" target='_blank'>think about work</a>.
Is work simply an input into a productive process that’s tracked and traded
like other commodities? Or something bad that individuals do primarily for
income? Or a source of personal satisfaction? A way to serve others? A way to fulfill
societal expectations?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Low-road, market-drive HR strategies are based on the
depersonalized commodity view, incentive-based HR strategies are rooted in seeing
work as a necessary evil to earn income, and high-engagement or commitment
strategies are based on views of work that see the potential for personal and
broader satisfaction. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Ultimately, work is exceptionally <a href="https://whitherwork.blogspot.com/2011/12/the-metaphor-of-octopus-worker.html" target='_blank'>complex
and multi-layered</a>, so I think it’s best to see these alternative
perspectives as all being relevant—that is, we should see them as complements
rather than competitors. But just for fun, I’ve noticed that it’s very
difficult to find songs (or comics or other forms of pop culture) that
celebrate any joys of working. One of the only songs with a positive view of
work I can find is <a href="https://youtu.be/m5EXnjYy6RU?t=60" target='_blank'>The Happy
Working Song</a>, which is from the Disney movie Enchanted (as an aside, I’ve
seen <a href="https://youtu.be/9cQgQIMlwWw" target='_blank'>Everything is Awesome</a> from the
Lego Movie suggested as a positive work song, but it might <a href="https://www.ibtimes.com/how-lego-movie-everything-awesome-parody-creeping-everyday-fascism-1555165" target='_blank'>really
be about conformity</a>—and in either case, we’re still left with positive work
songs only in kids movies). </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In sharp contrast, there are many, many songs about work
being commodified, lousy, and something to avoid, from <a href="https://youtu.be/5U7WtGGyTWQ" target='_blank'>old folk ballads</a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/Fs0aBntm2mw" target='_blank'>blues</a>, and <a href="https://youtu.be/ci8uvhiU9LE?t=16" target='_blank'>disco</a> to <a href="https://youtu.be/DlOyRPR0RRU" target='_blank'>2020s post-grunge</a> with lots of genres
in between. That is, work through the lens of songs definitely favors the economics
views of work. Indeed, these views can be illustrated by a single artist: Bruce
Springsteen.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In <a href="https://youtu.be/lc6F47Z6PI4?t=206" target='_blank'>The River</a>,
we can see work as a commodity left in the hands of market forces:</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><i>
I got a job working construction<br />
For the Johnstown Company<br />
But lately there ain't been much work<br />
On account of the economy<br />
Now all them things that seemed so important<br />
Well mister they vanished right into the air<br />
Now I just act like I don't remember<br />
Mary acts like she don't care</i><br />
<p class="MsoNormal">In <a href="https://youtu.be/plaOhNjJeBg" target='_blank'>Factory</a>, we
see the daily punishment and toil of work:<o:p></o:p></p><i>
Early in the morning factory whistle blows<br />
Man rises from bed and puts on his clothes<br />
Man takes his lunch, walks out in the morning light<br />
It's the working, the working, just the working life<br />
<br />
Through the mansions of fear, through the mansions of pain<br />
I see my daddy walking through them factory gates in the rain<br />
Factory takes his hearing, factory gives him life<br />
The working, the working, just the working life</i><br />
<p class="MsoNormal">And hot (or cold) repetitive toil is evident in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpDyrXiMWqM&t=68s" target='_blank'>Working on the
Highway</a>: <o:p></o:p></p><i>
I work for the county out on 95<br />
All day I hold a red flag and watch the traffic pass me by<br />
In my head I keep a picture of a pretty little miss<br />
Someday, mister, I'm gonna lead a better life than this<br />
<br />
Working on the highway, laying down the blacktop<br />
Working on the highway, all day long I don't stop<br />
Working on the highway, blasting through the bedrock<br />
Working on the highway, working on the highway</i><br />
<p class="MsoNormal">In modern economic thought, work doesn’t need to be directly
painful (or boring or stressful or…), it can simply be an opportunity cost.
That is, work might be OK, but it’s a costly use of your time if non-work
activities are better. We can (sort of) see this in <a href="https://youtu.be/zBBvw1T94IU" target='_blank'>Night</a>, where night-time drag racing is
a lot more enjoyable than working (though work here is negative, too):<o:p></o:p></p><i>
You get up every morning at the sound of the bell<br />
You get to work late and the boss man's giving you hell<br />
'Til you're out on a midnight run<br />
Losing your heart to a beautiful one<br />
And it feels right as you lock up the house<br />
Turn out the lights and step out into the night</i><br />
<p class="MsoNormal">In these Springsteen songs, we can also see the reason for
working—to make money to support your family and your more pleasurable pursuits,
which again is a theme in many other songs by diverse artists. It’s not a
source of deep rewards, as sought by high-road HR strategies.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>We can question whether popular music accurately represents
views of work across the population—maybe the mournful aspects of work just
make for better songs—but the extent to which these songs resonate with so
many people should cause us to question the match between the assumptions of
high-road HR strategies and how significant numbers of people actually
experience their work. Though by itself, this can't answer the question of whether high-road HR strategies are fundamentally flawed (e.g., due to inherent conflicts of interest between workers and employers) or are simply difficult to achieve in practice.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>John Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6493308528029298667.post-17779540295424727392022-01-21T10:16:00.004-06:002022-11-29T07:38:03.265-06:00Using Political Party Manifestos to Investigate the Relative Importance of Industrial Relations Ideas in Politics<p>Note: if you'd prefer an animated version of this posting, see:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/q1a295K7TcA" width="320" youtube-src-id="q1a295K7TcA"></iframe></div><br /><p></p><p>Before almost any major election in democratic countries, each political party publishes its manifesto which declares the party’s values, goals, and policies it will pursue if elected. In order to fully inform candidates from that party as well as voters, manifestos comprehensively cover a wide range of topics. Researchers have created ways of categorizing these topics to study them. In fact, researchers from the <a href="https://manifesto-project.wzb.eu/">Comparative Manifesto Project</a> have assembled a data set of manifestos for over 1,000 parties from more than 50 countries across 700 elections. The earliest manifestos in the data generally date back to each country’s first postwar national election, so some start in the 1940s with other countries coming into the data set in later years. The data include countries from five continents. </p><p>The key variables in this data indicate what fraction of a manifesto’s statements pertain to each of 56 possible topics, some of which distinguish between positive and negative mentions. Across all of the manifestos, welfare receives the most attention, on average. Our focus is on work-related mentions; more specifically, the “Labour Groups: Positive” and “Labour Groups: Negative” categories. The positive category includes pro-worker ideas, like calls for more jobs, fair wages, good working conditions, and stronger labor unions. The negative category almost exclusively consists of anti-union statements.</p><p>Across all years and countries, parties dedicated about 2.8 percent of their manifestos to labor groups positive topics—that is, pro-worker ideas—and 0.15 percent labor groups negative topics—that is, anti-union ideas. While these might seem like low rates of industrial relations content, ultimately what matters is the relative importance of these categories compared to others, and the implications of variation in these categories across time, place, and parties. Over time, there was a decline in pro-worker mentions in the 1980s and 1990s, but since then there has been a resurgence, and today pro-worker mentions are more common in manifestos now than they were even during what might be considered the heyday of the labor movement following World War II. Anti-union party platforms are consistently less prevalent, but there have been some periods with greater anti-union attention, such as in the 1970s and 1980s which include the anti-union platforms of Thatcher’s conservatives in the UK.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhVQ0IrgE8X_Hl3Fb490jFtsNT1ZD50wlEk9ei_5QGzZhKpO-GkrR-x2biw_UOWxs9rpOMrQEaG_08ODAv9UuxPc0w3X87sCnsurmrw3moNhGxCROQjx4dRCkcZIsAUos8dDIOc20cWKXvc1nIyg6lJPNvDt4aII01AhC6AVGhJ2LTSmSc3tPH8rH-uVA=s775" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="592" data-original-width="775" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhVQ0IrgE8X_Hl3Fb490jFtsNT1ZD50wlEk9ei_5QGzZhKpO-GkrR-x2biw_UOWxs9rpOMrQEaG_08ODAv9UuxPc0w3X87sCnsurmrw3moNhGxCROQjx4dRCkcZIsAUos8dDIOc20cWKXvc1nIyg6lJPNvDt4aII01AhC6AVGhJ2LTSmSc3tPH8rH-uVA=s320" width="320" /></a></div><br />To think about these dynamics more deeply, we contend that political party manifestos are ideational documents. They are not simply a listing of policy proposals. Rather, a manifesto provides the means for a political party to give meaning to its platform, and allows politicians, policy makers, and voters to more deeply understand a party’s platform. In other words, it embodies ideas about the issues a party sees as important, and attempts to use these ideas to persuade others that these are the best ways to think about those issues.<p></p><p>But where do a manifesto’s ideas come from? We theorize three channels. One, party manifesto ideas on work-related issues may be rooted in a party’s entrenched values based on longstanding historical traditions, ideologies, or beliefs about work and workers. Parties that are ideologically farther left are expected to have greater pro-worker content, while manifestos will be more relatively anti-union among right-leaning parties due to their core beliefs. Two, industrial relations ideas can end up in party manifestos due to new thinking that reflects deviations from the party’s longstanding ideological positions. Three, ideas can arise in party manifestos because of the reactive mirroring of ideas to which the party believes voters will be most receptive, usually in an attempt to gain political power. If voter interests shift regarding how work should be governed, so too might the ideas placed within a party’s manifesto, reflecting an attempt to demonstrate commitment to the new interests of their constituents. </p><p>We use these three channels to motivate statistical analyses of the frequency of pro-worker and anti-union ideas in political party manifestos using the Comparative Manifesto Project data combined with other measures that we merge in, although we cannot directly observe the three channels. Specifically, we estimate OLS regression models with two dependent variables: the percent of pro-worker and anti-union mentions in a manifesto. Depending on data availability, our regressions have between 2,000 and 4,500 observations. </p><p>With respect to party family, socialist parties have the largest average pro-worker mentions, followed by social democratic parties, just as one would expect. Looking first at a party’s enduring ideology as reflected in its mean ideology across all elections, parties that are more right-leaning have fewer pro-worker mentions than left-leaning parties, even controlling for the party family, but there are mixed results for deviations from long-term ideology. These results suggest that entrenched values are an important foundation for political parties’ ideational strategies pertaining to work while the support for the new thinking or reactive mirroring channels is not as strong. We also explore the explanatory power of other measures relating to party extremism, parties’ responses to competitors, labor movement and economic conditions, and political systems characteristics. </p><p>But do voters care about work-related mentions? Yes. We find that more pro-worker mentions predicts greater votes and seats won in an election, and pro-worker ideas is one of only 7 (out of 56) manifesto categories correlated with greater vote share. </p><p>In conclusion, political parties are under-researched actors in industrial relations, and we hope that this study of their ideas spurs additional research into the importance of political parties in industrial relations. With respect to the emerging scholarship on ideas in industrial relations, we’ve tried to illustrate that political manifestos are useful documents for capturing ideational thinking that are unadulterated by necessary legislative or political compromises required to govern. Methodologically, we hope our large-n analyses shows that quantitative analyses can make unique, complementary contributions to the qualitative literature. For example, our finding of an enduring use of pro-worker ideas paired with more episodic deployments of anti-union ideas could be hard to see in a focused, qualitative study. This should also serve as an indicator that there are consistencies in ideas over time such that ideational research needs to incorporate theories of long-term stability with theories of shorter-term change. Conceptually, the three-channel framework sketched here for thinking about the ideational content of manifestos can also be applied employers or unions. As the environment changes, how do they navigate the tensions between staying true to their core ideas, introducing new ideas, and being responsiveness to what their constituencies want?</p><hr />Source: <span>J. Ryan Lamare and John W. Budd (forthcoming) "The Relative Importance of Industrial Relations Ideas in Politics: A Quantitative Analysis of Political Party Manifestos across 54 Countries," </span><i>Industrial Relations</i><span>. </span><a href="http://doi.org/10.1111/irel.12296">http://doi.org/10.1111/irel.12296</a> [free access to the <a href="http://jbudd.csom.umn.edu/RESEARCH/manifestos.pdf">pre-publication version here</a>].John Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6493308528029298667.post-7132537617320773222021-10-27T13:57:00.002-05:002022-11-29T07:39:16.821-06:00A Diagnostic Tool for Managing Conflict at its Sources<p>To successfully resolve a conflict or dispute, Alex Colvin (Cornell), Dionne Pohler (Saskatchewan), and I assert that you must first understand its roots or sources, and then appropriately match a dispute resolution method. We call this "<a href="https://whitherwork.blogspot.com/2020/02/managing-conflict-at-its-sources.html">managing conflict at its sources</a>." To this end, we’ve created a <a href="https://whitherwork.blogspot.com/2019/02/what-causes-conflict-new-three.html">three-part typology</a> of the roots of conflict—specifically, structural, cognitive, and dispositional sources of conflict—to facilitate the identification of effective dispute resolution methods tailored to the particular sources of a given dispute. </p><p>This can be facilitated by a <a href="https://z.umn.edu/diagnostic-tool">diagnostic tool</a> that helps parties to a conflict ask the right questions. For starters,</p><p>1. Diagnose the structural nature of the relationship between the parties</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>What are their interests or goals, rights, and sources of power? </li><li>What are their value orientations or identity needs?</li><li>What are the rules or institutions that govern their relationship?</li><li>Are there scarce resources involved? </li><li>Why are the parties in a relationship together? Are there better alternative options? How much does their success depend on the other’s?</li><li>If there are reasons for a lasting interdependency, are their interests mostly able to be aligned (mutual self-benefit), mostly conflicting with each, or a mixture of both?</li></ul><p></p><p>2. Diagnose the cognitive sources of conflict</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>What cognitive frames shape how each participant perceives and interprets the situation, and influences desired action? This can reflect culture, individual experiences, and individual preferences. </li><li>Are there cognitive limitations (e.g., information overload) or cognitive biases (e.g., loss aversion, anchoring, framing, fixed-pie perception, exaggeration of conflict, illusions of transparency, decision fatigue, or overconfidence)?</li><li>Are there information limitations, imbalances, and/or uncertainties?</li><li>Are there intergroup tensions based on in-group/out-group identification?</li><li>Are there sources of miscommunication, such as noisy communication channels, different meanings, incorrect filtering of intent, and misinterpretation of nonverbal cues and personal demeanor?</li></ul><p></p><p>3. Diagnose the dispositional sources of conflict</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>What emotions or mood might be positively or negatively affecting the situation?</li><li>Are there personality factors that shape how one or more participants feel, think, and/or behave? </li><li>Are there differences in personality that clash?</li></ul><p></p><p>Not all of these will apply in every situation. But for those that do, the <a href="https://z.umn.edu/diagnostic-tool">diagnostic tool</a> then helps connect these underlying sources with the implications for how to manage this kind of conflict. </p><p>The <a href="https://youtu.be/jZPUXeFaox4">animated version</a> of "Managing Conflict at its Sources" also provides an introductory overview: </p><p> <a href="https://youtu.be/jZPUXeFaox4"></a></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://youtu.be/jZPUXeFaox4"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jZPUXeFaox4" width="320" youtube-src-id="jZPUXeFaox4"></iframe></a></div><a href="https://youtu.be/jZPUXeFaox4"><br /></a><p></p><div><br /></div>John Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6493308528029298667.post-33917665593743946822021-09-20T08:10:00.004-05:002022-11-29T07:39:26.478-06:00The Importance of Political Systems for Trade Union Membership, Coverage, and Influence<p>Here's the <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnWBudd/status/1439930278009622530?s=20">Twitter thread </a>version of my new article:</p><p>Excited that “The Importance of Political Systems for Trade Union Membership, Coverage, and Influence: Theory and Comparative Evidence” with <a href="https://twitter.com/jryanlamare">@jryanlamare</a> is in the current BJIR issue. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12575">https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12575</a><br />1/</p><p>Ideological links between the state & industrial relations have-of course-been recognized as important for a long time. We build on this to consider the influence of the structural nature of a country’s political system, irrespective of the ideological leaning of the state.<br />2/</p><p>By political system, we mean 1) the extent to which a national electoral system yields a legislative body that is (dis)proportional to the fraction of votes each party received, 2) effective number of parties, 3) multiparty ruling coalitions. <br />3/</p><p>We theorize that these can influence workplace-level unionism, holding state ideology constant, via incentives for inclusionary governance & legislative body diversity. In short, a pol. system that rewards compromise rather than competition may create similar workplace norms.<br />4/</p><p>Eg, in more representative & coalitional systems, unions have more opportunities to use their extra-parliamentary status to act as consensus-builders, increasing their legitimacy. Also, employers have incentives to influence as a social partner, so can't bust unions.<br />5/</p><p>Using <a href="https://twitter.com/eurofound">@eurofound</a> establishment data & <a href="https://twitter.com/ESS_Survey">@ESS_Survey</a> individual data for 25+ European countries, increased political representativeness (lower disproportionality, coalitions) is a statistically significant predictor of a greater likelihood of individual trade union membership.<br />6/</p><p>And competitive fragmentation, measured by greater numbers of political parties, is associated with weakened collective voice. Causal ambiguity is likely the strongest for the multiparty coalition outcomes.<br />7/</p><p>The importance of cross-national institutional differences in the nature of trade unions & workplace voice, supportive legislative policies, and varieties of capitalism needs to be complemented by a deeper understanding of the role of varieties of political systems.<br />8/</p><p>Article: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12575">https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12575</a><BR>Non-paywall version:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12575"> https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3425452</a><BR>9-minute animation (fewer details, more fun): <a href="https://youtu.be/K_mP-htYcok">https://youtu.be/K_mP-htYcok</a><BR>And we are deeply touched by the care shown to us & our work by the late David Marsden who was the editor.<br />9/9</p>John Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6493308528029298667.post-37409408858354349842021-07-08T16:14:00.002-05:002021-07-08T16:18:08.311-05:00Worker Voice and Political Participation in Civil Society: Lousy Work Is Bad for Democracy<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The
stories are familiar by now: </span><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/some-business-owners-are-blaming-workers-for-the-labor-shortage-2021-7" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">businesses
claim that there’s a labor shortage</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> and others reply that they </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/06/10/worker-shortage-raising-wages/" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">need
to pay more</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">. Pay is obviously an important part of a job, but we need to
remember that the positive and negative aspects of </span><a href="http://jbudd.csom.umn.edu/RESEARCH/thoughtofwork.htm" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">work are
complicated</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">, which means that we must consider more than pay when
evaluating </span><a href="http://jbudd.csom.umn.edu/RESEARCH/job-quality.pdf" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">job
quality</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> and </span><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0959680114535312" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">worker
well-being</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">. Among many important things, this includes paying attention to
how the quality of work affects society. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Concerns
with how workplace experiences affect the political arena are longstanding. Over
150 years ago, </span><a href="https://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlP.html" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">John
Stuart Mill</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> advocated for worker cooperatives and participatory economic
systems because he believed economic democracy fostered political democracy. Most
workers, however, do not work in cooperatives. But varying forms of worker
voice can have elements of economic democracy, or more widely-speaking, at
least some degree of autonomy. In a </span><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/participation-and-democratic-theory/75E1EDCA6842303901349FB5D3B0F261" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">seminal
book</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">, Carole Pateman argued that individuals with autonomy in their work—e.g.,
the ability to control certain aspects of the job—develop confidence that they
are capable of autonomous action. This confidence can spill over to the
political and civic arenas leading to higher levels of participation in these
arenas. In other words, workplace voice can create “</span><a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265052500000625" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">psychological supports</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">”
for political and civic engagement. A second line of theorizing focuses instead
on skill development. That is, exercising voice in the workplace can enhance
skills pertaining to things like advocacy, negotiation, and communication, which
can also be useful in the political and civic arenas. So workplace voice can
lead to greater political and civic participation through skill enhancement.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTFBmbyJRIPZJJl7QIrQI_7hIDIBifvrISpVw3Gt8AYhvmfz89wc7EIKu3ohQfGewW-ED2fWAwuOQjHkvbgZ7yVZxrA_iHbsuclemsYJX9OQy4XnCufXRMiB2fz8NEJsj8zBSpJJFiPxFd/s1275/Voice+%252B+Political+Participation+chapter+-+EBES+2021.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="1275" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTFBmbyJRIPZJJl7QIrQI_7hIDIBifvrISpVw3Gt8AYhvmfz89wc7EIKu3ohQfGewW-ED2fWAwuOQjHkvbgZ7yVZxrA_iHbsuclemsYJX9OQy4XnCufXRMiB2fz8NEJsj8zBSpJJFiPxFd/w320-h150/Voice+%252B+Political+Participation+chapter+-+EBES+2021.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Stronger forms of workplace democracy include being represented by a labor union or works council, and being involved
with these forms of voice can also trigger both of these channels. That is, participating in a union or works council</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">—</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">and probably a worker center, too</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">—</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">can enhance confidence, instill beliefs
about the importance of democratic decision-making, and develop skills that
translate into greater political and civic engagement. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">If individual or
collective voice prompts greater political and civic participation through
these channels, it’s a happy byproduct of workplace voice rather than
intentional one. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">But labor
unions and other collective bodies can also intentionally try to increase
political and civic participation through </span><a href="https://www.gmb.org.uk/register-to-vote" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">voter registration</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> and </span><a href="https://aflcio.org/2018/11/6/get-out-and-vote" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">get-out-the-vote drives</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">,
campaigns to </span><a href="https://actionnetwork.org/forms/pro-act?source=website" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">contact
politicians</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> or </span><a href="https://unitehere.org/campaign/freedom-ride-for-voting-rights/" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">join
demonstrations</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">, and training programs for </span><a href="https://cwa-union.org/national-issues/legislation-and-politics/cwa-political/cwa-political-activist-training" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">political
advocacy</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> and </span><a href="http://www.oregonlaborcandidateschool.org/" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">running
for political office</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">. So unintentionally and intentionally, unions, works
councils, and worker centers can build “</span><a href="http://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198825272.003.0014" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">democratic character</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">:
the willingness and capacity of individuals to engage in democratic politics
and to do so in ways that are informed by judgements of the common good.” Conceptually,
then, we should expect workers involved with these forms of collective voice to
participate more readily in the political and civic arenas compared to workers
that lack avenues of workplace voice.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">But does
this happen in practice? Ryan Lamare and I have </span><a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_213-1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">recently reviewed the
literature</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">, and we conclude quite strongly that there are strong
relationships between individual or collective voice on the one hand, and
political and civic participation on the other. One of our </span><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0019793917746619" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">favorite studies</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">—because we
authored it!—shows that across 27 European countries, workers with greater individual workplace voice are more likely to vote, contact politicians, work
in a political party, and engage in other activities. This is just one of a number of studies on individual voice that have broadly similar findings across various samples and using diverse measures of individual voice and political participation. But spillovers are not guaranteed</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">—</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321720960969 ">supervisor support or suppression</a> can also affect the workplace-political linkage. There is also a large literature on the effects of union voice. Empirical results show that union members are more likely to vote (in the </span><a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sos187" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">US</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">, </span><a href="https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/ohlj/vol50/iss4/8/" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Canada</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">, and </span><a href="https://doi.org/10.7202/1028110ar" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Europe</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">),
engage in </span><a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soy044" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">other political activities</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">,
and </span><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0019793916677595" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">give to charity</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">. There's also evidence that unions can also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912920950826">mobilize non-members</a> to engage in protests. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Admittedly,
specifically identifying causal relationships can be challenging. For example,
workers who are pre-disposed toward political and civic participation might
look for jobs with individual and/or collective voice, so their observed participation was not caused by workplace voice. But the studies that are
able to specifically address issues of causality typically find that non-causal
explanations cannot fully explain the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">observed </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">empirical relationships. In
other words, it appears that individual and collective voice prompt some
additional political and civic participation that would not have occurred in
the absence of this workplace voice. In this way, having more individual and collective voice would be good for society.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Consequently, while
individual and collective forms of worker voice are accurately viewed primarily
as workplace phenomena, the interconnections to and ramifications for political
and civic engagement should not be overlooked. Labor unions, with their own
internal participatory, democratic systems and their incentives for political
education and mobilization, are perhaps the form of worker voice in which it is
easiest to expect there to be spillovers into the political and civic
arena—including spillovers that are the byproduct of experiencing unionization
and others that result from intentional union strategies. But even the
experience of individual forms of workplace voice such as in-job autonomy can
have spillovers by fostering democratizing attitudes and civic skills.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Across time and space, then, what happens at work is not expected to
stay at work. Researchers and commentators often present this in a positive
frame, as has been done here—that is, higher levels of workplace voice are
associated with higher levels of political and civic participation. But it is
important to remember that if this is true, then so is the corresponding
negative framing—that is, dictatorial and authoritarian workplaces in which
workers lack individual and/or collective voice likely lead to lower levels of
political and civic participation, with consequent negative impacts on society.
