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Job quality and the union movement
 by
Conor Cradden
Many trade unions have
adopted the concept of ‘job quality’ as part of their work,
combining the traditional collective bargaining agenda with a new
emphasis on job design, work organization, skills and career
development. They argue that quality jobs are not an end in
themselves, but are vital for the achievement of quality public
services. In this article, PSI considers the pros and cons of the notion
of job quality from a union perspective.
The concept of job quality
The concept of job quality has
emerged in reaction to neoliberal approaches to work and the labour
market. Contemporary economic and social policy places considerable
weight on measures to encourage job creation. Unfortunately, the main
strategy used to promote this has been the deregulation of labour
markets. The result has been the re-emergence of the kind of poorly
paid, insecure work which many of us had dared to hope was a thing of
the past. This kind of work is often associated with a lazy and
authoritarian approach to management – an approach which treats
the worker as an object to be closely controlled with rules and
regulations, generally backed by the threat of dismissal.
While neoliberal economic
policies have opened the way for the ‘McJob’, the
development of new management techniques has meant that even better
paid, more highly skilled employees are now subject to unprecedented
pressure both to conform and perform. More than simply obedience,
employers have begun to require a kind of moral and emotional commitment
from their workforce – the kind of commitment where work always
comes first.
The concept of job quality
captures two different ideas that both run counter to these tendencies.
First of all, there is the idea that the creation of just
any jobs is not necessarily a good thing. Rather, employment
creation policies should be designed to produce only quality jobs.
Second, there is the idea that work should have as much room in an
employee’s life as he or she wants to give it, but that in all
cases a working life should be something that is worth living. Work
should be compatible with the standards of dignity and respect for the
individual that are expected in other areas of life.
The twelve
‘dimensions’ listed in Box 1 add up to a typical definition
of job quality. From the trade union perspective, the most significant
aspect of the idea is that it collapses the long-established distinction
between issues which form part of the union agenda (pay, terms and
conditions, health and safety, and workplace union organization) and
issues which have more often been addressed by management alone (the
content of the job, skills and career development, and the organization
of production or service delivery). The first set of issues are usually
known as ‘extrinsic’ job factors, and the second as
‘intrinsic’ job factors.
Obviously, unions have no
difficulty with the idea that jobs should be safe, secure and well-paid.
What is more questionable is whether they should also take the
initiative to try to improve the ‘intrinsic’ aspects of
their members’ jobs. In the next section, we look briefly at the
history of union attitudes to job content and work
organization.
Box 1: The dimensions of job quality
1 Issues which
form part of the traditional union agenda, often known as
“extrinsic” job factors
- the level of remuneration,
including salary payments, benefits and equal opportunities;
- the security of the
job;
- the hours and intensity of
work and its implications for physical and mental health and for
opportunities to have a satisfying personal and family life;
- the social protection attached
to the employment contract, including mechanisms for sick leave,
disability and unemployment insurance, pension schemes, child care and
maternity leave;
- the employer’s health
and safety practices and procedures;
- the fairness of the system of
management control and discipline;
- the opportunities for freedom
of association and collective bargaining;
2 Issues which
have more often been addressed by management alone , often referred to
as “intrinsic” job factors
- the degree of autonomy or
control the worker enjoys in the job;
- the skills involved in the job
and the opportunity that the exercise of those skills provides for
personal fulfilment or for social or productive service;
- the responsibilities involved
in the job and both the opportunities for job satisfaction that these
provide and the stress that these may induce;
- the opportunities the job
provides for developing and enhancing skills and for moving into more
satisfying, more secure or better paid employment over a life
cycle;
- the opportunities the job
affords for contributing to creative activities of the organization,
including problem solving, incremental innovation and the use of
personal initiative based on developed skills and knowledge.
Source: adapted from Rubery &
Grimshaw, 2001 and ILO, 1999.
Unions, job content and work organization
The demand for jobs and systems
of work organization that, on a human level, are worthy of the time and
energy invested by workers is as old as the labour movement itself. As
the industrial revolution spread across Europe and North America, it
became clear that the new systems of mass production degraded the role
of the worker.
The earliest industrialists had
relied on skilled craft workers to organize the process of production.
However, the mechanization of industry during the
19th century meant not only that there was less need for
craft skills, but also that ‘economies of speed’ became more
important. The greater the amount invested in production, the more
important it became for managers to resist ‘traditional craft
norms concerning the allocation and pace of work.’ (Lazonick, 1990). Many employers
embarked on a deliberate strategy of de-skilling in order to ensure that
workers had minimal influence (abd less capacity to disrupt) productive
activities on the shop floor. Management strategy was increasingly
focussed on maintaining detailed control over production.
In the face of this strategy
there were two union responses. Craft unionism was the more
direct response. It aimed to resist the erosion of the skill
requirements of certain jobs, and to limit access to the acquisition of
those skills. The power of the union was founded on the fact that
skilled workers had knowledge about the technical aspects of the
production process which management could not easily find
elsewhere.
The other response was
industrial unionism. The majority of workers did not have skilled
work to defend. From the managerial perspective they were entirely
expendable, since there were always others willing to take their place.
For these workers, union power could only be based on solidarity and
mass organization across the whole of an industry.
It is hardly surprising that in
the tradition of industrial unionism, the content of jobs and the
organization of the workplace has not been a high priority. More than
being boring and meaningless, early industrial labour was usually also
dangerous, pitifully paid, and insecure. Workers were subject to long
hours, arbitrary discipline and appalling conditions. The priority of
many early trade unions, then, was to establish their capacity to
challenge the worst of the factory-, mine- and mill-owners’
excesses. The right to organize and take action, and the development of
collective bargaining to improve pay and basic terms and conditions came
to dominate the union agenda. Generally speaking, job content has only
been of concern to industrial unions where it was part of an attempt to
increase the pace of work.
What unites the two union
traditions is an essentially reactive attitude to job content and work
organization. Craft unions have tried to defend the methods of working
customarily employed by skilled craftspeople. Industrial unions have
generally taken the view that managers can have whatever kind of labour
they want as long as they are prepared to pay fairly for it. In neither
case have unions been particularly concerned with promoting production
techniques or ways of working which increase the intrinsic job
satisfaction of workers.
Can the labour movement afford
to expand its aims to include the promotion of job quality? Resources
are inevitably limited, and, unfortunately, most of the world’s
unions are still struggling over the most basic extrinsic elements of
the employment relationship – wages, working conditions, social
benefits, health and safety etc. Given this, it is quite understandable
that the improvement of the intrinsic value of work and working
relationships is often considered something of a luxury.
The managerial capture of work organization
Unfortunately, the effective
abstention of unions from this issue has meant that over the last thirty
years or so, employers have been able to ‘capture’ the whole
territory of job design and work organization, reducing it into just
another tactical issue in the struggle for increase profits.
For a long period on either
side of the Second World War, the attention of managers in the
manufacturing sector was focussed almost exclusively on maintaining or
increasing production. In the late 1960s, however, the emphasis in
Europe and North America began to shift towards increasing
productivity and improving product quality. Suddenly,
the passive compliance of workers – which could be assured by
setting wages and conditions at ‘the going rate’ – was
no longer enough. Instead, managers had to seek active cooperation in
the organization and reorganization of the production process. Although
some employers tried to establish this kind of cooperation through
productivity bargaining, many others turned to the work psychology and
human relations techniques that had been developed since the 1930s,
principally in US non-union firms. These employers rejected the idea
that cooperation processes were best established through bargaining.
They insisted that employees’ interests and those of the
corporation were the same, and that bargaining was therefore
inappropriate. The management of labour was no longer about securing a
reliable supply of labour of acceptable quality. Rather, it became the
art of influencing attitudes and behaviour in order to obtain worker
cooperation or ‘flexibility’ without any loss of management
control.
The justification for this
manipulative approach was that since managers knew what was good for the
corporation, they also knew where employees’ true interests lay.
In effect, they argued that they knew this better than the employees
themselves. For this reason many employers turned against trade unions.