Pay might be the #1 concern of workers struggling to make ends meet, but
societally we should be pushing not only for jobs that allow workers to support
themselves and their families, but also that contribute to the broader health
of our society.</span></p><hr />Source: John W. Budd and J. Ryan Lamare (2021) "Worker Voice and Political Participation in Civil Society," in Klaus F. Zimmermann, ed., Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics (Cham: Springer). <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_213-1">https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_213-1</a> [free access to the <a href="https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/226521/1/GLO-DP-0725.pdf">pre-publication version here</a>].John Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6493308528029298667.post-65229425408686654982021-06-09T08:48:00.002-05:002021-06-09T08:48:19.076-05:00Will Work Really Change That Much?<p> As people look ahead to the end of the Covid-19 pandemic,
many are heralding a work-from-home revolution. But for centuries, it’s been easy
to overstate predictions about the future of work. Even when they are not just
plain wrong, such predictions are, at best, only partially true because how
people experience work varies tremendously by education and skill level,
gender, race, class, age, unionization, geography, sector, occupation,
employer, and more. Even someone in 1935 who predicted a future of greater
unionization in the wake of the then-new National Labor Relations Act would
have been more wrong than right. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Predictions about remote work are likely to suffer the same
fate. Even during the height of the pandemic, <a href="https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2020/0901">less than half of U.S. workers</a>
were working remotely, and having the privilege of being able to do so was much
less likely for Black and Hispanic workers and those without a college degree. When women choose flexible working arrangements, they are more likely than men
to be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-018-2025-x">perceived as having weakened career commitment</a>.<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"> </span>So even if we think that the future of work will be significantly different
because remote work outlives the pandemic, this change will likely reproduce
inequalities rooted in intersectional combinations of gender, race, and class.
So at a fundamental level, this doesn’t sound like much of a change.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But will remote work even outlive the pandemic? The
optimistic prediction is that workers who have been able to work at home will
be able to have the autonomy to choose how to best structure their working
arrangements. Most workers lost this autonomy with the advent of
industrialization and the shift from home-based work to mills, factories, and
offices. So at first glance, this could be a significant change for some
workers. But less optimistically, this could become more of a return to
pre-industrialization work arrangements than workers imagine. In a
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/06/ceo-i-want-my-employees-understand-risks-not-returning-work-office/">widely-publicized editorial</a>, the CEO of Washingtonian Media openly admitted
that if workers are rarely on-site, then “management has a strong incentive to
change their status to ‘contractor.’” Indeed, <a href="https://www.socialeurope.eu/the-long-covid-of-work-relations-and-the-future-of-remote-work">Nicola Countouris and Valerio De Stefano warn</a> that only employees with “highly-desirable,
hard-to-find, firm-specific, ‘core’ skills” are likely to remain as regular
employees while being allowed to work remotely; others are likely to be reclassified
as contractors, with the accompanying loss of benefits and security. So even if it looks like workers have a choice of working remotely, for many it
could be less of a free choice and more of an economically-coerced choice.
Again, this doesn’t sound like much of a change in the fundamental nature of
capitalist work.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Industry leaders have also been trying to lead the
narratives around the future of remote work. Finance industry leaders have
largely been <a href="https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210323-the-bosses-who-want-us-back-in-the-office">preaching the need to return to the traditional office</a> while
technology industry leaders have signaled greater willingness to continue with
remote work. These differences may stem from a variety of reasons, such as assumptions of
how to manage workers, a need for different mentoring methods in certain
settings, or the tech industry’s self-interest in selling products that support
remote work. More generally, there are <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/05/09/opinion/hybrid-workplace-probably-wont-last/">multiple reasons</a> why a return to
traditional work is likely, such as a need for belonging, learning from others,
and separating work from home. But in any case, these narratives are laying the foundation for decisions about
the future of work that will likely be made by employers, not workers, without significant
worker voice.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">While (some) employers are re-assessing their policies on
work, it is also likely that workers and their families will be doing their own
re-assessments. One recent survey revealed that a full-time, stay-at-home
parent is the <a href="https://americancompass.org/essays/home-building-survey-part-2/">most popular family structure</a> for caring for young children
except among those earning more than $150,000. So 25 percent of women are <a href="https://wiw-report.s3.amazonaws.com/Women_in_the_Workplace_2020.pdf">thinking about reducing</a> their labor market
attachment, including dropping out of the workforce altogether. Others are re-assessing whether low-paid retail jobs are worth it when they
face bullying from the public because of masks, their race, or other things
that have become politicized and divisive. But until there are significant
shifts in power relations, a recognition of deep-seated structural inequalities
and privilege, and changed social norms, these reassessments are likely to yield
individual and family decisions about work that react to the options available
to them rather than shape new forms of work in meaningful ways. If work is
going to shift more fundamentally, <a href="https://www.epi.org/unequalpower/publications/wage-suppression-inequality/">we need to center power and public policy</a>,
and do so in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0019793921992080">identity-conscious and intersectionality-aware</a> ways.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">So in thinking about the future of work, we need
to remember that work is complex and diverse. If we focus on remote work, increased
flexibility doesn’t fundamentally change the nature of the employment
relationship. Workers are still trading their time for money fulfilling the
policies and requirement set by employers. More importantly, a focus on remote
work renders a majority of the workforce invisible, especially those who have
traditionally been most vulnerable and least well-off. This is where a
fundamental change is needed the most. So if we are looking at remote work to
see whether work is really changing, we’re looking in the wrong place.</span></p><div style="mso-element: endnote-list;"><div id="edn10" style="mso-element: endnote;">
</div>
</div>John Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6493308528029298667.post-21087319382135762692021-05-05T09:45:00.000-05:002021-05-05T09:45:02.509-05:00The Importance of Cognitive Frames for Understanding HR Practices, Part 2 (Adding Workers In)<p>In the recent union organizing drive at an Amazon warehouse
in Bessemer, Alabama, workers were presented with <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/02/amazon-union-warehouse-workers/">competing
narratives</a>. Amazon portrayed unionization as unnecessary because it already
provides good wages and benefits along with direct communication between
workers and their managers, whereas union advocates emphasized the need for
increased power through collective voice to counter Amazon’s power. While this
messaging taps into employee fears or material interests, it also fundamentally
reflects different beliefs about the underlying nature of the employment
relationship. Is it best seen as a market-based transaction (which unions
interfere with), a partnership in which organizations and workers share
long-term interests (so unions are unnecessary), or an unequal relationship that
includes conflict interests (so unions are needed to better balance power)?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Each of these underlying beliefs, which may be subconscious,
comprises a distinct frame of reference on the nature of the employment
relationship, where, more generally speaking, a frame of reference is a
cognitive lens through which we perceive the world. In <a href="https://whitherwork.blogspot.com/2021/04/the-importance-of-cognitive-frames-for.html">a previous post</a>, I described the
first part of <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/irel.12275">new
research</a> with Dionne Pohler and Wei Huang in which we assert that we need
to better consider leaders’ frames of reference in determining human resources
(HR) strategies and practices. But as this example is meant to highlight, the
second part of our research asserts the need to also factor in workers’ frames
of reference.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As described in that post, we highlight four frames of
reference on the employment relationship (neoliberal-egoist, unitarist, pluralist,
and critical), and these apply equally to workers as well as organizational
leaders. That is, workers have an implicit frame which shapes their
expectations. One Amazon worker who supported unionization <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/02/amazon-union-warehouse-workers/">was
quoted as saying</a>, “I ain’t going to lie, I thought it was going to be a
great place to work.” We can see differences in these expectations most visibly
in the context of unionization, but this thinking applies to workers in all
settings and pertains to all aspects of HR policies and practices. So just as
we predict that a neoliberal-egoist manager will favor practices consistent
with a transactional approach, a unitarist manager with a commitment approach,
a pluralist manager with an accommodative approach, and a reformist critical
manager with a cooperative approach, so, too, do we assert that neoliberal-egoist
<u>worker</u> will favor practices consistent with a transactional approach, a
unitarist <u>worker</u> with a commitment approach, a pluralist <u>worker</u>
with an accommodative approach, and a critical <u>worker</u> with a cooperative
approach.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But what happens when workers’ expectations are violated? Before
addressing that, we recognize that there are many factors that push toward alignment
rather than mismatch. Workers are not randomly assigned to organizations;
rather, they apply for and accept certain jobs, are socialized into the
organization, and can quit when their expectations are unfulfilled. Nevertheless,
mismatched frames can occur for various reasons, including limited job
opportunities for applicants, selection decisions that overlook fit or
prioritize diversity, the inconsistent application of HR policies, new
organizational leaders, and new events that change manager or employee frames. We’re
not claiming that mismatch is more common than alignment; rather, we’re saying
that the possibility of mismatch should not be overlooked as an organizational
phenomenon and explanation for under-performing HR practices.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So again, what happens when workers’ expectations about HR
practices are violated? We theorize that this will prompt workers to engage in
a sensemaking process. This may cause them to come to accept what they are experiencing,
to quit, or to resist the status quo. So a key part of our research is
exploring what we think emerges from different combinations of (mis)matched
frames between leaders and workers. For example, if they both have unitarist
frames, we’d expect high-commitment HR practices created by leaders that are then
embraced by workers, resulting in a high-performance organization. But a worker
with a pluralist frame working for a neoliberal-egoist manager may try to find
other similarly-minded co-workers to band together to fight for more voice,
better pay, and other improved conditions. This mismatch is predicted to lead
to conflict. Or, a neoliberal-egoist employee working for a unitarist manager
is unlikely to engage with the high-commitment HR practices, leading to
managerial frustration over under-utilized HR practices. Here is a brief
summary of our predictions, with more detailed tables in our article:</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMxuieL3DBHMHtzSFXGRf8aEhRYs00P8cy8R8o-SO8Gz2lXgFR19fceDAtKQvfS2du_Ft5iGSKB3gawkbvzxqVKdL9azkgtVi1NudxrmPbvtVAQLgp_2-ddWxQ8HCuQOGXZfqNEF_IRGbr/s924/matrix.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="924" height="249" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMxuieL3DBHMHtzSFXGRf8aEhRYs00P8cy8R8o-SO8Gz2lXgFR19fceDAtKQvfS2du_Ft5iGSKB3gawkbvzxqVKdL9azkgtVi1NudxrmPbvtVAQLgp_2-ddWxQ8HCuQOGXZfqNEF_IRGbr/w400-h249/matrix.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Previous HR systems research has focused on
archetypes—bundles or clusters of HR practices within organizations that are
structurally determined, internally consistent, relatively stable over time,
and documented across contexts—what we label here as transactional, commitment,
accommodative, and cooperative. Our research seeks to highlight the important
role of leaders’ frames of references, in addition to environmental, structural
factors, for influencing the type of HR approach that emerges (<a href="https://whitherwork.blogspot.com/2021/04/the-importance-of-cognitive-frames-for.html">see part 1 that precedes this post</a>) <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">as well as the importance
of shared frames with workers in order for an archetypical approach to be
stable and result in less conflict</b>. While there is a large research literature
on person-organization fit, this has typically focused on job skills,
organizational culture, or environmental and socially responsible values rather
than beliefs regarding the structural nature of the employment relationship and
resulting expectations about HR practices.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Moreover, by rooting expectations over HR practices in
actors’ (mis)matched frames of reference, we can explain a broader and more
nuanced set of HR policies and practices that better matches the variation
observed in HR policies and practice in reality—including patterns that are
more conflictual or the fact that competing organizations in the same industry
can have very different HR strategies.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This also helps explain how conflict over HR practices
sometimes results from employees wanting more, but also from managers’
frustration with a lack of employee commitment, loyalty, and participation. In
this way, we propose a new categorization of HR practices: effective,
underutilized, or causing recurring, antagonistic conflict.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSG6qE7BhfoJFRP49bsc7h4klUxRS_2fxBgPAOBBdOqONzIBXQK_sbCRYejkvPAJu1wkwIeaIwFJbV5nc0KA9gQtrmmXejH93dWHE2DUaQXiKtG6Sn40dq1W1X03xu9HcCTl3xftxgeb1v/s942/Capture.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="601" data-original-width="942" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSG6qE7BhfoJFRP49bsc7h4klUxRS_2fxBgPAOBBdOqONzIBXQK_sbCRYejkvPAJu1wkwIeaIwFJbV5nc0KA9gQtrmmXejH93dWHE2DUaQXiKtG6Sn40dq1W1X03xu9HcCTl3xftxgeb1v/w400-h255/Capture.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /> <p></p>
<br />
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Lastly, appreciating the potential importance of
(mis)matched frames within the dynamics of an organization draws attention to
the existence of framing contests within organizations. A framing contest is
the intentional use of ideas and information to persuade others to adopt your
frame, and thus follow your desired actions. We therefore expect managers to
regularly use discursive practices to obtain and maintain employees’ acceptance
of their frame of reference on the employment relationship as part of
reinforcing a broader organizational logic that is viewed as legitimate.
Organizations would generally have stronger communication channels than
employees, but union organizing drives are one visible example where employees
produce counter-narratives. In any case, this highlights the importance of
communication practices within organizations not simply to inform, but to
achieve conformity with the HR practices an organization wants its employees to
buy into.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<br />
<hr />Source: John W. Budd, Dionne Pohler, and Wei Huang
(forthcoming) "Making Sense of (Mis)Matched Frames of Reference: A Dynamic
Cognitive Theory of (In)stability in HR Practices," <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Industrial Relations</i>. <a href="http://doi.org/10.1111/irel.12275">http://doi.org/10.1111/irel.12275</a> [free
access to <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3795614">the pre-publication version here</a>].<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>John Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6493308528029298667.post-52175239912266419942021-04-15T20:18:00.004-05:002021-06-09T08:56:09.176-05:00The Importance of Cognitive Frames for Understanding HR Practices, Part 1 (Organizational Leaders)<p class="MsoNormal">Last Fall, workers at two popular craft breweries in the
Twin Cities (Fair State and Surly) announced their intent to unionize. The CEO
of Fair State <a href="https://www.startribune.com/twin-cities-based-fair-state-becomes-country-s-first-unionized-microbrewery/572372232/">responded
by saying</a> “I am proud of the self-determination our team has shown by
taking on the responsibility of organizing to make Fair State better,” and Fair
State became the first U.S. microbrewery to unionize. However, Surly announced
plans to <a href="https://www.startribune.com/surly-brewing-to-close-mpls-beer-hall-in-november-150-to-lose-jobs/572295702/">close
its taproom two days later</a>. Even if this had already been planned due to
pandemic-related financial losses, Surly certainly didn’t embrace the
unionization effort, and it remains nonunion. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If market conditions determine human resources (HR) strategies
and practices, such a stark difference is hard to explain. In <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/irel.12275">a recent paper</a>,
Dionne Pohler, Wei Huang, and I assert that we also need to factor in the role
of leaders’ frames of reference. A frame of reference is a cognitive lens
through which we perceive the world. When someone says “labor union,” quick
meanings probably come to mind; possibly, large, bureaucratic organizations
protecting lazy workers, relics of a bygone era, or needed champions of social
justice. This is because your brain has created a mental map based on prior
experiences, assumptions, and beliefs. This then influences what you think is
possible and desirable, perhaps subconsciously.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We focus on frames of reference on the nature of employment
relationship, and consider four broad alternatives:</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="text-indent: -22.5pt;">The </span><b style="text-indent: -22.5pt;">neoliberal-egoist
frame</b><span style="text-indent: -22.5pt;"> in which organizations and workers are seen as dispassionate agents
pursuing their own self-interest in economic markets that approximate ideal
competitive conditions, often with a view that work is lousy but serves
economic interests.</span></li><li><span style="text-indent: -22.5pt;">The </span><b style="text-indent: -22.5pt;">unitarist
frame</b><span style="text-indent: -22.5pt;"> in which organizations and workers are seen as essential partners who
can both thrive when appropriate policies and practices align and unite their
mutual interests, which are often seen as psychological as well as economic.</span></li><li><span style="text-indent: -22.5pt;">The </span><b style="text-indent: -22.5pt;">pluralist
frame</b><span style="text-indent: -22.5pt;"> in which organizations and workers are seen as having complex
relationships in which they are each an important partner, but also that this
partnership is set against a backdrop of bargaining power advantages for the
organization which is important because not all of their interests coincide and
can be aligned, potentially leading to harmful inequities.</span></li><li><span style="text-indent: -22.5pt;">The </span><b style="text-indent: -22.5pt;">critical
frame</b><span style="text-indent: -22.5pt;"> in which capitalist organizations and workers are seen primarily as
adversaries with opposing goals interacting in a world in which the dominant
group uses its deep-seated economic and social power to maintain its
advantages, systematically depriving the other of essential rights and
standards.</span></li></ol><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 22.5pt; text-indent: -22.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0px; text-align: left;">We assert that most organizational leaders’ implicit views
on the nature of the employment relationship can be usefully categorized as
largely falling either in the neoliberal-egoist or unitarist frames. There can
also be organizational leaders whose inherent beliefs are more consistent with
the pluralist way of thinking.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Central to our work is that we assert that these views, even
if subconscious, will influence what types of HR strategies and practices
organizational leaders will prefer and implement. That is, neoliberal-egoist
leaders will prefer transactional HR approaches, unitarist leaders will prefer
commitment HR approaches, and pluralist leaders will prefer accommodative HR
approaches:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvQbZPeRg0aPH537IZBydHMguaEbHu4viJrvnOluLkJbw0UIcz1_5UieBX9f40b08xMkUaR_wk_vAWTZJpLFvRlq4Gc_vsuP33oiKYnkhzu6mcXqEuG1N8E5SU36su6zGEoqcUz4t1H8j6/s588/Capture.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="588" data-original-width="545" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvQbZPeRg0aPH537IZBydHMguaEbHu4viJrvnOluLkJbw0UIcz1_5UieBX9f40b08xMkUaR_wk_vAWTZJpLFvRlq4Gc_vsuP33oiKYnkhzu6mcXqEuG1N8E5SU36su6zGEoqcUz4t1H8j6/w371-h400/Capture.JPG" width="371" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Note that this dynamic can occur at various levels within an
organization. The top leadership of an organization can have a certain frame
that sets an overall HR direction, and then if lower-level managers have the
same frame, their implementation practices will reinforce this direction.
However, there are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000426">many ways in
which lower-level managers can shape</a> the implementation of HR policies
consistent with their own frame. For example, a neoliberal-egoist manager could
act in an authoritarian fashion while denying development opportunities to
workers in a unitarist organization. So we admit that these relationships are
complicated, but nevertheless we believe that research needs to place more
attention on the importance of organizational leaders’ beliefs about the nature
of the employment in considering how HR strategies and practices are determined
and implemented.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But what about the critical frame? The critical frame of
reference sees the employment relationship as a deeply unequal one rooted in
socio-political-economic dominance by an elite group, such as capital. A leader
who holds this view could exploit this by acting only in the organization’s
interest without regard for employee well-being. By dismissing employee welfare
as something workers are themselves responsible for, such a leader would be
acting in a neoliberal-egoist fashion, and would provide market-driven,
take-it-or-leave terms and conditions of employment. Instead, consider a
business owner who sees the employment relationship through a critical frame of
reference but is bothered by the inequalities that disadvantage employees
rather than seeking to exploit them.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Through a critical lens, redressing these inequalities
requires structural changes in resources and decision-making rights. We label
leaders who have this perspective as “critical reformist” because of the
implied need to reform traditional capitalist organizational forms by creating
non-hierarchical organizations or alternative employment models that are
characterized by a relatively equal distribution of resources and shared
authority over decision-making between managers and employees. We label this a
cooperative approach where “cooperative” indicates worker-owned cooperatives (e.g.,
Mondragon) and other multi-stakeholder organizational governance forms (e.g.,
Stocksy). And thus, we can add another row to table above:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggpn9JK4a0HZDjsB5mUTb-qgHe1JwPkTDssJRFOjJQ1etqY3AbHdEKbhiFSOGJKnGWGaeiYxFcP2h4x1GrrBB_I1SYlHgWJ8lhGwLgIY4GGatgAksSQSdTQpprbszujhyOzVKgMigZW4jJ/s540/Capture2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="136" data-original-width="540" height="101" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggpn9JK4a0HZDjsB5mUTb-qgHe1JwPkTDssJRFOjJQ1etqY3AbHdEKbhiFSOGJKnGWGaeiYxFcP2h4x1GrrBB_I1SYlHgWJ8lhGwLgIY4GGatgAksSQSdTQpprbszujhyOzVKgMigZW4jJ/w400-h101/Capture2.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">To return to the opening example, Fair State is, in fact, a
cooperative, and hence <a href="https://www.startribune.com/twin-cities-based-fair-state-becomes-country-s-first-unionized-microbrewery/572372232/">the
CEO sees unionization as</a> “one more step to building the business that we
have envisioned from the beginning—one where workers and consumers each have a
say and stake in a business, working together to build something beautiful and
thriving.” The Surly leaders might not be surly, but with more of a unitarist
mindset they did not embrace unionization. More generally, previous HR systems
research has focused on archetypes—bundles or clusters of HR practices within
organizations that are structurally determined, internally consistent,
relatively stable over time, and documented across contexts. Our research seeks
to highlight the important role leaders’ frames of references can play in
influencing an organization’s HR approach, in addition to environmental,
structural factors.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But what about workers? They are also humans (!), and as
such have their own cognitive frames, including on the nature of the employment
relationship. So they have their own expectations about HR practices. This is
an essential element of our paper, and is <a href="https://whitherwork.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-importance-of-cognitive-frames-for.html">addressed in a follow-up post</a>.
Or you can watch <a href="https://youtu.be/vVYK_nnShNQ">our animated video
overview</a>.</p>
<br />
<hr />Source: John W. Budd, Dionne Pohler, and Wei Huang
(forthcoming) "Making Sense of (Mis)Matched Frames of Reference: A Dynamic
Cognitive Theory of (In)stability in HR Practices," <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Industrial Relations</i>. <a href="http://doi.org/10.1111/irel.12275">http://doi.org/10.1111/irel.12275</a> [free
access to <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3795614">the pre-publication version here</a>].<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>John Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6493308528029298667.post-72179628357067446272021-03-08T13:27:00.003-06:002021-03-08T15:31:44.598-06:00Can a Resurgence in Labor Unions Help Working Women, With or Without the PRO Act? <p><span style="color: #111111;">Happy International Women's Day!</span></p><p><span style="color: #111111;">First came the
wave of teacher strikes </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/10/women-teachers-strikes-america">led by women</a><span style="color: #111111;"> fighting the
devaluing of their work, then Google employees walked out in </span><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/01/tech/google-walkout-one-year-later-risk-takers/index.html">protest of its handling of
sexual harassment</a><span style="color: #111111;"> and (later) formed the Alphabet Workers Union, and now </span><a href="https://jacobinmag.com/2021/02/amazon-union-racial-justice-bessner-alabama">racial justice is a central
theme</a><span style="color: #111111;"> as Amazon warehouse workers in Alabama vote on whether to
unionize. In between have been innumerable other actions of protest,
solidarity, and collective action spurred by concerns with racial justice, the </span><a href="https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2020/december/she-cession-persists-women-of-color">she-cession</a><span style="color: #111111;"> and other pandemic-induced
inequalities, and feelings of powerlessness.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #111111; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Despite numerous
obstacles, this newfound energy could lead to increased unionization. The
prospects of a resurgence in labor unions would be dramatically magnified if
Congress passes the </span><a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/842">Protecting the Right to
Organize (PRO) Act</a><span style="color: #111111; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">. The PRO Act brings together pieces of failed legislation over
the past three decades and would </span><a href="https://brandonmagner.substack.com/p/breaking-down-the-pro-act">drastically re-shape labor
law</a><span style="color: #111111; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> by </span><a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/why-unions-are-good-for-workers-especially-in-a-crisis-like-covid-19-12-policies-that-would-boost-worker-rights-safety-and-wages/">removing numerous employer
advantages</a><span style="color: #111111; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext">over
unions and workers, making it easier for workers to form unions and giving them
greater bargaining power. Greater unionization could result in important
benefits for working women. Here’s why.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p><span class="MsoHyperlink"><b><span color="windowtext">Boosting Women’s Pay<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p>
<p><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext">Perhaps the most
obvious thing that unions typically do is negotiate for </span></span><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12122-004-1022-9">higher pay</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext"> and </span></span><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12122-004-1013-x">better benefits</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext">. Recent research
indicates that, on average, unionized women earn </span></span><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/caje.12432">12 percent more</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext"> than similar nonunion women in the U.S. private
sector. Unionization appears to increase pay for white women and Black women </span></span><a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/663673">to a similar degree</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext">. So if more women become unionized, we’d expect their
pay, on average, to increase. The union wage premium for women could even conceivably
increase with the passage of the PRO Act because of its potential to increase
union power. There could also be </span></span><a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/union-decline-lowers-wages-of-nonunion-workers-the-overlooked-reason-why-wages-are-stuck-and-inequality-is-growing/">spillover effects</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext"> that increase the
pay of other working women because the threat of unionization can cause
employers to preemptively increase pay. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext">Some things that
labor unions commonly do—such as raise pay more aggressively among lower-paid
workers, negotiate standardized pay rates and strong grievance procedures, and
combat pay secrecy—could also </span></span><a href="https://www.epi.org/blog/unions-help-narrow-the-gender-wage-gap/">close the gender pay gap</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext">. Indeed, when
Wisconsin weakened teacher unions and allowed greater individual wage-setting,
the </span></span><a href="https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/13754/flexible-wages-bargaining-and-the-gender-gap">gender pay gap increased</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext">. But systematically
closing the gender pay gap requires greater intentionality among unions because
men have a </span></span><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/caje.12432">higher union pay advantage</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext"> than women in the
U.S. private sector, so increased unionization could benefit men even more than
women without a more explicit focus on the gender pay gap. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p><span class="MsoHyperlink"><b><span color="windowtext">Benefits Workers Can
Use</span></b></span><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p>Union contracts
typically address wide-ranging issues relating to benefits, scheduling, and
time off which are beneficial for <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4880255/">individual and
community well-being</a>. Many of these can be particularly beneficial for
working mothers trying to juggle multiple roles, though research paints <a href="https://academic.oup.com/sf/article/96/4/1541/4819204">a mixed picture</a>
with union members more likely to have stable hours but also more likely to
have nonstandard schedules. <a href="https://theconversation.com/three-crucial-ways-that-unions-improve-employees-work-life-balance-86436">Research
from the UK</a> highlights three ways in which unions help workers balance work
and family: <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/001979390405700203">bargaining</a>
for policies that directly help working mothers, such as paid parental leave,
job sharing or onsite child care; reducing the frequency of excessively long
working hours, and fighting the typical manager’s belief that balancing work
and family is solely the worker’s responsibility.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>But bargaining
for policies is not enough; workers need to be able to actually use them. This
dynamic is captured by the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0019793918820032">four A’s:</a>
availability, awareness, affordability, and assurance. In other words, for a
new mother, for example, to take paid parental leave: 1) the policy needs to be
available, 2) if available, the worker needs to be aware of it, 3) even if
aware of an existing policy, the worker needs to believe she can afford a
leave, and 4) even if affordable, the worker needs to have assurances against
negative consequences that might result from taking a leave (e.g., missing out
on a promotion). <o:p></o:p></p>
<p>So beyond negotiating
for better policies (availability), unions can also significantly help women
use these policies—they can help spread awareness through newsletters,
one-to-one interactions, and the like; make leaves more affordable through
higher wages and better insurance coverage; and combat reprisals through
bargaining, grievance procedures, and other means. In my own research, I label
this the “<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/001979390405700203">facilitation
effect</a>” of labor unions. Through these various channels, union-represented new
mothers are more than 15 percent <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0019793918820032">more likely to
use paid maternity leave</a> than are comparable non-union mothers. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p>This
facilitation role of labor unions can also help working women navigate the
complex maze of federal, state, and local public policies on work. For example,
in the first years after the passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act
(FMLA), <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0160449X0302800304">hourly
unionized workers</a> were much more likely than others to have heard about the
FMLA, and were significantly less worried about losing their seniority or their
job if taking a family or medical leave.<span style="color: #111111; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Eligible workers are more likely to </span><a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.0019-8676.2004.00332.x" target="_blank">receive unemployment insurance benefits</a><span style="color: #111111; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> if they
were in union jobs, and unions help enforce </span><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0019793920953089">workplace safety</a><span style="color: #111111; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> and reduce </span><a href="https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/14112/wage-inequality-and-labor-rights-violations">other labor rights violations</a><span style="color: #111111; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">. This
assistance is likely particularly important for marginalized workers who
otherwise don’t have the resources and connections to counter employer
transgressions. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><b>Ripple Effects on the Policy Environment<span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext"><o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p>
<p><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext">Unions also lobby
for legislative protections for workers. The labor movement supports the $15
minimum wage that was controversially excluded from the federal stimulus bill last week.