If management knew what was good for workers, then worker objections to
reorganization were not legitimate. Instead, they were painted as
pointless and damaging efforts to sabotage economically-necessary
change. Trade unions who were suspicious of employer motives were
accused of wanting to prevent change – change that would be of
direct benefit both to workers and to their national economy.
Although this managerial
makeover began in manufacturing, it has now moved into the service
sector, an increasingly important source of jobs, particularly in the
developed world. Even more so than in manufacturing industry, the
quality of service provision depends heavily on the attitudes and
behaviour of employees.
Today, representatives of
employers’ interests and pro-business governments talk constantly
about enriching jobs, flattening hierarchies, increasing worker autonomy
and discretion, enhancing skills, and offering opportunities for career
and personal development. In short, they insist that it makes good
business sense for enterprises to offer only quality jobs. They speak as
if traditional low-skill, low-discretion, industrial jobs were a thing
of the past, and argue that workers are the key source of
competitive advantage. But has this shift in attitudes translated into
quality jobs, from a workers’ perspective? Profitable employment
practices and quality jobs are not the same thing.
Research eidence on job content and work organization
This new style of management
has now been the dominant global model for more than twenty years. There
is enough research evidence to make some solid judgements on what has
been happening. In looking at the evidence, there are three important
points for trade unions to know.
- On balance, the outcome of
management attempts to redesign jobs and work organization has not been
positive for workers. Although there is some evidence that the skill
content of many jobs has increased, task discretion has been reduced,
and that the pace of work has intensified.
- Managers seem to have avoided
certain initiatives, even though they have been proven to improve
corporate performance.[i]These
practices include employee participation, co-operative employment
relationships, a minimally hierarchical management system, and
employment security.
Many of the multinational
corporations who are the most ardent advocates of quality jobs have few
scruples about subcontracting production to the developing
world.
In other words the research
evidence suggests that most unilateral management efforts to reorganize
or restructure jobs and work organization, regardless of the rhetoric,
have had the effect of increasing managerial control at the
expense of quality jobs.
At the same time, it has been
clearly established that genuine efforts to improve job quality will
have positive outcomes for employers as well as employees. In
particular, this can be seen with efforts to increase worker discretion
and autonomy (giving workers a real say in how corporations are run) and
increasing job security. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that
management choices are not being made on the basis of a neutral
assessment of what would produce the best outcome for all stakeholders,
but are being designed to prevent workers gaining more
control over their jobs, and to exclude them from genuine influence in
decision-making.
A trade union job quality agenda
As we saw above, management
tends to dismiss certain approaches where they fear these will have an
impact on their ability to control the organization, even where there is
hard evidence that these approaches will have a positive impact on
performance. Many workers have felt the effect of this, and it is at
this point that a new union agenda is arising.
Workers have an interest in
maintaining and improving the long-term viability of the organizations
in which they work. They are also concerened with the effectiveness of
the services they provide. In principle, then, there are definitions of
competitiveness and effectiveness that workers accept, although they
need not be the same as those proposed by management.
Wendy Caird, coordinator of
PSI’s Quality Public Services campaign, argues that quality jobs
and quality services are just two sides of the same coin. The research
is on her side (see Bibliography and Resources). Employees will come up with the goods
if they are fairly paid; if they feel valued; if they have the
opportunity to make good use of their skills and talents; and if they
can see that they have a future in the organization where they work.
What is more, employees who work at the sharp end of service delivery,
along with those who use the services, are generally in a better
position than senior managers to say which methods and processes are the
most effective. One of the key dimensions of job quality is the
opportunity for employees to contribute to creative and innovative
solutions to problems faced by their organizations. Quality jobs are
therefore likely to be associated not just with motivated and
enthusiastic staff, but with effective organization structures and
processes.
A case in point: The People’s Hospital
The case of how PSI affiliates
from South Africa are trying to deal with a failing public service makes
for a fascinating example of how unions can address both job quality and
service quality in a single integrated initiative.
The Chris Hani Baragwanath
Hospital in Soweto is not only South Africa’s largest hospital,
but the largest in the southern hemisphere. After the democratic
breakthrough of the early 1990s and the transition to a post-apartheid
industrial relations regime, the established management system broke
down: ‘despite the institutionalisation of trade unionism and
workers’ procedural rights in the institution, no proactive
strategy has been established to build a new workplace regime, based on
a new consensus about roles, rights and responsibilities.’ The
situation was exacerbated by tensions that persisted after a long and
bitter strike in 1992.