An increase in the federal minimum wage would </span></span><a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/why-america-needs-a-15-minimum-wage/">particularly benefit</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext"> women, workers of color, and especially women of color (though these workers are also </span></span><a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/472910/systematic-inequality-economic-opportunity/">disproportionately excluded</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext"> from coverage). Passage
of the PRO Act could further boost union influence that results in </span></span><a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaa074">more favorable public policies</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext"> for workers and working women. Right-to-work laws that allow union-represented workers to not
pay union dues or fees weaken unions financially and politically, </span></span><a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w24259">resulting in more conservative lawmakers and lawmaking</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext">. The PRO Act would
abolish right-to-work laws, perhaps prompting the reverse cycle. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext">At an individual
level, labor unions help equip members with advocacy skills and norms that
translate into </span></span><a href="https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/glodps/725.html">greater political and civic engagement</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext">. If more women are
represented by unions in the future, these empowerment skills and norms could
potentially translate to other areas of their lives, too, such as </span></span><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/001979391306600207">running for political office</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext"> or negotiating the
allocation of household responsibilities. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p><span class="MsoHyperlink"><b><span color="windowtext">Putting the PRO Act in Context<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p>
<p><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext">A resurgence in
labor unions, perhaps supported by the PRO Act, could have important benefits
for working women—but there are multiple qualifications. What happens in any
particular bargaining unit can reflect contested political dynamics that are
not guaranteed to prioritize the concerns of working women or of workers with
other identities. Also, even if the PRO Act is enacted, increased unionized
would still require workers to successfully organize. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext">Additionally, the
PRO Act would only apply to the private sector, where less than 6 percent of
women are unionized; 60 percent of women union members work in the public
sector, where most are subject to state-level regulation which is often
unfavorable in conservative states. The PRO Act also fails to address </span></span><a href="https://whitherwork.blogspot.com/2020/08/is-nlra-racist.html">labor law’s racist</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext"> and sexist roots
that excluded agricultural and domestic service workers from its protections.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p>As good as the PRO Act might be for some women workers, it’s only one piece of a broader set of policy
interventions and new norms that we need to fully respect the <a href="https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-dignity-of-labor">dignity of labor</a>.</p>
<hr />
<i>Originally published in the <a href="https://genderpolicyreport.umn.edu/can-a-resurgence-in-labor-unions-help-working-women/">Gender Policy Report</a>.</i><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
John Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6493308528029298667.post-75047690319764564572021-02-08T18:22:00.008-06:002021-02-09T09:07:36.923-06:00Does 5 to 9 solve 9 to 5?<p>In the <a href="https://youtu.be/UbxUSsFXYo4">title song</a> for the 1980 movie "9 to 5", Dolly Parton captured the inhumanity of underpaid and over-harassed working women, which includes the well-known chorus:</p>
<i>Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living<br />
Barely gettin' by, it's all taking and no giving<br />
They just use your mind and they never give you credit<br />
It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it<br />
9 to 5, for service and devotion<br />
You would think that I would deserve a fair promotion<br />
Want to move ahead but the boss won't seem to let me<br />
I swear sometimes that man is out to get me.<br />
</i>
<p>From this chorus you can get a pretty good idea that work isn't portrayed all that positively in the song and accompanying movie. Work here is unfair, unequal, and sexist. Fast forward 40 years and Dolly Parton's song has been rewritten <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">—</span> or perhaps we should say "has pivoted"? <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">—</span> to "5 to 9" for <a href="https://youtu.be/y8jF96hoF9M">a Super Bowl commercial</a>:</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/y8jF96hoF9M" width="320" youtube-src-id="y8jF96hoF9M"></iframe></div><br /> Replacing the original chorus, but with essentially the same tune, 9 to 5 becomes:<p></p>
<i>Working 5 to 9, making something of your own now<br />
And it feels so fine to build a business from your know-how<br />
Gonna move ahead, and there's nothing that you can't do<br />
When you listen to that little voice inside you<br />
Well you got dreams and you know they matter<br />
Be your own boss, climb your own ladder<br />
That moment's getting closer by the day<br />
And you're in the same boat with a lotta your friends<br />
Launching ideas you all believe in<br />
The tide's gonna turn and it's all gonna roll your way.<br />
</i>
<p>In many respects, nothing has improved <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">— </span>in real life, and in the song's portrayal of work. The Super Bowl commercial starts out with repetitious images of the drudgery of office work and bored office workers <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">— again, </span>not a rewarding way to make a living. And the new chorus above has you dreaming of something better and being your own boss because the daily grind is just that.</p>
<p>But as I've explored in my book <i><a href="http://jbudd.csom.umn.edu/RESEARCH/thoughtofwork.htm">The Thought of Work</a></i>, work is complicated and can have multiple meanings. In addition to being a curse, drudgery that people tolerate to earn money, or something endured to confirm your social status as someone who works rather than loafs, work can also be a source of freedom and fulfillment <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">— </span>be your own boss, climb your own ladder, launch your own creative ideas.</p>
<p>Work as freedom and fulfillment are a reality for some (at least partly); a dream for others. And yet, 5 to 9 has created a backlash, including in provocative opinion pieces in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/07/business/dolly-parton-5-to-9-super-bowl.html">New York Times</a> and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/dolly-parton-s-2021-super-bowl-commercial-playing-rich-man-ncna1256944">NBC News</a>. To see why, we need the remainder of the new 5 to 9 lyrics:</p>
<i>
Working 5 to 9 you've got passion and a vision<br />
'Cause it's hustlin' time, a whole new way to make a livin'<br />
Gonna change your life, do somethin' that gives it meanin'<br />
With a website that is worthy of your dreaming<br />
5 to 9, you keep working, working, working<br />
Working 5 to 9, 'til your dreams, come true<br />
Working 5 to 9, you keep dreaming, dreaming, dreaming<br />
5 to 9, 5 to 9, you can do it<br />
</i>
<p>One controversy stems from the apparent celebration of "working, working, working" at a time when many feel overworked during the pandemic. Particularly ironic or galling is that the original 9 to 5 was somewhat of a feminist anthem, but 5 to 9 becomes extra humiliation as women are bearing much of the extra caring burdens with children home from school and elderly relatives unable to access support services. Indeed, 5 to 9 could mean 5pm to 9am (the famous "<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2014/08/06/the-second-shift-at-25-q-a-with-arlie-hochschild/">second shift</a>") so that women are expected to work, work, work around the clock.</p>
<p>Another controversy is that, whether intentional or not, the "hustling time" reference in the new lyrics taps into slang around the gig economy in which workers are continually forced to work side hustles or numerous jobs just to make ends meet. This is particularly true during the pandemic with <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/blog/2021/02/05/the-employment-situation-in-january/">record rates of job loss and unemployment</a>. We shouldn't be celebrating how hard it is to make a living. </p>
<p>So how should we interpret 5 to 9? Is it really a way to really break from jobs that are "all taking and no giving" such that people can earn a decent living doing "something that gives [life] meaning" without needing to work side hustles and multiple jobs, or becoming overworked through working, working, working. That is, does it allow you to take your day job and shove it, to paraphrase <a href="https://youtu.be/EzGoDtmTllg">another well-known work song</a>? If so, then this would be a good thing.</p>
<p>But the harsh reality is that for many, this takes more than a website worthy of their dreaming (yes, 5 to 9 is an ad for a web hosting and design company, Squarespace). So 5 to 9 really is 5pm to 9am, and it's added on top of other jobs. If this is the case, then we shouldn't be celebrating overwork. We should be trying to improve work so that people have can high-quality jobs that allow them to support a family without being overworked. And we should be doing so in ways that recognize rather than deny the deep inequalities rooted in race, gender, class, and other identities that shape work. But in the meantime...</p>
<i>9 to 5, yeah, they got you where they want you<br />
There's a better life and you think about it don't you<br />
It's a rich man's game no matter what they call it<br />
And you spend your life putting money in his wallet<br /></i>
John Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.com48tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6493308528029298667.post-45452959680450624492021-01-29T14:38:00.002-06:002021-01-29T14:38:58.337-06:00Union-buster Steve visits Superstore, But Maybe Not After the PRO Act<p>The NBC comedy Superstore is set in one store of the fictitious big-box retail chain Cloud 9. The main characters are all store employees, and refreshingly, it frequently <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2019/09/superstore-nbc-working-class-ice-raids-union-busting.html">reveals the injustices that many workers face</a>, such as the difficulty supporting a family on low wages, a lack of parental leave, inadequate health insurance, and many other indignities. These are all rooted in a fundamental imbalance between “corporate” and the realities of work on the shop floor (pun intended), and the prioritization of corporate interests. Appropriately, a repeated theme is corporate’s fear of worker solidarity, including corporate leaders going so far as triggering an ICE raid to derail the workers’ push for a union.</p><p>In the “Labor” episode, workers call corporate to ask about paid maternity leave, and after then mention the words “union” and “strike” in passing, corporate immediately escalates the situation, and reminiscent of <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/how-walmart-convinces-its-employees-not-to-unionize/395051/">stories heard about Walmart</a>, the next day the workers are treated to a visit by Steve, a union-busting labor relations consultant:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy4MbF7afPNRMFVJXYzLBU2i85JEpZCybPJ_XLbeb5pGROIlNkGnpVHZkSlxp488NlEzwk-47SajMlhRWDFEQK3sDbHkRZg6N_XSHxDmVv9iEdLWaY0fONRggzVt3RQ_6d14S1fOxjqE0n/s1744/Snapshot_43.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="974" data-original-width="1744" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy4MbF7afPNRMFVJXYzLBU2i85JEpZCybPJ_XLbeb5pGROIlNkGnpVHZkSlxp488NlEzwk-47SajMlhRWDFEQK3sDbHkRZg6N_XSHxDmVv9iEdLWaY0fONRggzVt3RQ_6d14S1fOxjqE0n/s320/Snapshot_43.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>Because it’s such a great portrayal of the stereotypical anti-union messages, I’ve reconstructed Steve’s whiteboard:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJZanIDQn6tAY829jTJ6QZJ3uJePli5MQlxK0A8gbqqpyiS1QeDc2pDCjWwLNQaNN6a5MrNyu6bqpT9ZT-jVgGD3lcmO0JgGASKUmmtLOC8K2sGs99wAkc1oFKqBAF7OOiPq_YFBLJgMJl/s1679/whiteboard+reconstruction+PPT.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1092" data-original-width="1679" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJZanIDQn6tAY829jTJ6QZJ3uJePli5MQlxK0A8gbqqpyiS1QeDc2pDCjWwLNQaNN6a5MrNyu6bqpT9ZT-jVgGD3lcmO0JgGASKUmmtLOC8K2sGs99wAkc1oFKqBAF7OOiPq_YFBLJgMJl/s320/whiteboard+reconstruction+PPT.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>First there is the “unions are unnecessary” theme. Cloud 9 is pro-employee and has an open door policy. Then there is the “unions are bad” theme—the negative reference to “union bosses” (and the implication of unions as outsiders), unions as raising prices (and thus threatening the employees’ jobs), and the always-present mention of union dues (don’t you want to keep your money?). The prospect of having to strike as well as a union’s inability to guarantee any improvements are additional common anti-union themes not included here. And then there is the attempt to portray workers who support unions as delusional or misguided—they’ve been lied to, pressured, bribed, swayed by outsiders, or just don’t really understand. Note the paternalism inherent in such statements. </p><p>Underscoring the realism of this fictional portrayal, note many of the same themes in this message <a href="https://twitter.com/skenigsberg/status/1283413958205083656?s=20">sent out by CorePower Yoga</a> in response to its instructors talking about unionizing:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpcPHkYagJnQDuvq7Y9H7b4Qs87hA4ikUSJYoRu6kycGjZM-PrPSle8c9Txk15oaeMjVvlzYvtal3hWVfN9LB_cdsrsc7a5U_bmBQ-YRyP8SqJM0AenRT8jxLnYifi0skQGGSRJ4Y6nshc/s1172/CorePowerYoga+7-15-2020+msg+pic+2-.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1172" data-original-width="1125" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpcPHkYagJnQDuvq7Y9H7b4Qs87hA4ikUSJYoRu6kycGjZM-PrPSle8c9Txk15oaeMjVvlzYvtal3hWVfN9LB_cdsrsc7a5U_bmBQ-YRyP8SqJM0AenRT8jxLnYifi0skQGGSRJ4Y6nshc/s320/CorePowerYoga+7-15-2020+msg+pic+2-.jpg" /></a></div><p>But returning to Steve’s visit to Cloud 9 store #1217, being forced to listen to your employer’s anti-union presentation is called “captive audience speech”, and in the United States this is legal unless it’s within 24 hours of a certification election or contains threats or promises. This has long been controversial because unions do not have the same ability to present their message to the workers. But the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/2474">Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act</a>—passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in 2020, but not the Senate, and undoubtedly primed for reconsideration in 2021—would change this situation and make captive audience meetings illegal. If Steve is an outside consultant, the PRO Act would also require Cloud 9 to disclose its relationships with labor relations consultants. And the PRO Act would make <a href="https://brandonmagner.substack.com/p/breaking-down-the-pro-act">many other changes</a>, too, amounting to the most significant change to private sector labor law since the 1940s. This is definitely something to watch in 2021—along with Superstore of course! </p><div><br /></div>John Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6493308528029298667.post-69877082920421634842020-11-05T21:14:00.001-06:002021-03-16T11:28:33.291-05:00How the U.S. Political System Might be Bad for Labor Unions Regardless of Who is in Power<p>Speaking of elections….it’s fairly obvious that whether Democratic or Republican politicians control local, state, or federal policy-making has important implications for future outcomes on wide-ranging issues, including employment-related outcomes like labor union strength. But recent research with Ryan Lamare suggests that regardless of which party is in power, the structure of the U.S. electoral system might also shape the strength of labor unions.</p><p>In our research we look at three measures of a country’s political system: (1) disproportionality, measuring (the inverse) of representativeness as captured by the discrepancy between votes and seats received, (2) the effective number of political parties, measuring fragmentation in a political system, and (3) whether or not there is a coalitional government. France is an example with high disproportionality scores—for example, President Macron’s party has more than 50 percent of the seats in the French National Assembly even though it only received 28 percent of the votes—while Belgium is an example of a large number of parties—currently, twelve different political parties currently have seats in the Belgian Chamber of Representatives.</p><p>Using multiple European data sets at both the individual and establishment level, we generally find that countries that labor unions are stronger and have more members when a political system is more representative, less fragmented, and governed by a coalition—regardless of the ideology of the ruling party or parties. </p><p>Why might this be the case? We can’t observe specific reasons in our analyses, but we articulate several possibilities. In more representative and coalitional political systems, it is difficult for any single party to govern or have outsized influence. In such systems, then, inclusionary governance arrangements are often required to attain political power, whereas in less representative and unilateral political systems, parties can be exclusionary in their governance. Under more representative and coalitional systems, unions have greater opportunities to use their extra-parliamentary status to act as consensus-builders, thus enhancing their legitimacy and value. Moreover, because it is difficult for any single party to govern in representative and coalitional electoral systems, employers have an incentive to seek influence as a social partner rather than relying on influence within specific political parties. In other words, there is a greater incentive for employers to embrace a culture of inclusion and compromise that recognizes rather than attacks the legitimacy of labor unions. All of these mechanisms can happen when the ideology of the legislature or ruling coalition is either right- or left-leaning. </p><p>On the other hand, when there are a large number of fragmented parties, smaller extremist parties can compete for relatively outsized power, this may make creating a spirit of consensus-building and compromise difficult. Instead we expect a competitive social climate in which unions are attacked. A large number of competitive parties could also create political gridlock, reinforcing an overall culture of competition rather than inclusion. </p><p><a href="https://whitherwork.blogspot.com/2019/12/legislative-election-rules-and.html">In an earlier posting</a>, I applied this to last year's UK election, and estimated that if the UK had proportional representation electoral rules, the chances of individual union membership would be higher by 2 to 9 percentage points than is currently the case under its highly disproportional system. </p><p>But where does the United States fit in? Numerically, the two-party system suggests a lack of competitive fragmentation, but recent experience suggests a great deal of polarization in spite of only two major parties. So labor unions become a partisan combatant in vitriolic contests rather than a consensus builder. The lack of coalition governments further denies labor unions this avenue for enhancing its legitimacy. In terms of representativeness as captured by disproportionality, the picture is cloudy. The U.S. House of Representatives typically scores favorably (that is, high proportionality / low disproportionality). In 2018, for example, the Democratic candidates garnered 53.4 percent of overall votes and ended up with 54 percent of the seats. But over the previous three elections, Republican Senate candidates received 44 percent of the vote but Republicans control 53 percent of the seats, resulting in a high disproportionality score of 8. And for the presidency, the electoral college can lead to even greater discrepancies. Unfortunately, this complicated U.S. electoral system doesn’t fit well with the European systems we analyzed in our research. But the above-average levels of disproportionality in the Senate and electoral college are consistent with the U.S. political system not being one of compromise and inclusion that our research suggests indirectly benefit the legitimacy of labor unions.</p><p>Even though it might be a stretch to our apply our results to the U.S. context, we think it’s important to continue to consider how the nature of a country’s political system may impact issues that are not typically considered, such as the legitimacy of a country’s labor movement. Some have used the 2020 presidential election as a platform for arguing the need to abandon the electoral college. Our research highlights that election rule reforms can have effects far beyond the obvious. Consequently, reforms could be even more valuable than realized...or full of unintended consequences. Only by thinking through these deeper effects can we get a better handle on this. </p><div><br /></div>
<hr />
Source: John W. Budd and J. Ryan Lamare (forthcoming) "The Importance of Political Systems for Trade Union Membership, Coverage, and Influence: Theory and Comparative Evidence," <i>British Journal of Industrial Relations</i>. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12575">https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12575</a>. [<a href="http://jbudd.csom.umn.edu/RESEARCH/Budd-Lamare-VOPC.pdf">free access to the pre-publication version here</a>]<br />
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John Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6493308528029298667.post-89758268301690678182020-10-07T10:45:00.001-05:002020-10-07T10:45:37.985-05:00Workplace Cooperation: Important, But Difficult<p>On Monday I had the honor of the receiving the 2020 <a href="https://uwm.edu/human-resources-labor-relations/news/melvin-lurie-labor-management-cooperation-prize/" target="_blank">Melvin Lurie Labor-Management Cooperation Prize</a>. This award honors the memory of Melvin Lurie, a Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and founder of what is now its <a href="https://uwm.edu/human-resources-labor-relations/graduate/" target="_blank">Master of Human Resources and Labor Relations (MHRLR) program</a>. The prize is intended to continue and enhance Professor Lurie’s legacy of promoting the practice and further the development of cooperation between labor and management.</p><p>As part of the ceremony, I delivered a lecture on "Workplace Cooperation: Important, But Difficult." This presentation highlights the connections between balanced employment relationships and workplace cooperation, and the difficulties of achieving and sustaining meaningful cooperation. Here is a video version: </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FD0MdB_wKCU" width="320" youtube-src-id="FD0MdB_wKCU"></iframe></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>John Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6493308528029298667.post-79696795352866832432020-08-31T20:52:00.005-05:002024-02-04T16:21:40.393-06:00Is the NLRA Racist?<p>One way to think more deeply about issues of race in work
and labor relations is to ask whether the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) is
racist. The NLRA was enacted in 1935 as part of the New Deal, and protects private
sector workers’ rights to organize into labor unions and collectively bargain.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">At its core, the NLRA is about workers, full stop, and the
language of the NLRA is colorblind. Moreover, many Black workers have benefited
from unionization. For at least the past 20 years, Black workers have had the <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.t01.htm">highest unionization
rates</a> compared to Asian, Hispanic, and white workers, and for most of the
postwar period, the positive effect of labor unions on household income has
been <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w24587">stronger for people of color</a>. Black
workers also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/663673">benefit from grievance
procedures</a>, standardized hiring and firing practices, and other policies
that can help mitigate discriminatory practices. The AFL-CIO now explicitly <a href="https://racial-justice.aflcio.org/">champions racial justice</a>. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But it hasn’t always been this way. Like many other aspects
of U.S. society, the labor movement has a mixed historical record with respect
to race and discrimination. Historically, some unions advocated for inclusion
while others were racist. Railroad and craft unions in the first decades of the 20<sup>th</sup>
century were particularly known for their racist, anti-Black stances, and in
some cases there were still separate, <a href="https://www-jstor-org.ezp1.lib.umn.edu/stable/2294116">segregated Black
and white locals</a> and restrictive membership policies in the 1960s.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">White union leaders and members are ultimately responsible
for this racist behavior, but there are several ways in which the NLRA systematically
disadvantages Black workers relative to white workers. The NLRA allows unions to be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329204269980">the workers’ exclusive
representative</a> when a majority of workers favor this. So a majority of workers
can significantly influence terms and conditions of employees for the rest. But
in spite of NAACP lobbying, the NLRA <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/604080">did not contain an anti-discrimination requirement</a> for unions, and the
judicially-constructed duty of fair representation was only a weak substitute in the face of prejudiced union leaders and co-workers. The
NLRA, therefore, gave unions significant power over workers—powers that were
even stronger for the first decade in which closed shops (allowing unions to
control access to jobs) were legal—but fell short of equally empowering Black
workers. Indeed, in the 1940s and 1950s, the agency established by the NLRA to
enforce it—the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)—<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329204269980">repeatedly allowed segregated locals
and trivialized racist speech by unions</a> during organizing drives. The
courts were no better. For example, in 1959 the Supreme Court refused to hear
an appeal of <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/262/359/54856/">Oliphant
v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen & Enginemen</a> in which the U.S.
Court of Appeals allowed the union to continue banning Black workers from becoming
members. It was not until the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 that such
discriminatory practices would be rendered illegal.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The lack of an explicit anti-discrimination provision in the
NLRA is often attributed to the need for Senator Wagner and other early NLRA
supporters to have the support of southern Democrats in Congress in order to
get the NLRA passed. Unions were not very strong in the south, so as long as
Jim Crow laws and norms that institutionalized and maintained white superiority were not threatened, then <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/When-Affirmative-Action-Was-White/">southern
Democrats would support the NLRA</a>. The preservation of Jim Crow in the south
also led to another feature of the NLRA that significantly harmed Black workers—the exclusion
of domestic and agricultural workers from the NLRA’s protections. These were
the largest categories of employment for Black workers in the south, and their exclusion
perpetuated the continued subjugation of them. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The intentional perpetuation of racial inequality during the
1930s and 1940s becomes even more apparent when looking beyond the NLRA to other federal policies of that era. The Fair
Labor Standards Act (minimum wages and overtime premiums), the Social Security
Act, unemployment insurance, the GI Bill, and other programs either excluded agricultural and
domestic workers or created programs that were ultimately administered locally,
thus allowing for subtle and not-so-subtle discrimination in the application of
these programs. As argued by Ira Katznelson, “by not including the occupations
in which African Americans worked, and by organizing racist patterns of
administration, New Deal policies for Social Security, social welfare, and
labor market programs restricted Black prospects while providing positive
economic reinforcement for the great majority of white citizens” which widened
economic disparity; or as he captures with the title of his book: this was <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/When-Affirmative-Action-Was-White/">when
affirmative action was white</a>. Federal housing policy resulted in the same pattern of discrimination as the Federal Housing Administration used <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america">biased decisions about mortgages</a> to segregate Black families in urban areas while subsidizing white home ownership in the suburbs, which widened racial wealth inequality.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Returning to the NLRA specifically, after the end of World
War II, unionization of southern workers represented a greater threat than 10
years earlier, so to <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/When-Affirmative-Action-Was-White/">maintain the south’s racial order</a>, southern Democrats in Congress changed course and teamed with
Republicans to pass the Taft-Hartley amendments to the NLRA. The changes to the NLRA made it more difficult to organize workers
and contributed to the failure of the labor movement’s Operation Dixie southern
organizing campaign. The Taft-Hartley Act also allowed states to pass
right-to-work laws prohibiting unions from charging workers dues and representation
fees. Right-to-work laws have racist origins in that they were created to
try to prevent the creation of solidarity among white and Black workers in the south.
Indeed, a vocal supporter of right-to-work laws in the 1940s allegedly <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0160449X15622702">inflamed opposition to
multiracial labor unions</a> by saying that if left unchecked, “white women and white men
will be forced into organizations with Black African apes whom they will have
to call ‘brother’ or lose their jobs.” </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">There are various
ways, then, in which the NLRA—along with other New Deal and immediate postwar
legislation—institutionalized and magnified existing power differences between Black workers and white workers in order to perpetuate patterns of inequality based on race.
In other words, aspects of the NLRA contributed to institutional racism. In
fact, the </span><a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/472910/systematic-inequality-economic-opportunity/" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">overrepresentation
of people of color</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> in the lowest-paid agricultural, domestic, and service occupations
continues to this day. At the same time, the overall picture is complex. Many Black workers have benefited from the NLRA’s protections of unionization, and </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/155704/new-deal-wasnt-intrinsically-racist" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">many
whites have been excluded</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> because they, too, work in domestic and
agricultural occupations. Many provisions of the NLRA or subsequent legal
interpretations have been shaped by ideologies pertaining to neoliberalism or
the democratization of work rather than racial hierarchies. And workers of all
races and ethnicities could benefit from labor law reform that strengthens the
NLRA and other labor policies. But maybe not equally. And therein lies the
issue—work </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/155704/new-deal-wasnt-intrinsically-racist" style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">isn’t
always (only) about race</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">, but we certainly shouldn’t </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">be blind to the complicated ways in which race
and labor intersect.</span></p>John Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6493308528029298667.post-83679761300789473852020-07-27T15:27:00.001-05:002020-07-27T15:27:22.425-05:00The Arbitration of Police Officer Discipline<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://whitherwork.blogspot.com/2020/07/police-unions-contracts-and-misconduct.html">Police unions and their contracts</a> should be
considered in discussions of social justice and policing. But we shouldn’t
ignore the details of the <a href="https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9652&context=penn_law_review">arbitration
procedure for deciding police discipline</a>. It’s common for U.S. union
contracts across all occupations and industries to set standards for discipline
and discharge (especially just or good cause), and to specify a grievance
procedure. Typically, the final step of this procedure allows for arbitration
by a neutral arbitrator who determines whether these standards have been
fulfilled and if so, the appropriate discipline. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Unionized grievance procedures are important, especially
when workers face discipline or termination. Rather than having one’s
livelihood threatened by arbitrary or unjust managerial actions, unionized
grievance procedures give workers due process so that discipline or
terminations only occurs when it is done properly, supported by evidence, and
just. The ability to appeal to an arbitrator is the linchpin for delivering due
process because a neutral, third party can override unjust actions rather than
leaving the grievant at the mercy of organizational leaders. Arbitrators take
this role seriously, and there is now a rich body of accepted standards
relating to due process, progressive discipline, and just cause.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Turning to police officers specifically, if we see them as
workers, then they should be entitled to due process protections so that any
disciplinary actions are just. As such, many police union contracts have
grievance procedures ending in arbitration just like those found across the
U.S. private and public sectors. But unlike most workers, police officers are
allowed to use force against others, and police misconduct can severely injure
or kill others. This magnifies the importance of disciplinary procedures when
applied to police officers, and it is important to ask whether such procedures
make it difficult to hold police officers accountable for misconduct (or
whether it would make it difficult to hold public safety workers accountable in
a drastically-changed system of public safety in which they are not <a href="https://workdayminnesota.org/minnesota-labor-can-lead-the-nation-as-we-reimagine-public-safety-together/">class
collaborators</a>). </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One study found that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/investigations/police-fired-rehired/?itid=lk_inline_manual_63">around
25 percent of terminated police officers</a> who appealed their firing to
arbitration were reinstated by arbitrators. Police chiefs argue that this
undermines their authority and makes it difficult to hold police officers
accountable for misconduct. By itself, however, that some cases are overturned
does not mean that there is a problem with arbitration. Indeed, arbitration
only serves its purpose of providing due process throughout the grievance
process if unjust terminations are overturned. For example, a patrol sheriff
was fired for escorting his girlfriend home during his shift so they could
spend his lunch break together, but this was <a href="https://www.oregon.gov/erb/Documents/19-01-07_MarionCountyLawEnforcementAssn-MarionCounty(TermGrv)Marr_Redacted.pdf">overturned
by an arbitrator</a> who found that the investigation of this incident was
incomplete, unreliable, and incorrect.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But legal scholar <a href="https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9652&context=penn_law_review">Stephen
Rushin’s in-depth consideration of police disciplinary appeal procedures</a>
reveals specific features that could undermine accountability. One, when police
chiefs and unions play an active role in selecting the specific arbitrator who
will hear the case (e.g., by alternating striking names from a roster of
choices), arbitrators have an incentive to make both sides happy in order to be
selected again in the future. Reducing a termination to a suspension might be a
way to split the difference between the two sides. Alternative selection
procedures could weaken this incentive while preserving arbitration as a check
on due process. For example, starting in September 2020, in <a href="https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/text.php?session=ls91&number=HF1&session_number=2&session_year=2020&version=list">Minnesota
a roster of arbitrators</a> will be assembled by the state’s Bureau of Mediation
Services, and after they undergo training on racism and policing, arbitrators
will be assigned to cases alphabetically rather than selected by the parties. [Relatedly,
most arbitrators are probably older white men so the impact of reforming the
selection process could perhaps be magnified by diversifying the arbitration
profession.]</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Two, arbitrators typically have broad authority to hear a
case without deferring to previous decisions in that case—in legal parlance,
they can arbitrate a case <i>de novo</i>
(“from the new”). So all evidence can be reconsidered, new factual
determinations can be made, and decisions by, for example, civilian review
boards, can be ignored. Police officers accused of misconduct have a strong
incentive to appeal to arbitration because they will get a new hearing. But
perhaps more significantly, the authorities that are democratically accountable
to the community—such as police chiefs, city officials, or civilian review
boards—are subordinate to the arbitrator who can craft his or her opinion from
scratch. An alternative approach would be to make arbitration more of an
appellate-type review with a deferential standard. In this way, rather than an
arbitrator being able to substitute their judgement for that of the police
chief, the arbitrator would need strong procedural reasons or evidence of
significant factual errors to overturn a disciplinary decision. In other words,
this could shift the mindset from “what would I (the arbitrator) do?” to “is
what was done reasonable?” This could still provide a check on due process
violations, but would give more deference to the decisions of democratically
accountable officials. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Another area to consider is past practice. An important
aspect of just cause is whether discipline is being evenly applied—that is, is
the worker being treated the same as other workers who previously did similar
things? So arbitrators place a lot of weight on past practice, and when seen
through a lens of fairness, this seems appropriate. But if police departments
have been lax in holding police officers accountable for misconduct, then the
importance of past practice for arbitrators can make it difficult for new leaders
to enforce misconduct standards because others have not been punished for the
same offenses in the past. <a href="https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/cuapb/pages/1/attachments/original/1591595256/WHAT_WILL_IT_TAKE_TO_END_POLICE_VIOLENCE_with_Appendices.pdf?1591595256">Communities
United Against Police Brutality therefore advocates</a> for a mandatory
“disciplinary reset mechanism.” This consists of a thorough revision of a
police department’s use of force policy that includes clear penalties for violations
and a statement that this replaces past practices. This should also include
training for officers on the new policy, and training for supervisors on how to
correctly document violations while also administering consistent and
progressive discipline. If done properly, this will fulfill the arbitral
standards for just cause discipline and discharge. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In closing, design choices for organizational dispute
resolution procedures importantly affect worker justice and organizational
efficiency. In the case of police officers (or potentially some workers in a
reformed system of public safety), it may also influence public accountability
for police brutality, with very important and sometimes tragic consequences for
victims and communities. This makes these issues too important to uncritically
accept the status quo without considering avenues for improvement, even if this
is just a small piece of a larger, complex puzzle of public safety reform.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Discussion / Reflection Question</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What are some limitations of these proposals for changing
arbitrator selection, limiting <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de novo</i>
authority, and enacting a disciplinary reset? Be sure to separately consider
this from the perspective of (a) police or public safety workers, (b) police
department and city officials, and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(c)
the public. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><br />John Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6493308528029298667.post-86342514223349081192020-07-27T15:24:00.005-05:002020-08-25T08:38:19.471-05:00Police Unions, Contracts, and Misconduct<p class="MsoNormal">Systemic problems with police brutality raise important
issues for labor relations. As with other public sector workers, police
officers have pushed for collective bargaining rights when they have been
frustrated with their pay and employment conditions, and they started winning
these rights in the 1960s as states began authorizing public sector collective
bargaining. Today, police officers are among the most highly-unionized
occupations in the United States, and police unions have used collective
bargaining to advocate for officers’ interests. In many respects, this is no
different from what unions do for any kind of worker, and <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2841837">police union
contracts are like many other collective bargaining agreements</a> in that they
include provisions pertaining to salaries, overtime, leaves, health and
retirement benefits, retirement, hours, sickness and vacation leave, pensions,
just cause requirements, and a grievance procedure. But there are also
important ways in which police unions are unique, and these cannot be separated
from issues of race.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Police officers are a very special type of worker because they
are allowed to use physical force to
enforce laws and rulings. As such, the police, along with the military
and prison system, are the coercive force of the government, and by extension, <a href="https://workdayminnesota.org/minnesota-labor-can-lead-the-nation-as-we-reimagine-public-safety-together/">the
economically and politically powerful</a>. The extent to which this serves
elite interests is clearly seen in the origins of policing, such as <a href="https://lawenforcementmuseum.org/2019/07/10/slave-patrols-an-early-form-of-american-policing/">slave
patrols in the southern U.S.</a> that violently controlled and terrorized
African Americans, and the use of <a href="https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/history-policing-united-states-part-3">police
in the north to physically repress striking workers</a> through mass arrests
and violent crowd dispersal, as highlighted in this <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/19j2BdElHltDsttnsVGXdFY9kwlQEHJbZ/view?usp=sharing">1934 rally against police brutality</a>
organized by striking longshore workers. Today, police are still used in
strikes, often on the side of business (e.g., making sure strikebreakers can
enter and leave work sites), and to maintain by force what elites characterize
as “social order.” Note carefully that this involves race when elites are
largely white and their perceived threats to social order are people of color. More
generally, when laws, public policies, and state-supported institutions
perpetuate racial inequality, then policing is inextricably linked to
structural racism because of policing’s role in enforcing these instruments of
the state, even in the absence of racial prejudice among individual police
officers.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Among unions, then, police unions can have unique
relationships with the ruling state apparatus. Indeed, connections with
conservative, law-and-order politicians have made police unions <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-police-union-power-helped-increase-abuses">particularly
powerful in the political arena</a> at a time when most other unions are under
attack by conservative politicians and right-wing groups. This has allowed
police unions to be exceptionally successful in shielding police officers from
discipline for police brutality and misconduct. Campaign Zero highlights <a href="https://www.checkthepolice.org/#project">various ways in which police
contracts make it difficult</a> to hold police officers accountable for
misconduct:</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Misconduct
complaints are invalid when submitted too many days after an incident occurs or
are dismissed if an investigation takes too long (sometimes as short as 60
days).</span></li><li><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Limitations
are placed on how, when, and where police officers can be interrogated,
including prohibitions on interviews immediately following an incident.</span></li><li><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Accused
officers are given unique access to information get prior to being interrogated
(e.g., names of accusers and all evidence before even being interviewed).</span></li><li><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Officers
are given paid leave while under investigation, and cities are required to pay other
costs like legal fees and settlements with victims.</span></li><li><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Civilian
oversight structures and/or the media are prevented from holding police
accountable by limiting what can be released to the media and by <a href="https://whitherwork.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-arbitration-of-police-officer.html">allowing appeals to arbitration</a></span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">.</span></li><li><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Past
misconduct is erased from an officer’s record after a period of time (sometimes
as short as 2 years) and/or cannot affect punishment in a subsequent case.</span></li></ol><p></p><p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Even in the absence of contractual provisions, at least 16
states include some of the these provisions in Law Enforcement Officers Bills
of Rights (“LEOBORs”), so these types of inhibiting provisions are not limited
to police officers who are unionized.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Police unions, then, have pursued a “business unionism”
philosophy that focuses on protecting their members’ interests. In principle, this
is not unusual as all unions advocate for their members. But given the unique
roles of police officers in society, has this gone too far? Indeed, whether
achieved via collective bargaining or legislation, research shows that these
barriers to police accountability are <a href="https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d251393e-53e0-4c5e-a0ab-323b49768de2/download_file?file_format=pdf&safe_filename=Police%2BInstitutions%2Band%2BPolice%2BAbuse%2B-%2BEvidence%2Bfrom%2Bthe%2BUS%2B-%2BRG%2Bthesis.pdf&type_of_work=Thesis">associated
with greater levels of police abuse</a>. And yet police unions oppose reform,
<a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/7/31/21334190/what-police-do-defund-abolish-police-reform-training">sponsor warrior training</a> (even against the order of their own city, as was <a href="https://www.startribune.com/minneapolis-police-union-offers-free-warrior-training-in-defiance-of-mayor-s-ban/509025622/">the
case in Minneapolis</a>), and target officers who speak up about police
misconduct. So unlike some other unions that have <a href="https://www.nj.com/opinion/2020/07/big-labors-structural-racism-is-bigger-than-the-problem-with-police-unions-opinion.html">become
more community oriented</a>, police unions see their interests in opposition to
the community. This reflects a “thin blue line” mentality that assumes the police
are the only thing preventing society from descending into disorder. When
combined with the militarization of the police, this results in an <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/7/7/21293259/police-racism-violence-ideology-george-floyd">us
versus them mindset</a> in which everyone represents a threat.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">These issues are inseparable from race as <a href="https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/lpd16p.pdf">police officers are
mainly white</a> as are <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/06/10/a-major-obstacle-to-police-reform-the-whiteness-of-their-union-bosses">their
union leaders</a>, even when the community is not, and they are part of a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/opinions/systemic-racism-police-evidence-criminal-justice-system/">criminal
justice system that systemically produces racially disparate outcomes</a>. This
is not to say that all police officers are prejudiced, but it should raise
questions about the overall nature of the system, the roles of police unions
within it, and changes to police unionism that could better strike a balance
between collective bargaining rights for police officers and social justice for
people of color and others. In terms of police unions, such <a href="https://www.onlabor.org/police-unions-its-time-to-change-the-law/">changes
could include</a> greater public oversight, ending exclusive jurisdiction so
that reform-minded officers could form their own associations that might be
more reform-minded and community-oriented, and excluding issues of force,
misconduct, and discipline from collective bargaining. Or as an institution that "<a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2020/08/americas-brotherhood-of-police-officers" target="_blank">scorns the personhood of all but its own brethren</a>" and does not stand in solidarity with other workers, perhaps police unions are not really unions at all, and are beyond reform. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Discussion / Reflection Questions</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p>1. What elements of police work justify extra protections
against discipline and discharge? What elements of police work justify the
opposite?<div><br />2. What are some ways to strike a better balance between police
officer safety and the safety of the public?</div><div><p class="MsoNormal">3. Should police unions be expelled from labor federations like
the AFL-CIO?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p>4. </o:p>What elements of police accountability should be handled in
the employment relationship and what elements should be handled in the criminal
justice system? How should these processes relate to each other? What features
of policing create unique barriers to relying on the criminal justice system
for handling police accountability? What are the implications of these unique
barriers for how the police officer employment relationship should be governed?
In other words, how are police officers different from other workers, and what
does this imply for police officer unionization and contracts?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><br /></div>John Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6493308528029298667.post-63919441609564773332020-06-29T14:46:00.004-05:002024-01-08T10:41:06.193-06:00Using Employment Relations Frames of Reference to Think about Discrimination and (Institutional) Racism<div class="MsoNormal">
Central to <a href="https://whitherwork.blogspot.com/2012/04/labor-relations-advice-importance-of.html">my
approach for labor relations teaching</a> is the explicit recognition of schools
of thought (equivalently, “frames of reference”) on the employment relationship.
<a href="https://whitherwork.blogspot.com/2016/04/everything-you-need-to-know-about.html">Four
schools of thought</a>, in particular, illustrate sharply contrasting
perspectives on labor unions, and it’s important to understand how these views
are rooted in different models of the employment relationship that embrace
differing assumptions. In brief, the four key models are:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
1. <b>Neoliberal egoist</b>: Dispassionately rational employers and
employees freely pursue their own self-interest in competitive labor markets;
when these interests align, they transact with each other, when they do not
align, they keep searching for mutually-beneficial exchanges.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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2. <b>Unitarist</b>: Although labor markets might not be perfect,
employers and employees share a unity of interests (hence “unitarist”),
especially in that treating employees well improves the company’s bottom line
and vice versa.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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3. <b>Pluralist</b>: Employers and employees interact as unequals
with some shared and some conflicting interests that are accepted by the other as
legitimate (hence, “pluralist”), but these conflicts are economic in nature and
limited to the employment relationship.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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4. <b>Critical</b>: Employers and employees interact as unequals
with key conflicting interests and significant power differentials that are
embedded in societal institutions.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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In this post I hope to illustrate the usefulness of
explicitly considering these alternative frames of reference as a way for
thinking about discrimination and (institutional) racism, especially with
respect to the limitations of some perspectives.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">First, some definitions would be useful. Prejudice is an individual bias against others based some identity; individual racism is prejudice based on race and beliefs of racial superiority. Discrimination is a pattern of behaviors and practices that harm members of a group. Institutional racism is the systematic allocation of resources and opportunities that advantage racial groups at the expense of other racial groups. Individual racism might be easy to see; institutional racism can be embedded in hard-to-see institutions and norms. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Now turning to the frames of reference, in the neoliberal egoist employment relationship with
perfectly-competitive markets and self-interested agents, discrimination on any
basis except economic value should not exist because those who discriminate
would face a competitive disadvantage, and market competition would force them
to change or go out of business. But perfectly-competitive markets only exist
in economics textbooks, and discrimination obviously exists. However, consider
what happens if we make this model more realistic by recognizing that employers
do not perfectly know an individual worker’s true qualities. In this case, for employers
to generalize on the basis of demographic characteristics (for example, by
assuming that parents of young children will be absent more frequently) can be
rational behavior driven by profit-maximization (self-interest) rather than prejudice.
This is called statistical discrimination. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As a concept, statistical discrimination is useful for
thinking about how seemingly-benign self-interest can lead to racial and other
forms of discrimination. But in reality, attempts to explain broad-based racial
discrimination as statistical discrimination <a href="https://www.minneapolisfed.org/~/media/assets/people/william-spriggs/spriggs-letter_0609_b.pdf?la=en">ignore
the racism</a> that leads to race being seen as a meaningful indicator in the
first place, and overlook the inherent racism that causes the believed
attributes to always be negative. In other words, when it comes to race, we
should not see statistical discrimination as a benign explanation of patterns
of inequality, but rather as ultimately rooted in racism.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the unitarist school of thought, discrimination is
largely ascribed to individual or organizational failings that can be addressed
through improved organizational policies and practices that are voluntarily
adopted. Unitarism rests on the assumption that workers and organizations have
common interests that can be aligned. As such, conflicts in the workplace,
including those pertaining to discrimination, are seen as resulting from the
aberrant attitudes and behaviors (e.g., prejudice) of specific individuals, and
that this can be improved through interventions like training. At an
organizational level, high-functioning organizations are seen as those that tap
into workers’ interests for mutual benefit, which leads to an emphasis on
diversity management as a win-win source of organizational performance and
respect for all individuals. Organizations that don’t do this are urged to
recognize the so-called business case for diversity.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At its best, the unitarist organization can change
individual attitudes and behaviors while giving employment opportunities to people
of color. But <a href="https://hbr.org/2019/11/getting-over-your-fear-of-talking-about-diversity">talking
about race is hard</a> (even with the many <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race">tools available</a>) and <a href="https://www.startribune.com/will-this-be-the-moment-when-businesses-get-serious-about-racial-bias-in-hiring/571511282/?refresh=true">change
is hard</a>. Moreover, a unitarist approach places an excessive reliance on
organizational self-interest and self-policing. What happens when an
organization believes its business case is serving a racist segment of society,
or segments its workforce along racial lines to make it easier to manage? Or if
it doesn’t back up public relations statements with <a href="https://hbr.org/2020/06/u-s-businesses-must-take-meaningful-action-against-racism">meaningful
action</a> or if its diversity training fails (<a href="https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail">as is often the case</a>)?