In the face of this breakdown
and the more or less total failure of management to take the situation
in hand, the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union
(NEHAWU), the largest of the hospital’s four recognised unions,
approached the National Labour and Economic Development Institute
(NALEDI) for help. NALEDI is a research and policy institute established
by the South African trade union federation COSATU. Although it has a
high degree of autonomy, its primary role is to provide advice and
research analysis to trade unions. Researchers from NALEDI worked with
unions, management and staff to diagnose problems and develop a set of
proposals for changes to the hospital’s work organization and to
management structures and practices. As the researchers put it, the idea
was to transform Chris Hani Baragwanath into “a
‘People’s Hospital’ which would improve the quality of
health-care service as well as the quality of working life for union
members.”
The changes proposed included
the replacement of ‘silo’ structures of management
–functional hierarchies that cut across the principal
organizational units like wards and clinical departments – with an
integrated structure in which the effective functioning of each unit is
the responsibility of a single manager. Work organization would also
reflect this integrated pattern, being based on a team-working approach
involving all categories of staff. The skills of ward attendants,
nursing auxiliaries and ward clerks were reassessed and opportunities
for training and career development were put in place. The proposals
were accepted by management and the provincial Department of Health and
put into practice as a pilot project in the Surgical Department at the
beginning of 2003.
The situation in the hospital
is still very difficult – largely because of problems stemming
from under-funding - however the government has seen what is happening,
and has acknowledged its own role. Baragwanath will now be given
priority in a hospital revitalization programme.
Thembi Mngomezulu of the
nursing union DENOSA (appointed PSI regional secretary for Southern
Africa in 2005), says that above all, the project has brought hope and a
clear, shared goal: the construction of a People’s Hospital. This
has enabled staff to put many of the problems and tensions of the past
behind them. Ms Mngomezulu believes that the use of an outside agency
trusted by both staff and management was very valuable. “With the
results of NALEDI’s research, the unions were able to go to
management with objective evidence of the problems that existed in
Bara,” she says.
For more on this story of
trade unions rescuing public services, see http://www.polity.org.za/pdf/baragwanath.pdf
Box 2: Key Lessons from the People’s Hospital Project
- The proposals drawn up by
NALEDI were explicitly designed to tackle both job quality
and service quality. It was clear that the two issues could not be
separated.
- Although it had the support of
certain individual managers, the transformation project was entirely a
union initiative.
- The project proposals were
drawn up by an independent but openly pro-labour agency based on
extensive research and discussion in the workplace.
- Although the project was
initiated by NEHAWU, the other workplace unions lent unequivocal support
to the initiative.
Conclusion
Many unions, through sheer necessity, restrict their actions to the
struggle to achieve a decent level of pay and basic terms and conditions
for their members. However to assume that job content and work
organization are part of an entirely different, managerial agenda would
be a strategic mistake. This approach allows employers to maintain
unilateral control over a wide range of areas which have a huge impact
on working lives. The choices that employers make about work
organization are very often damaging to workers’ interests. The
research results are in: there are sound, viable alternatives which will
improve jobs as well as services.
The credit for the continuing
transformation at Chris Hani Baragwanath lies clearly with the unions.
Similar stories are often found in the union movement, but they are
seldom told. In particular, there are two conclusions we can
draw:
- Employees should not accept a
unilateral managerial definition of what competitiveness or
effectiveness involves;
- Employees should not accept a
unilateral definition of how the goals of the organization are to be
achieved.
From this arises a third
conclusion. Unions who take on this wider agenda will need strong and
active structures in the workplace. Only organised workers, capable of
speaking in solidarity, will be able to engage with employers around
alternative approaches to work organization and job quality.
Job quality, technology and
performance
There are three papers
which, between them, cover a great deal of ground in this area and
have comprehensive bibliographies. The principal point that all three
have in common is the emphasis on the possibility of
choice in work organization.