And since racism, prejudice, and structural inequalities are social phenomena, even
the most well-intentioned organization can only have a limited impact. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the pluralist employment relationship, discrimination
stems from unequal bargaining power. African American workers, for example, might be (1) paid less than white workers because they lack the bargaining power to get higher pay,
and (2) crowded into certain occupations because they lack the leverage to break
into better-paying occupations or because intentionally-constructed racial
divisions can lower all workers’ bargaining power. Integration and improved
labor market power, not just diversity or non-discrimination are therefore highlighted.
Consequently, multi-pronged institutional changes are championed, including
legislative action and labor union representation to enhance workers’ power. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Unlike the previous two approaches, the pluralist school of
thought recognizes the importance of power differences across racial groups.
But there are limitations. Relying on labor unions or other groups to increase
the power of African American workers or those with other identities requires union leaders
committed to this and able to overcome racist attitudes among the rank and file.
But these are not guaranteed, especially when these institutions are <a href="https://www.nj.com/opinion/2020/07/big-labors-structural-racism-is-bigger-than-the-problem-with-police-unions-opinion.html">embedded in a society marked by racism</a>. In other words, the pluralist approach
focuses largely on the labor market, which makes it inadequate to address
racism and labor market inequalities that go beyond the labor market. For
example, even though many aspects of the 1930s New Deal were worker-friendly,
the New Deal’s Federal Housing Administration created racially-segregated
neighborhoods by making <a href="https://www.mappingprejudice.org/">restrictive
racial covenants</a> a condition of receiving subsidized mortgages. The result
of this segregation often persists today, and continues to make it more
difficult for workers with marginalized identities to access good jobs in the predominantly white suburbs.
So a pluralist focus on the labor market doesn’t do enough to uncover why there
are power differences between white people and people of color, and fails to redress
systemic racism. As with the unitarist perspective, important initiatives can
emerge, but they are inadequate by themselves for combating institutionalized racism. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Which brings us to critical schools of thought on the employment
relationship in which inequalities between a dominant elite and others are
rooted in a number of social inequalities, such as education, housing, banking
and loans, health care, media, and political and judicial influence. The
dominant elite, therefore can use these material and normative advantages to
maintain its dominance, which includes controlling access to good-paying jobs.
This way of thinking can be applied to various fault lines such as class and
gender, but of particular relevance to racism is critical race theory which
focuses on racial divisions and the ways in which white people have systemic
advantages that go beyond the labor market. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of the four conventional schools of thought on the
employment relationship, the critical race theory wing of the critical school
is the most powerful lens for considering institutional racism because it
prompts us to consider the ways in which labor market discrimination is deeply
connected to other key aspects of society that are material as well as
normative, and more generally the ways in which capitalism is more accurately described as "racial capitalism" because identities are exploited for profit. In other words, we must confront how racism is embedded in societal institutions including business. Consequently, redressing racial inequalities requires deep, anti-racist structural reforms that move beyond formal equality or corporate diversity
programs. Genuine equality and inclusion requires re-defining society’s values
and aggressively opening up good-paying jobs to traditionally marginalized workers. And this perspective deepens the traditional pluralist thinking on
labor market segmentation by revealing the complex roots of segmentation that
reside outside of the usual employment relations actors, such as racialized patterns
of education, housing, and health care. So opening up good paying jobs requires
addressing these underlying inequalities which means confronting the racist
origins of these differences.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">In closing, as part
of broader <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race">personal
reflections and conversations about race</a>, I hope that these perspectives
are useful for thinking about discrimination and racism at an individual as
well as societal level. From an individual level, for example, white people can ask
themselves whether they are trying to justify decisions on the basis of
statistical discrimination and what not-so-apparent advantages they’ve
benefited from. At a societal level, we can ask what are the roots of racial
inequalities and what’s needed to redress them.</div>John Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6493308528029298667.post-83854481325280000532020-04-24T16:38:00.003-05:002023-04-27T19:28:50.512-05:00Data (Analytics) on COVID-19: Lessons for People AnalyticsData visualization, dashboards, and <a href="https://windypundit.com/2020/04/a-brief-and-unnecessary-defense-of-epidemic-models/">statistical modeling</a>
have been <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/4/10/21209961/coronavirus-models-covid-19-limitations-imhe">thrust into the spotlight</a> because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I am not
a biostatistician or an epidemiologist (not even <a href="https://twitter.com/dutchscientist/status/1248608462256275456">an armchair one</a>!) so I am not in a position to evaluate or
criticize these visualizations and models. But I’m currently teaching a course
on data and metrics for human resources, so there is an educational opportunity
to consider lessons the spotlighted data (analytics) on COVID-19 might have for
people analytics.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let’s start with dashboards, which are common in people
analytics. Here is a COVID-19 dashboard from <a href="https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html">Johns Hopkins</a>:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOTst02nWwNX4wRoKRwp1TnPepGvD7CLFFsFjwHtBtkjafFE0dKq94OTcMbnuItH9hxP4qlPyrpJpUPIbNBxi_mzxu8FMZ22DqzGUqv9jBtNOFSwoIkVhyk3WGFI5noKRl4GPqlKX9J_Hn/s1600/jhu-map.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="843" data-original-width="1058" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOTst02nWwNX4wRoKRwp1TnPepGvD7CLFFsFjwHtBtkjafFE0dKq94OTcMbnuItH9hxP4qlPyrpJpUPIbNBxi_mzxu8FMZ22DqzGUqv9jBtNOFSwoIkVhyk3WGFI5noKRl4GPqlKX9J_Hn/s400/jhu-map.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html" style="font-size: medium; text-align: start;">https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s impressive in the amount of data it brings together and
in the ability for the user to change views. You can certainly easily grasp the
major metrics, numerically as well as graphically—which is the purpose of a
dashboard, whether pertaining to COVID-19 or HR metrics such as employee
headcounts. But as with all dashboards, there are at least three major questions. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<ol>
<li>Are these the right metrics for
what you are trying to understand? It’s easy, for example, to find Twitter
threads debating whether total deaths or deaths adjusted for country population
is the better measure. But like many debates over metrics, rather than seeing
this as a competition over which metric is better, it would be more productive
to see various measures as complements that measure different aspects (e.g.,
total cases reflects the pace at which an outbreak is growing; per capita cases
indicates strain on a health care system). </li>
<li>Are the data accurate or comparable, especially when collected from diverse sources? Do individuals within an organization have a self-interest to report data in certain ways? Or are there different capabilities that produce different measures. As <a href="https://ler.illinois.edu/about/faculty-staff/faculty/lamare-j-ryan/">Ryan Lamare</a> reminds me, dashboards and data visualizations work best when there is a common baseline. Otherwise, users need to think carefully about what they're actually seeing and how they're interpreting it. In the COVID-19 case, for example, how should we interpret national comparisons of total tests when testing capacity differs? A similar example in HR might be a comparison of training numbers across units with different training capacities. </li>
<li>Beyond seeing the scope of a current situation, what actions can
you take from metrics that are largely descriptive? This dashboard, for
example, shows which areas have the most cases by COVID-19 but how do we act upon
that information? An HR dashboard might reveal areas of an organization with
low employee engagement, but is unlikely to help reveal why. </li>
</ol>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Next, here is a visualization from <a href="https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch">John Burn-Murdoch</a> of the Financial Times that
has also frequently been spotlighted:<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSRUYqRGEZRHsZVz998luL17N8p-OicDq3_982kwZPtz-og2c0uXjPhUxXvMIBCsi2v0CXnVzaDbbKxSkNKSf0r-ok_aKaAksiWAE2SjbtU-F4zXsw_4SGUk2KXJwLGH1MIXteNZUHdN8T/s1600/ft-time-trends.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="494" data-original-width="706" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSRUYqRGEZRHsZVz998luL17N8p-OicDq3_982kwZPtz-og2c0uXjPhUxXvMIBCsi2v0CXnVzaDbbKxSkNKSf0r-ok_aKaAksiWAE2SjbtU-F4zXsw_4SGUk2KXJwLGH1MIXteNZUHdN8T/s400/ft-time-trends.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest">https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is a great visualization for seeing trends within countries, and across them, too, if you carefully remember what's being compared. In a people analytics context, this could be seen almost as a
scorecard to see how your organization stacks up against others, or how areas
within your organization compare to each other. But there are at least three
things to be cautious about. First, there are the same concerns as with a
dashboard—are these the right measures, the right comparisons, is there a common baseline, etc. (in fact,
the source of the data for this visualization is the John Hopkins dashboard
data, so the same concerns apply). Second, the nature of visualization tempts you to forecast into the
future. But what’s the basis for that forecast?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For example, let’s go back to the March 15 version of the
same visualization:<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6xkkajrS5azKromejzHD29hyphenhyphen2cKOSzRLl9khtM6PM0zrxxZxO36phLgJE4ZGa-ngS0eRkxKMdQPNIcx3_-HNrwIcmzg0bv51VPNBTgY6ET6bsDvg1PgNzsPE1AvSFmpiHPjbXw87WPYC_/s1600/ft-time-trends_03_15_2020.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1020" data-original-width="1400" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6xkkajrS5azKromejzHD29hyphenhyphen2cKOSzRLl9khtM6PM0zrxxZxO36phLgJE4ZGa-ngS0eRkxKMdQPNIcx3_-HNrwIcmzg0bv51VPNBTgY6ET6bsDvg1PgNzsPE1AvSFmpiHPjbXw87WPYC_/s400/ft-time-trends_03_15_2020.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15.3333px; text-align: start;"><a href="https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1239276487062233089?s=20">https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1239276487062233089?s=20</a></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Based on this visualization, we might have projected that
the U.S. would look more like South Korea, and that Spain was on the worst trajectory of all. Unfortunately, Spain has indeed been hard hit, but it’s been
exceeded by the United States in terms of total cases. Moreover, I think our minds are tempted to draw
single lines that project out from each trend line. Even if these lines grasp the complicated curvature reflected in the trends to-date (so you do a complicated rather than simplistic projection), there is still a major problem. Namely, this ignores
forecast error—instead, we should also be trying to ascertain how much
variability and uncertainty there is in any forecast, including HR-related
projections. More broadly, in making any statistical inference, we should understand whether the sampling error is large or small, and thus the magnitude of the margin of error and the <a href="https://youtu.be/1q63n3B2Ngc">soundness of concluding that there is a meaningful relationship or result</a>.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A third caution for people analytics that we can take away
from this visualization is a reminder that this metrics-focused approach
doesn’t inquire as to what factors influence the trends portrayed. Note that is
doesn’t claim to, so this isn’t a criticism per se. Rather, it’s a reminder
that if you want to act upon information by, for example, implementing new HR
initiatives, you should always be asking what’s influencing the metrics. What
levers can you nudge that will change the metrics in the desired ways? Even if
you can’t estimate an actual regression, it can be helpful to approach problems
with that mindset—what variables would you like to include in a regression to
explain the metric? In the absence of a regression, is there other evidence to
support the importance of these factors? What’s missing from your (mental)
model?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thinking about factors that influence a trend or a metric represents a shift from a metrics approach to more of a predictive
analytics approach. In the COVID-19 pandemic, this is reflected in the importance of statistical models for policy-making—for example, using predictions from models for implementing
stay-at-home orders. Let's consider two broad approaches.<br />
<br />
One approach to modeling the spread of COVID-19 essentially tries to figure out the shape of
the curves in the above visualizations by fitting statistical parameters to the curves that are the most complete (e.g., China, Italy). If you then assume that the lagging
countries (or other geographical units) are on an earlier part of that same
curve, then you can predict where those countries are headed. This is the approach
of the <a href="https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america">Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation</a> (IHME):<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP98Wnqo7o7NLYOwU7ZcbwWCa1gPyuB0yC92PydK7vov7XjDt0dyGz8ODxbQAcsTkjSU18bADpuQk_-p-_Sw2RKzZfSEccWYClhtTn_DHvDnAFugUvs2l_OyCuL8LADIFKuNb4DsXgH9Y1/s1600/imhe_04-15-2020.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="701" data-original-width="885" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP98Wnqo7o7NLYOwU7ZcbwWCa1gPyuB0yC92PydK7vov7XjDt0dyGz8ODxbQAcsTkjSU18bADpuQk_-p-_Sw2RKzZfSEccWYClhtTn_DHvDnAFugUvs2l_OyCuL8LADIFKuNb4DsXgH9Y1/s400/imhe_04-15-2020.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america" style="font-size: medium; text-align: start;">http://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Importantly, note the shaded area which reflects a 95% confidence
interval. And note that it’s quite large for the immediate future. This is a
good reminder for people analytics that estimates are just estimates. There is
always uncertainty, and it’s important to understand the magnitude of that
uncertainty before making decisions. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But note that this curve-fitting approach is akin to a data
mining exercise. There is <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/17/influential-covid-19-model-uses-flawed-methods-shouldnt-guide-policies-critics-say/">no epidemiological model that underlies these forecasts</a>. In HR, this would be like observing the retirement ages of previous
workers, and predicting a particular worker’s retirement probability based
solely on their age. There’s no accounting for that person’s particular
characteristics or changes in the environment particular to that person. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As an alternative modeling strategy, a long-standing epidemiological approach is the
susceptible (S)-exposed (E)-infected (I)-resistant (R) model (SEIR, for short)
(or alternatively, a SIR model with three classes: susceptible, infected, and
recovered individuals). A SEIR model starts with the number of susceptible, exposed,
infected, and resistant individuals, and then sets up a formulaic relationship
across the categories based on estimates of incubation periods, frequency of
contact across individuals, the probability of being infected after exposure,
and the like. The spread of COVID-19, hospitalization usage, and other outcomes
can then be simulated by projecting out what happens as exposure and infection
increases. And by changing key parameters, you can also forecast alternative
scenarios, such as the impact of various social distancing measures. This type
of model is being used to <a href="https://mn.gov/covid19/data/modeling/">guide public policy in Minnesota</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
An analogous people analytics example would be a workforce
planning model where you start with the current number of employees and make
assumptions about retention rates, mobility, hiring rates, and future needs.
This creates forecasts into the future, and by changing different assumptions,
you can model alternative scenarios, forecast shortfalls, and infer needed
responses.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Note that there is expert judgement or past empirical trends
built into this model—it’s not just curve fitting. And a realistic recognition
of the range of uncertainty around the underlying assumptions yields confidence
intervals that help inform how strongly you should interpret the results. These confidence intervals, or estimates of uncertainty, can be seen here (in red) for the Minnesota modeling of COVID-19, and at the same time, note the modeling of different scenarios (rows) and the estimated impact on different metrics (columns):<o:p></o:p></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_AzwGmq2o_AjwAvALYLv5ae0Hjafyn04sEEGMIHOeuJAwfrTNRF9faJEo68i8-mcXIbdteQX-M3o6CYVu7DkNeHbrXk1eBdWodP8nOQOEdp9pDjoUV9j9mw0KCjn6SL7WJui5nNjscn_6/s1600/mn_dept_health.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="444" data-original-width="966" height="183" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_AzwGmq2o_AjwAvALYLv5ae0Hjafyn04sEEGMIHOeuJAwfrTNRF9faJEo68i8-mcXIbdteQX-M3o6CYVu7DkNeHbrXk1eBdWodP8nOQOEdp9pDjoUV9j9mw0KCjn6SL7WJui5nNjscn_6/s400/mn_dept_health.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
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<a href="https://mn.gov/covid19/assets/MNmodel_PPT_tcm1148-427787.pdf">https://mn.gov/covid19/assets/MNmodel_PPT_tcm1148-427787.pdf</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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But important questions can always be asked, such as where
to the assumptions and parameters come from (especially when trying to model a new issue), how much do they vary by different
groups (e.g., age groups in the COVID-19 case; occupations in a workforce
planning model), how fully-specified are the relationships, and are there
important things that are missing? It’s also important to consider the decision-making
criteria. In social science research and people analytics, we might be looking
for results that characterize a typical (i.e., average) situation; in a public health crisis,
it’s likely more important to identify how to avoid worst case scenarios.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, the IHME's curve-fitting model and Minnesota's SEIR model <a href="https://www.startribune.com/360-deaths-or-22-000-why-minnesota-s-covid-19-models-are-so-different/568966211/">give very different predictions of where we're headed</a>. Both approaches contain significant unknowns, such as how well (or not) states or countries fit the earlier experiences of China (which had much stricter social distancing) and Italy because there are so many variables that presumably affect how the outbreak spreads, or in the SEIR approach, whether key parameters are accurate because COVID-19 is a new virus. This highlights the importance of understanding the nature and limitations of any kind of statistical model, and paying attention to the sensitivity of the results. The starkly-different projections of these particular models are also a reminder that actions based on statistical models will only be as good as the explanatory power or fit of those models. Ideally, imprecision in the degree of fit will translate into margins of errors and confidence intervals, but if a model is being applied to a new situation, then purely statistical margins of error maybe too conservative. The onus is always on the decision-maker to use their subject-matter expertise when interpreting and applying statistical results. But what to do when you have to make a decision? Explicitly recognize the decision rules and include the costs of making different types of inferential errors in any decision calculus. <br />
<br />
Putting all of this together, then, a good people analytics person is always skeptical—or at least
probing…where did the data and assumptions come from, how do we know they are
accurate, how sensitive are the results to particular assumptions, how much
uncertainty is there, what’s the decision-making criteria, what’s missing? And notice that this is as much about subject-matter expertise—whether that's infectious diseases or human resources—as it is about statistical sophistication. It's not just data mining.<br />
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It might also be useful to note that neither of these
modeling strategies (curve-fitting or simulation based on parameterized flow
models) match the dominant predictive approach in HR, especially in HR research
(I don’t say this as a critique, just as another point of comparison). From a
social sciences perspective, it’s much more common to predict outcomes in a
regression framework where an outcome variable is modeled as a statistical
function of a set of explanatory variables. For example, if employees’ level of
engagement with their supervisor (inversely) predicts an intention to quit,
then if an organization can increase engagement, we’d expect that quit
probabilities would decrease, albeit imperfectly and with variation. This is a
reminder that analytically, some issues are best modeled as societal phenomena, some modeled at an organizational level,
and some at an individual-level. They each involve unique measures, and their own
analytical challenges. A good people analytics person matches the methods and
data to the problem—while still being probing as defined in the previous paragraph.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Lastly, COVID-19 dashboards and modeling raise challenging
ethical questions. What data are being collected and how are they being used?
Are metrics and results being presented in sensationalized or inaccurate ways?
What’s the role of modeling in determining public policy decisions? There are
no easy answers to these and other ethical challenges, but they are a good
reminder that people analytics also involves important ethical challenges. How
is employee data being used? What kind of consent should be required? How
transparent is the decision-making? Are implicit biases embedded in modeling
decisions furthering rather than redressing historical inequalities? Throughout
the people analytics process, it’s essential to remember that most data, and
certainly most decisions, pertain to real people, not data points in a database
or costs on an income statement. The science of people analytics is important,
but so is the humanity. And in terms of presenting data in skewed ways, this has long been recognized as a danger with statistics, and perhaps the best defense is to be a wise consumer of statistics who doesn't naively take everything at face value (see "probing" above). <o:p></o:p></div>
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In closing, it’s nice to see data visualization, dashboards,
and statistical modeling getting such public attention, but it’s obviously
unfortunate that this is because of a global pandemic that has harmed so many
people and communities. While not losing sight of what’s most important, there
are also lessons here for people analytics.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />John Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6493308528029298667.post-83513175425419401752020-02-15T14:53:00.002-06:002020-02-15T14:57:02.605-06:00Managing Conflict at its SourcesIn Director Bong Joon-ho’s highly-acclaimed movie <i>Parasite</i>
(2019), the wealthy Park family believes that they have a win-win relationship with
the lower-class Kims. The Kims, however, view this relationship very differently, allowing them to prioritize their own interests in this
relationship. If we were to step into this in the middle of the movie, we’d
need to get the Parks to see the actual nature of their relationship, while
also addressing the perceptions and emotions that are fueling a simmering
conflict between the two families. Moreover, on an appropriately dark and
stormy night, the <span style="background: black; mso-highlight: black;">xxxxxxx</span>’s
have an unexpected encounter with <span style="background: black; mso-highlight: black;">xxxxxxx</span> and <span style="background: black; mso-highlight: black;">xxxxxxx</span>
(redacted to avoid a spoiler). Emotions flare up (especially fear), and magnify
the fixed pie cognitive bias that pushes us to assume sharp conflicts of
interest, leading all involved to treat this as a win-lose battle for
self-preservation. Again, if we were to step in and try to resolve this before
it spirals downward and reaches lower depths (an inside reference for those who
have seen the movie), we’d need to re-frame the nature of their relationship
(they have some common goals), address their decision-making, and help them
cool their emotions.<br />
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Alex Colvin (Cornell), Dionne Pohler (Toronto), and I call this
“managing conflict at its sources.” In other words, to successfully resolve a
conflict or dispute, you must first understand its roots or sources, and then
appropriately match a dispute resolution method. So we’ve created a three-part
typology of the roots of conflict—specifically, structural, cognitive, and
psychogenic sources of conflict—to facilitate the identification of effective dispute
resolution methods tailored to the particular sources of a given dispute. <a href="https://whitherwork.blogspot.com/2019/02/what-causes-conflict-new-three.html">These are described in my earlier blog posting</a>, but brief definitions are useful
here. Structural sources pertain to nature of the parties’ relationship,
including their power, rights, and interlinked interests or goals. Cognitive sources
relate to mental functioning, including interpretation, perception, information
processing, decision-making, and (mis)communication. Psychogenic sources arise
from the psychology of feelings, especially emotions, moods, and personality. <o:p></o:p></div>
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We believe that it’s important to diagnose a conflict by
looking for these sources because they require different approaches to resolve
them. Resolving structural conflicts requires diagnosing the nature of the
parties’ relationship. Key alternatives include (i) a self-interested exchange
with accessible alternatives (egoist); (ii) lasting interdependence with a mutual
gains structure (unitarist); (iii) lasting interdependence with a mixed-motive
structure (pluralist); or (iv) lasting interdependence with a win-lose structure
(antagonistic). Recognizing these structural forms is important for factoring
in issues of power. In an egoist relationship, power is less important than
self-interest. If someone gives you a good deal, take it; if not, take your
next best alternative. In a unitarist relationship, a focus on power likely
interferes with finding interest-aligning policies. In contrast, power
differences are likely a significant aspect of an antagonistic relationship,
and distributive negotiations would be fully consistent in this structure.
Integrative bargaining is very difficult in an antagonistic structure. In a
pluralist relationship, both distributive and integrative negotiations are
likely, and the parties or third party dispute resolution actors would likely
need to ensure that power is not exercised in an overly aggressive way that
undermines the shared interests and enduring nature of the relationship.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The effectiveness of third party interventions also varies
across these relationship types. In an egoist relationship, the main need for
third party intervention is to adjudicate alleged violations of contractual
terms, which points toward arbitration-type procedures that provide a clear
determination. In a unitarist relationship, in contrast, the importance of mutuality
means that the arbitration of conflicts could be counter-productive;
rather, mediation-type interventions are most useful in helping the parties recognize
their mutual interests and resolve any coordination problems or barriers to
achieving the integrative potential inherent in their relationship. But in
antagonistic relationships, mediation efforts that search for common interests are incompatible with the fundamental oppositions of interests that drive conflict
in this structural form, and thus would likely be futile. By contrast, pluralist relationships are most open to
a range of interventions, including mediation- and arbitration-type third party
interventions, reflecting the diverse nature of distribution and integrative
issues inherent in this type of relationship. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Turning to the cognitive dimension, there are various
techniques to address perceptual differences rooted in contrasting cognitive
frames, such as a process of unfreezing, changing, and refreezing frames,
either with or without mediator assistance. Other interventions can explicitly
address cultural differences (more generally, in-group versus out-group
conflicts). Regarding conflicts that have an aspect of limited information
processing, people can more easily identify cognitive errors made by others
than themselves. Providing individuals training in decision-making biases and
teaching them critical thinking and self-awareness can help them become aware
of decision-making blind spots to work through this type of cognitive conflict.
Similarly, recognizing when miscommunication causes or contributes to a
conflict also points to specific conflict resolution strategies. This can include avoiding communication channels with low signal-to-noise ratios, listening for
the intended meanings of what’s being said, communicating in ways that the
listener will understand your intent and that reflects the listener’s
perspective, and establishing conditions under which an effective dialogue can
occur. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Psychogenic conflict is perhaps the most difficult type of
conflict to tackle, and again requires tailored dispute resolution strategies. This aspect of
conflict is not easily resolved through negotiation, nor is it likely to be
truly resolved by the imposition of a solution by a third party such as a
manager or an arbitrator. Indeed, the most accessible strategy is to give
people tools to work through their own emotions, or to control their moods in
different situations, either in advance of a conflict or during it. When
dealing with hot emotions, cooling strategies such as taking a time-out or a
break and trying to re-orient an individual’s attention to be more reflective
and self-distanced rather than self-immersed can facilitate problem solving. If
hot emotions like anger or humiliation<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>are contributing to a conflict, then facilitators can lessen these
emotions by acknowledging them. An understanding of how different personality
types approach not only conflict, but feeling, thinking, and behavior more
generally also can be useful to understand how to engage with others
constructively with others. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Lastly, not only might a dispute be complex (<a href="https://whitherwork.blogspot.com/2017/11/lessons-for-resolving-conflict-from-nfl.html">so don't stop after identifying the first cause</a>), conflict can be dynamic and evolve around over time.
As such, the source(s) of the conflict can change in the midst of attempts to resolve
the initial source(s) of the dispute. This reinforces the need for those trying
to resolve disputes to understand the range of possible sources of conflict, so
that changes in the nature or sources of a particular dispute can be identified
and appropriately addressed, rather than inadvertently contributing to
compounding the conflict. In <i>Parasite</i>, the initial conflict between the wealthy
and poor families appeared economic in nature, but with greater personal
contact came new challenges that were more cognitive and especially psychogenic
in nature. To continue to treat this conflict as purely economic (structural)
and to ignore other smelly issues (another inside reference) would not produce
a lasting resolution to this conflict. <span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">To effectively manage conflict at
its sources is to recognize that dispute resolution needs to be tailored to the
specifics of each conflict based on a careful diagnosis of the possible
overlapping and changing structural, cognitive, and psychogenic dimensions. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<hr />
Source: John W. Budd, Alexander J.S. Colvin, and Dionne Pohler (2020) "Advancing Dispute Resolution by Understanding the Sources of Conflict: Toward an Integrated Framework," <i>ILR Review</i> 73(2): 254-80. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0019793919866817">https://doi.org/10.1177/0019793919866817</a>. [<a href="http://jbudd.csom.umn.edu/RESEARCH/Budd-Colvin-Pohler-Conflict-Framework-paper.pdf">free access to the pre-publication version here</a>]<br />
<br />John Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6493308528029298667.post-48466958793744449682020-01-06T18:18:00.000-06:002020-01-06T18:18:10.244-06:00A New Culprit in the Decline of American Labor? Robert F. Kennedy and the Long Cast of Hoffa's ShadowI just finished reading Jack Goldsmith’s <i><a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374175658">In Hoffa’s Shadow: A Stepfather, a Disappearance in Detroit, and My Search for the Truth</a></i> (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019) which I highly recommend. Who needs fiction when real-life history produces stories like these? The author is a Harvard law professor whose mother married Chuckie O’Brien on June 16, 1975 when the author was 12 years old. In the author’s own words, Chuckie was “a great father” who “smothered me in love” (p. 5). But on July 30, 1975, former Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa disappeared and Chuckie—Hoffa’s longtime friend and aide in the Teamsters—quickly became a leading suspect in this extremely high-profile case.<br />
<br />
<i>In Hoffa’s Shadow</i> chronicles Hoffa’s rise and fall—often with Chuckie at his side—and his disappearance—where the FBI long thought Chuckie was also at his side, unwittingly delivering him to mob hitmen (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/the-irishman-movie-chuckie-obrien.html">a fiction often repeated</a> in popular culture, including most recently in Netflix’s <i>The Irishman</i>). The focus is uniquely on Chuckie—his life, his ties to the Teamsters and the mafia, his personal values, his decades-long public mistreatment at the hands of the FBI, and the sheer improbability of any culpability in Hoffa’s disappearance. All of this is quite interesting, but what really makes this book such a compelling read is how deeply personal it is. Goldsmith is exceptionally candid in describing how he idolized Chuckie in high school but at age 21, renounced him and changed his name from Jack O’Brien to Jack Goldsmith out of fear that “the association with Chuckie might jeopardize my legal career” (p. 26). After 20 years, Goldsmith reconciled with Chuckie, who accepted Goldsmith “back into his life without qualification, rancor, or drama” (p. 41). The author eventually convinced Chuckie to let him tell his story, in the author’s hope that it would solve the 45 year-old mystery of Hoffa’s disappearance. Alas, the author ultimately fails on this last account, but in the end that seems like a minor footnote given the depth of insight we get into Hoffa’s leadership of the Teamsters, the relationship between the mafia and the Teamsters, the likely reasons for his disappearance, the troubling extent of the federal government’s use of its own power, and at a personal level, the complex character of Chuckie.<br />
<br />
From a labor relations perspective, one thing that jumped out to me is the provocative claim that the field has overlooked “the most fundamental” reason for the decades-long decline in labor union membership. It is well-recognized that the fraction of <a href="https://whitherwork.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-state-of-organized-labor-in-us.html">workers represented by a union (“union density”) peaked in the private sector in the mid-1950s</a>, and since that time has fallen from around 35 percent to 6 percent. Many explanations have been proposed, including structural change (e.g., the decline of manufacturing, demographic shifts, globalization), decreased demand for union representation (e.g., laws and paternalistic human resource management provide some of the protections that unions provide, or unions have failed to keep up with what workers want), and legal and illegal employer opposition facilitated by hostile legal rulings. But Goldsmith argues that “the most fundamental reason [that membership fell] was the identification of the entire labor movement with corruption, violence, and bossism—an identification that crystallized with Bobby Kennedy’s singular crusade” (p. 108). Wow!<br />
<br />
What was this singular crusade? Senator Estes Kefauver led a special Senate investigation into organized crime in the early 1950s, and the resulting public attention on the sensational hearings helped propel Kefauver to national prominence (including being selected as the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate in 1956). According to Goldsmith, Robert F. (Bobby) Kennedy saw this as a model for elevating the profile of the Kennedys (which included his older brother John F. Kennedy), and perhaps, too, for Bobby Kennedy to prove his worth within the Kennedy clan. So in 1957, the United States Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management (“the McClellan Committee”) was created to investigate labor racketeering (the corruption of labor unions by organized crime), with Bobby Kennedy as its chief counsel. Enter Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters. Goldsmith quotes historian Arthur Schlesinger as saying that before the hearings even started, Kennedy had already concluded that Hoffa was corrupt and ran the Teamsters solely for his own benefit. As such, Hoffa was “the enemy [Bobby Kennedy] had been seeking” (p. 99).<br />
<br />
The reality of Hoffa is seemingly much more complex. Hoffa seemed to genuinely care for the economic well-being of truck drivers and other workers, and fought hard on their behalf—albeit often too hard in terms of taking an extreme ends-justifies-the-means approach, even if this meant hiring mob goons to literally fight employers and giving kickbacks to the mafia to maintain his own power. So of course Hoffa was no angel, but <i>In Hoffa’s Shadow</i> shows the extent to which Kennedy became obsessed with publicly vilifying Hoffa. And each time this failed, “Kennedy got angrier, become more vindictive, and invariably cut more corners” (p. 102). This included sending the IRS on a fishing expedition looking for evidence of criminality in over 3,500 tax returns, and then illegally entering confidential IRS information into the public record.<br />
<br />
Students of labor relations know that these hearings resulted in the Landrum-Griffin Act in 1959 which sought to make unions more democratic while also placing a few additional restrictions on union activities (especially banning secondary boycotts). But Goldsmith interestingly argues that the larger effect was that the hearings led by Bobby Kennedy “embedded in the public mind, including the minds of many workers, the idea that unions were flawed institutions exercising illegitimate power” (p. 106). And thus we have Goldsmith’s provocative claim that “the most fundamental reason [for declining union power] was the identification of the entire labor movement with corruption, violence, and bossism—an identification that crystallized with Bobby Kennedy’s singular crusade.” Whether we can trace 65 years of union decline to this one moment is debatable and would represent an influence with remarkable staying power, but it is certainly stimulating to consider its role among other factors.<br />
<br />
Goldsmith doesn’t let Hoffa off the hook: “his defiant embrace of criminal tactics and associations [even if done in with the sincere belief that this was to help the rank and file] allowed Kennedy [and others] to paint him as a subversive force…and his performance tarnished the entire labor movement” (p. 107). But Kennedy was anything but balanced, and ignored, for example, the role of employers in fighting workers. Kennedy’s campaign against Hoffa continued in the 1960s with Kennedy’s appointment (by his then-president brother) as U.S. attorney general. In the end, according to Goldsmith, Kennedy “neglected, elided, or interpreted away ethical and legal restrictions that are supposed to channel and constrain the federal government’s colossal power to destroy one’s reputation and liberty” (p. 121). This included a sharp rise in the government surveillance of individuals, including breaking into homes and businesses to plant listening devices, typically without any warrants or legal oversight.<br />
<br />
The extent to which this rise in illegal government surveillance connects to Goldsmith’s own work in government is another unique aspect of <i>In Hoffa’s Shadow</i> making for a compelling read. But a larger take-away, in my eyes, is that these revelations implicitly highlight the need for democracy, transparency, and institutional balance. When the government holds all the cards, where are the checks on its power? Or to what end is government power being exercised? These questions are as important as ever when legislation and judicial rulings are seemingly weakening organized labor for political gain, and we seem to have forgotten the importance of the labor movement and other groups for a vibrant democracy. Hidden in <i>In Hoffa’s Shadow</i>, then, is a strong conservative case for labor unions, even if the focal union in this book has historically struggled with democracy and corruption.