Professor Morris Altman of the
University of Saskatchewan argues that there is ‘rapidly amassing
evidence that a certain set of work practices yield relatively large
permanent increases in labour productivity, yet these work practices are
simply not adopted and more often than not resisted by management’
(Altman, 2002).
Rubery and Grimshaw’s
paper is concerned with the effects of information and communications
technology on the job quality. In line with most research in the area,
they conclude that technology in itself is neither positive nor
negative. What matters is how it is used in the workplace. Depending on
managerial choices, ICT can lead to deskilling, work intensification and
the diminution of worker autonomy, or it can help to improve job quality
by automating routine tasks and opening up the possitility for new, less
intense and more creative forms of working.
Rather than considering a
particular type of work reorganization, the ILO working paper looks at a
particular industrial sector, that of small- and medium-sized
enterprises. Employers in this sector are notorious for their claims
that good quality job and employment practices ‘are not
affordable’. However, the ILO paper makes precisely the opposite
argument:
There is no doubt that
small enterprises have been more likely to be associated with inferior
pay and working conditions on most dimensions. However this association
is not inevitable. There are strong suggestions of a link between small
enterprise incomes and working conditions and the basis on which such
enterprises compete. There are also indications that enterprises seeking
to compete by meeting new demands for high levels of quality,
productivity, reliability, innovation, flexibility and a capacity to
adapt to changing needs, have advantages in this regard when various
qualitative aspects of employment are present. This includes, for
example superior labour relations and opportunities for worker
participation, good working and community conditions (including adequate
health and safety environments) progressively improving skills and
equipment and adopting adequate social protection mechanisms. In fact,
good conditions and a capability to meet current competitive needs may
be mutually supportive.
- Morris Altman (2002) “Economic
Theory and the Challenge of Innovative Work Practices”,
Economic and Industrial Democracy Vol. 23(2),
pp.271-290.
- Jill Rubery & Damian
Grimshaw (2001) “ICTs and Employment: The Problem of Job
Quality”, International Labour Review, Vol. 140 (2),
pp.165-192.
- International Labour Organization
(1999) Job Quality and Small Enterprise Development,
Working Paper No. 4, InFocus Programme on Boosting Employment through
Small Enterprise Development.
Effects of managerial choices on work
organization
As will have been clear from the text,
Altman’s paper also covers the actual outcomes of managerial
choices over the last twenty years or so. His conclusion is that the
high performance or high yield workplace is as yet a very rare thing,
despite the fine words of employers. Two other papers that cover some of
the same ground but that are rather more focussed in their concerns are
those by Felstead et al and by Green. Both use a large British data set
to test certain propositions about the development of work organization
and job content in the UK. Although the findings are specific to one
country, they are still interesting because they support Altman’s
more general claim about the gap between managerial rhetoric and the
real situation in the workplace.
- Alan Felstead, Duncan Gallie and
Francis Green (2002). Work Skills In Britain 1986-2001.
Nottingham, DfES Publications.
- Francis Green (2002) “Work
Intensification, Discretion and the Decline in Well-Being at
Work”, unpublished paper delivered at the Conference on Work
Intensification, Paris, November 2002.
- William Lazonick (1990)
“Organizational Capabilities in American Industry: The Rise and
Decline of Managerial Capitalism”, Business and Economic
History, Vol. 19, pp.35-54.
- Christopher Ansell & Antoine Joseph
(1998) “The Mass Production of Craft Unionism: Exploring
Workers’ Solidarity in Late Nineteenth-Century France and
America”, Politics and Society, Vol. 26(4).
The People’s
Hospital
The case study on Chris Hani Baragwanath
Hospital was based on a paper by two of the researchers from NALEDI who
were involved in the project, as well as an interview with Thembi
Mngomezulu.
Karl von Holdt & Bethuel Maserumule
(2005) “After Apartheid: Decay or Reconstruction? Transition in a
Public Hospital”, in Webster & Von Holdt (eds.) Beyond the
Apartheid Workplace: Studies in Transition, University of
Kwazulu-Natal Press. Also available at http://www.polity.org.za/pdf/baragwanath.pdf.
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