<br />
<br />
So in the end, this book is about much more than Hoffa’s
disappearance. Indeed, I assume that “in Hoffa’s shadow” refers to the personal
experiences of Chuckie O’Brien. But as we continue to confront questions of
power, democracy, and surveillance, it seems that we’re all living in the
shadows of Hoffa and Bobby Kennedy, with their lasting implications for labor
unions and democracy.John Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6493308528029298667.post-5888901209014921452019-12-18T09:07:00.001-06:002020-11-05T21:13:44.159-06:00Legislative Election Rules and Industrial Relations—Representativeness is GoodLast week’s UK parliamentary election has highlighted the importance for election rules for determining the representativeness of a legislative body. In particular, the Conservative party won 56 percent of the seats in Parliament while only receiving 44 percent of the votes cast. The Labour party’s representation better matches its vote share (a 32 percent vote share yielded a 31 seat share), but the Liberal Democrats were left with not even two percent of the seats in spite of receiving more than 11 percent of votes. So the composition of seats in Parliament is not very representative of the distribution of votes across the electorate.<br />
<br />
These mismatches were further highlighted when the <a href="https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/">Electoral Reform Society</a> simulated the results <a href="https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/latest-news-and-research/media-centre/press-releases/general-election-how-the-2019-election-results-could-have-looked-with-proportional-representation/">if the UK followed the proportional representation electoral rules</a> used elsewhere in Europe. It found that the Conservatives would have won 288 instead of 365 seats, Labour 216 instead of 202, and the Social Democrats 70 instead of 11 (though the Church of Militant Elvis party still would not won any seats). Under these proportional representation election rules, the composition of seats in Parliament would be strongly representative of the nature of the votes cast (e.g., Conservatives with 44.3 percent of the seats based on 43.6 percent of the votes).<br />
<br />
This is not a matter purely for the political sphere. <a href="https://ler.illinois.edu/about/faculty-staff/faculty/lamare-j-ryan/">Ryan Lamare</a> and I have been working on a research project that analyzes the connection between election rules (representativeness) and industrial relations—specifically, linkages to the extent of workplace employee representation such as labor unions and union membership. Theoretically, we identify multiple ways in which political representativeness might shape employee representation, including enacting public policies, involving unions in peak-level corporatist initiatives, enabling direct relationships between trade unions and legislators, shaping attitudes around political inclusion that affect workplace agency, and giving social legitimacy to collective voice. Through all of these channels, a political system with greater representativeness is expected to have stronger workplace employee representation and higher rates of union membership.<br />
<br />
But what happens in practice? Political scientists have developed measures of legislative representativeness, and we focus on a measure called “disproportionality.” In short, this measures the magnitude of the deviations between seat and vote shares. With a baseline of perfect proportionality (seat share = vote share) of zero, then greater deviations yield a higher disproportionality score. The disproportionality score for last week’s UK election is 11.9—this is actually lower than in recent UK elections but is much higher than in many European countries (for example, the disproportionality score is typically less than five in Belgium, and less than two in Denmark). France is another European country with high disproportionality scores—for example, President Macron’s party has more than 50 percent of the seats in the French National Assembly even though it only received 28 percent of the votes (maybe this is connected to all of the worker protests in France?). [Curious about other country's values? Choose <a href="http://www.parlgov.org/explore/">any election here</a> and look for “Disp” in the lower right corner.]<br />
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We can then statistically analyze the predictive power of disproportionality scores across European countries between 2002 and 2016. We generally find that disproportionality is negatively related to the presence of trade unions and other representative bodies in the workplace, the existence of a collective wage agreement, and the likelihood of individual union membership. In other words, consistent with the predictions of our theory above, greater representativeness in a country’s legislative body is linked to greater workplace representativeness. We can’t observe exactly why, but we think that it’s because a culture of compromise and inclusion at a legislative level spills into other spheres, including the workplace.<br />
<br />
In fact, our results suggest that what happens at the electoral level is quite important for industrial relations. Returning to the recent UK election, using the distribution of hypothetical seats that the Electoral Reform Society calculated would have resulted using proportional representation electoral rules, we calculate that the disproportionality score would have been only 1.4 instead of the actual 11.9. This is a very low score indicative of a highly representative outcome. Using a back of the envelope calculation, then, our statistical results imply that this reduction in disproportionality (using the proportional representation election rules) would increase the chances of individual union membership in the range of 2 to 9 percentage points. Note that the union membership rate (“union density”) in the UK is less than 25 percent, so this hypothetical change is not trivial. Those interested in the world of work and employee representation should pay more attention to election rules.<br />
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Source: John W. Budd and J. Ryan Lamare (forthcoming) "The Importance of Political Systems for Trade Union Membership, Coverage, and Influence: Theory and Comparative Evidence," <i>British Journal of Industrial Relations</i>. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12575">https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12575</a>. [<a href="http://jbudd.csom.umn.edu/RESEARCH/Budd-Lamare-VOPC.pdf">free access to the pre-publication version here</a>]<br />
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John Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6493308528029298667.post-14630703541431136232019-11-10T16:53:00.000-06:002019-11-11T11:22:46.672-06:00And Now for the Biden Labor Plan...Laudable But Still a Narrow View of High-Stakes, Worker Voice<a href="https://whitherwork.blogspot.com/2019/10/incomplete-reflections-on-sanders-and.html">Last month’s post</a> was prompted by the release of the labor plans by the <a href="https://berniesanders.com/issues/workplace-democracy/">Bernie Sanders</a> and <a href="https://elizabethwarren.com/plans/empowering-american-workers/?source=soc-WB-ew-tw">Elizabeth Warren</a> campaigns. A couple weeks later, the Biden campaign released its labor plan (“<a href="https://joebiden.com/empowerworkers/">The Biden Plan for Strengthening Worker Organizing, Collective Bargaining, and Unions</a>”). Like the Sanders and Warren plans, the Biden plan contains an embrace of the traditional reforms to the National Labor Relations Act that you’d expect from a Democratic presidential candidate:<br />
<ul>
<li>Card check certification elections</li>
<li>Ban on captive audience meetings</li>
<li>Stronger penalties for labor law violators</li>
<li>First contract arbitration</li>
<li>Ban on permanent strike replacements</li>
<li>An end to right-to-work laws allowing represented worker to free-ride by not paying union dues</li>
<li>Extending coverage to domestic and agricultural workers.</li>
</ul>
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The Biden plan also addresses some problematic areas that have emerged more recently, including:<br />
<ul>
<li>Restoring bargaining (and other) rights for federal workers</li>
<li>Giving franchisors joint employer status (and thus bringing them to the bargaining table)</li>
<li>Providing federal labor law protections to state and local government employees</li>
<li>Giving independent contractors the right to unionize and bargain. </li>
</ul>
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Beyond labor law, the Biden plan also seeks to increase the national minimum wage, strengthen prevailing wage standards, ban most non-compete agreements and mandatory arbitration, give gig economy workers the legal status of employees, and remove harmful occupational licensing requirements. Maybe I’ve missed it, but I think this very last one is unique among the candidates’ plans, and I trust that my colleague <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=JFqLIewAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Morris Kleiner</a> will be pleased to see this issue recognized as he’s been the primary researcher in this area for years.<br />
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Except for the occupational licensing part, the elements of the Biden plan are pretty standard fare. In some respects, that’s not necessarily bad. These are all important issues, and that Biden is not unique in addressing them can be seen as a broad acceptance (on the left) of the problem areas. But as <a href="https://whitherwork.blogspot.com/2019/10/incomplete-reflections-on-sanders-and.html">I argued last month</a> with respect to the Sanders and Warren plans, there seems to be an unstated premise that workers want union representation but are unable to form unions because they are excluded from protections (e.g., gig workers) or because the election process favors employers. Research consistently shows that many nonunion workers—<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0019793918806250?journalCode=ilra">maybe even half of them</a>—do indeed want union representation. But the same research also reveals that many others want other forms of voice.<br />
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The ”workers want to unionize but cannot” premise also overlooks the fact that the U.S. system is essentially all or nothing. You either have union representation in which case a union bargains for you over all terms and conditions of employment, or you do not and collective voice is probably completely lacking. All of the candidates’ plans seem to miss opportunities to promote localized, participatory forms of worker voice such as mandatory safety and health committees in which workers can gain firsthand experience with collective voice, which can grow into a desire for stronger forms of involvement and representation. Others have labeled this “<a href="https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/11223/the-twin-track-model-of-employee-voice-an-anglo-american-perspective-on-union-decline-and-the-rise-of-alternative-forms-of-voice">training wheels voice</a>,” and this should be included in plans to improve workers’ rights.<br />
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The all or nothing nature of the U.S. labor system also makes the certification process a high stakes affair for workers and managers. This is partly because of the big jump from no collective voice to the union as the exclusive representative over all terms and conditions of employment, but also because it can be difficult to remove an unresponsive union. So a bolder change would be to make certification elections an automatic, regular occurrence for all workers. <a href="https://www.minnesotalawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Estreicher_MLR.pdf">As outlined by Samuel Estreicher</a>,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Every two years (unless
the union achieved a collective bargaining agreement, in which case every three
years) the employees in the unit, after an initial minimal required showing of
interest [e.g., 5-10% of workers], would have an opportunity to vote in a
secret ballot whether they wish to continue the union’s representation, select
another organization, or have no union representation at all. Petitioning labor
organizations and employers would be required to share certain specified
information, in electronic form, with the voting employees.” </blockquote>
Before this is dismissed as crazy, note that Republican legislatures in Wisconsin and Iowa have enacted requirements for regular <b>recertification</b> elections. If unionized workplaces should have to recertify in order to confirm that a majority of workers still support unionization, then the same logic should apply to nonunion workplaces to regularly determine what the majority support. The democratic process shouldn’t choose sides.<br />
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Indeed, having regular elections would bring certification elections into line with political elections, and would not only perhaps make it easier to gain certification but also to get rid of an ineffective or undesirable union. In other words, it might be better to have an “<a href="https://www.minnesotalawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Estreicher_MLR.pdf">easy in, easy out</a>” system for determining union representation and allowing for experimentation with different forms of collective voice. A risk is that conflict over unionization becomes a regular occurrence, but the hope would be that by regularizing this and reducing the stakes, the worst of the current process could be avoided. Moreover, if unionization became more widespread, this could reduce managerial opposition by weakening the perception of unionization as a significant competitive disadvantage.<br />
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Circling back to the Biden plan, it also uniquely calls for the creation of “a cabinet-level working group that will solely focus on promoting union organizing and collective bargaining in the public and private sectors.” Intriguing…but I would advocate for a broader scope that examines collective voice, including but not limited to collective bargaining.<br />
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John Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6493308528029298667.post-10501307039343877582019-10-04T12:43:00.001-05:002019-10-04T12:43:59.615-05:00(Incomplete) Reflections on the Sanders and Warren Labor PlansBernie Sanders (<a href="https://berniesanders.com/issues/workplace-democracy/">"The Workplace Democracy Plan"</a>) and Elizabeth Warren (<a href="https://elizabethwarren.com/plans/empowering-american-workers/?source=soc-WB-ew-tw">"Empowering American Workers and Raising Wages"</a>) have now both released labor plans as part of their presidential election campaigns. If enacted, each ambitious plan would bring the deepest and most far-ranging reforms to labor law since…well, ever. Both plans include provisions for union certification based on card checks followed by first contract arbitration when needed, reducing employer interference in union drives, banning permanent strike replacements and right-to-work laws, and extending protections for unionization to public sector workers, independent contractors, graduate students, and others who have been excluded. These are all sorely needed reforms, and it's great to see labor law getting serious attention.<br />
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Both plans also call for sector bargaining in which wages and other basic employment standards would be established at an industry level, as is often the case in Europe. But European countries are small, have weaker links between being a union member and having union representation (a link that is at the heart of the U.S. system), and have stronger employer associations, traditions of social dialog, and other supporting institutions. Technically, sector bargaining isn’t prohibited under existing U.S. labor law (and has occurred, as in the steel industry in the 1950s), but it requires everyone to be unionized and employers to agree to it. So to make this a reality, policy change is necessary. It’s very difficult to see how this would be imported to the United States on a large scale. Philosophically, will workers see this as a step towards workplace democracy when unions they haven’t supported are speaking for them? Practically, how will sectors be determined along with representatives of labor and business in each? Legally, how will sector bargaining and agreements be enforced? I’m all for learning from international experience and importing good ideas, but I think this is a stretch in this particular case. In fact, Germany represents a classic case of strong sector bargaining, but it recently established a minimum wage because of the decline of sector bargaining. So while I understand the rationale for raising wages and standards on a broad rather than piecemeal basis, and for taking wages out of competition, I'm skeptical that sector bargaining can be a U.S. reality even if there was the political will. Maybe I'm not alone--while Sanders plan actually calls for “a sectoral collective bargaining system with wage boards”—so in other words, wage boards which are more akin to reforming minimum wages than actual sector bargaining.<br />
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Both plans also seem to have an underlying mindset that workers are ripe for unionization, but are prevented from doing so either because they are excluded from protections (e.g., gig workers) or the election process favors employers (e.g., greater access to employers, minimal penalties for firing union supporters). This is undoubtedly true. <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0019793918806250">Research consistently shows</a> that many nonunion workers want a union—maybe as high as 50 percent. But only partly true: this same research also shows that others want more voice in other forms. As such, both plans seem to miss opportunities to promote localized, participatory forms of worker voice. Specific possibilities here include mandatory safety and health committees and works councils. As workers experience voice directly in their own workplace, they can see its benefits, and push for stronger forms of involvement and representation. This might even lead to majority support for a traditional union with full-fledged bargaining rights. In this way, <a href="https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/11223/the-twin-track-model-of-employee-voice-an-anglo-american-perspective-on-union-decline-and-the-rise-of-alternative-forms-of-voice">others have labeled this “training wheels voice.”</a> I would add training wheels voice to the Sanders and Warren plans.<br />
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Stepping away from the areas connected to labor relations and collective bargaining, the Warren plan goes much further than the Sanders plan. For example, the Warren plan would prohibit non-compete clauses and “no-poach” agreements which limit worker mobility and thereby suppress wages and benefits, and would also ban forced arbitration agreements. The Warren plan also addresses worker scheduling, discrimination, and labor policy enforcement issues, and also provides for <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/8/15/17683022/elizabeth-warren-accountable-capitalism-corporations/?source=soc-WB-ew-tw">worker representative on corporate boards of directors</a>. There are sound bases for all of these proposals. But one area where the Sanders plan goes beyond the Warren plan is in ending at-will employment by prohibiting workers from being fired when there isn’t just cause.<br />
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Ten years ago in our book <i><a href="http://jbudd.csom.umn.edu/RESEARCH/invisiblehands.htm">Invisible Hands, Invisible Objectives: Bringing Workplace Law and Public Policy Into Focus</a></i>, Steve Befort and I advocated for an “American Good Cause Termination Act” in which employees can only be fired if there is “good cause” for such an action. A just cause standard is nearly universal in U.S. union contracts and CEO contracts (and has also been in effect in Montana since 1987). Decades worth of decisions by labor arbitrators applying this standard have created a reasonably coherent framework for determining if an employer has good cause to discharge an employee. This proposed universal good cause standard does not prevent employers from terminating employees because of substandard performance or changes in the direction of the business. To balance employer and employee interests, we propose that a U.S. good cause standard be remedied by a maximum of one year’s back pay, except in cases of unlawful discrimination in which case double or treble damage awards would be allowed. It is difficult to argue that U.S. employers would be at a competitive disadvantage in the global economy because the United States virtually stands alone in failing to a provide general statutory protection against unjust terminations.<br />
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The benefits of an American Good Cause Termination Act would be widespread. Social justice (equity) is served by outlawing both bad and irrelevant reasons for dismissing employees. Other employment policies would also be enhanced as workers would have greater protections for exercising their rights, such as by filing a valid workers’ compensation claim or taking a family or medical leave. Also, employee voice would be facilitated because <a href="https://whitherwork.blogspot.com/2017/08/from-google-to-top-dog-hot-dogs-via.html">employee free speech</a>, autonomy, and unionization would be protected as terminations in retaliation for pursuing these activities would not possess good cause unless they interfered with job performance. Efficiency could even be promoted by reducing the regulatory burdens of the current system--including multiple forums and an expensive litigious approach--with a streamlined system that is quicker and cheaper. So this is an omission from the Warren plan that could help support the broader objectives of that plan, and I think it merits serious consideration.<br />
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Among many other things that Steve and I proposed (some of which overlap with the Sanders and/or Warren plans), I will highlight just one that is missing from both which could be the easiest of all to implement: mandatory disclosure of employment terms and conditions. Workers simultaneously <a href="https://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/research/cornell-law-review/upload/Kim.pdf">over-estimate the extent to which they can only be fired for a good reason</a> and <a href="https://www.nber.org/chapters/c8094.pdf">under-appreciate the availability of other benefits</a> (e.g., family leave) or protections (e.g., <a href="https://whitherwork.blogspot.com/2016/01/dont-quit-strike.html">NLRA protections of collective voice</a>). The employment relationship would work better if employees better understood their actual terms and conditions of employment. As <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Rights_at_Work.html?id=DlLtAAAAMAAJ&source=kp_book_description">Richard Edwards noted many years ago</a>, lenders are required to disclose accurate interest rates for loans and manufacturers must reveal the ingredients of food products. Given the importance of employment to individuals, disclosure of employment terms also should be required. This should include wage and benefit information, leave policies, dismissal policies, and descriptions of their rights under the law. At-will employees, for example, should be told that they can be dismissed for any reason. Subject to relevant laws, employers would still be free to unilaterally determine and change these policies, but those changes should be transparent to employees.<br />
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This proposal for mandatory disclosure of the terms and conditions of employment has international precedents. China requires written contracts for employees that specify wages and benefits, the length of the working day, vacation policies, disciplinary policies, and methods for changing, renewing, or terminating the contract. Closer to our proposal are European Union requirements that employers must provide written notices to employees detailing key elements, including wage payments, leave policies, and the expected duration of employment for temporary employees. These requirements <a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/1991/533/oj">date back to 1991</a>, and were just <a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2019/1152/oj">renewed in 2019</a>. Who can be opposed to greater accuracy and transparency?<br />
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In closing, as someone who advocated for broad-scale policy reform 10 years ago, it’s great to see such comprehensive plans being proposed and debated. Of course the path to actual enactment is a lengthy and uncertain one. But ideas are important for highlighting the deficiencies and imbalances in the current system, and for starting to shape new norms and expectations that can one day lead to substantive reform and ultimately, <a href="https://whitherwork.blogspot.com/2017/12/employment-with-human-face-delivered-on.html">employment with a human face</a>.<br />
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John Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6493308528029298667.post-3586042522960621482019-09-23T17:01:00.001-05:002019-09-23T17:08:24.326-05:00The Fragility of Genuine Workplace Cooperation...Or, Avoid Sliding Down the Cooperation Curve<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="https://whitherwork.blogspot.com/2019/08/cooperationwhat-does-it-really-mean.html">In last month’s blog posting</a>, I described a project in which</span> <a href="https://www.newcastle.edu.au/profile/mark-bray">Mark Bray</a>, <a href="https://www.newcastle.edu.au/profile/johanna-macneil">Johanna Macneil</a>, and I carefully look at different meanings of cooperation. We think this is important because greater clarity over contrasting perspectives on cooperation can lead to a deeper understanding among individuals with differing views, whether they are academics, policy-makers, company leaders, workers, or worker advocates. This also helps to reveal important challenges in implementing and sustaining workplace cooperation.<br />
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For starters, with sharply differing perspectives, cooperation is a contested idea, and cooperation is hard to implement when the parties lack a shared vision and common understandings. More deeply, a dynamic consideration of the tensions across different forms of cooperation helps reveal how there can be a natural tendency to move away from cooperative employment relationships, even when there are strong institutional supports or the parties to the employment relationship devote considerable effort and appropriate resources to maintaining cooperation. My collaborators and I address these dynamics by locating differing perspectives on what we call a “cooperation curve.”<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheR2FJ0EzKjGTXtMYO7-Vt2lL7eL9lQzZJIm3ISAis_jARTuudIKgQ2F__puLq0Ts6ZLjSmh36ySu6hb3TwOrMwUVYz_7YdHqe8LRq1KZmdnaOJ3oPWfPODf_G5Da0x5kMZmoec1fhVmMt/s1600/cooperation-curve.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheR2FJ0EzKjGTXtMYO7-Vt2lL7eL9lQzZJIm3ISAis_jARTuudIKgQ2F__puLq0Ts6ZLjSmh36ySu6hb3TwOrMwUVYz_7YdHqe8LRq1KZmdnaOJ3oPWfPODf_G5Da0x5kMZmoec1fhVmMt/s400/cooperation-curve.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Cooperation Curve</td></tr>
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We place collaborative pluralism and cooperative unitarism at the top of the cooperation curve because, as discussed in <a href="https://whitherwork.blogspot.com/2019/08/cooperationwhat-does-it-really-mean.html">the previous post</a>, these are the only views of cooperation in which workers and their employers are truly working together (and thus engaged in genuine cooperation). Achieving these forms of genuine cooperation require overcoming resistance among workers and/or labor unions (on the left-side of the hill) and/or among managers and business leaders (on the right-side of the hill), and also requires work to maintain this genuine cooperation. Without continued investment, we argue that a degradation or running down of cooperation ("entropy") will occur, represented by a movement downwards from the center of the cooperation curve on either side.<br />
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Starting from the middle or peak of the curve, moving one step to the left or right leads to what we think of as pragmatic opposition to cooperation. The assumptions in these perspectives are not fundamentally different from their neighbors that support cooperation, such that one could envision a shift between adversarial and cooperative pluralism or between cooperative and autocratic pluralism as being determined by a pragmatic calculation of the best way to achieve one’s goals. One of the important insights here is how easy or subtle this shift can be, at least initially. In a situation of consultative unitarism, managers might start to see cooperation as slow and less decisive, leading to subtle increases in unilateral decision-making, and the slide down the cooperation curve has begun. Managers and executives might also be trained to think that it is their responsibility to craft organizational policies, and prejudices might cause them to think that they have unique expertise, which pushes them toward autocratic unitarism.<br />
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Similarly, consider a relationship characterized by collaborative pluralism where workers are represented by a union. This, too, can be a fragile situation. Union leaders might think that strong leadership means winning gains for members, not cooperating with management which risks them being labelled as a sell-out. And thus a push for a stronger advocacy of workers’ interests can start a slide away from genuine cooperation. Indeed, narrow perceptions of self-interest can push employees, union leaders, managers, executives and others to prioritize their own needs at the expense of others, which can in turn create a backlash from others who react by prioritizing their own needs. All of this slides the parties away from a mutual gains focus and genuine cooperation.<br />
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In these ways, we believe that the cooperation curve reveals that the central tension within cooperation is the duality between mutuality and self-interest. Mutuality is easily undermined unless both sides take some degree of responsibility for addressing the other side’s interests and commit effort and resources to the cooperative venture. Moreover, this effort must be sustained, or cooperation may gradually decline in a process we call entropy. Indeed, this helps explain why key individuals (that is, “champions”) are key for achieving and maintaining cooperation. Our curve additionally makes clear that it can be management or labor that is responsible for failing to achieve genuine cooperation. So worker-centered perspectives should stop uniformly blaming employers for the lack of cooperation, and managerialist perspectives should stop uniformly blaming trade unions and workers. Rather, genuine cooperation can be fragile and therefore requires an explicit understanding of shared visions as well as attention from all involved. Otherwise, it's all too easy to slide down the curve away from genuine cooperation.<br />
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Source: Mark Bray, John W. Budd, and Johanna Macneil (forthcoming) "The Many Meanings of Cooperation in the Employment Relationship and Their Implications," <i>British Journal of Industrial Relations</i>. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12473">https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12473</a>. <a href="http://jbudd.csom.umn.edu/RESEARCH/cooperation.pdf">Click here to read the full paper</a>.<br />
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John Buddhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09489686540453366939noreply@blogger.com0