How Unions and Trade Councils Fit with Requisite Organization?

Speaker A I had thought from Elliot, not because he said so, that Wilford was merely reflecting the industrial democratic movement of the UK at the time he was actually creating. And so he did a 180 as a result of their discoveries in trying to share authority with the union. Right. Wilford actually ended up doing a 180.

Speaker B From what I mean, he was trying.

Speaker A To create a situation where the unions.

Speaker C Had genuine authority, where the people in.

Speaker D The business had genuine authority.

Speaker B What I said before, Wilford understood power and he understood that power is out there, and unless you corral it, it'll distort everything. It has to be brought within the constitution.

Speaker A But he was trying to use a democratic structure to harness the power.

Speaker B He believed democracy is the least worst way of managing affairs. The irony, as I said, was that Wolfgang Kirsteber has gone into this looking at the kind of presumptions made by Germans in the middle 19th century. They all believed that Britain was racing it ahead in the application of looking at Wilfred Owen and people like that, assuming that what Owen was up to was kind of the norm. It never was, but Brits haven't got the hang of it yet, and the Scots do. I mean, what we're talking about now is not rocket science. It's certainly not rocket science to the Scott, but those guys in the charm circle around the clubs in London will be genuinely baffled by this conversation. The English don't get I'm generalizing a lot, obviously. Well, that's what they reference.

Speaker A We're talking about Brown, the Scott, and it seems to me he made a dramatic change in his thinking.

Speaker B I'm not so sure. He was very well read. Even before he took up his role as chief executive at the age of 29, he was already very well read in the matter of democratic institution. Why they matter? There wasn't a sort of bloodfast for him in his own thinking. He certainly was bringing something to Glacier which he hadn't had before. But I think there's a great continuity in Brown's thinking about this.

Speaker A There's no question there's an evolution, because what he tried to do wouldn't work. What he ended up doing, saying that authority is not delegated democratically, but it's delegated from each manager to each subordinate. They're expected to exercise that authority, but then they're held accountable for it. I mean, that's a very different model from what he's set out to do.

Speaker B I don't see it that way. It seems to me that there is. I mean, that's the whole point about the executive. Wilford's point was that if you're a manager, you have to manage, and unless you separate out the policy formation process, which is your works council, working at that level from your executive, then your managers won't be able to manage. He was very keen on managers being able to say, it sounds like the military. I mean, in the military, it's rather important you have to earn your authority. But of course it's important when the boss says, OK, we do this, we just do it. Goodford's conception was that doesn't happen unless you sort out the other matters, the appeals procedure. So his motion always was that power is a reality. That's the important thing to understand about Wilfred, about he had a feel for he was a powerful man. He knew he was dangerous when he was out of control. If you've ever met him on a golf course, you'd know that he was easy with power. He understood power and he believed passionately that power will distort your world unless you corral it in the correct way. He figured that's what democracy is, it's the least worst way of doing that. I think that was a consistent idea of his, and that's absolutely consistent with the manager being able to manage Alistair.

Speaker E What happened with works councils? And where do unions fit in? And I don't hear any talk about works councils when we talk about requisite.

Speaker B For Wilfred, the unions were a necessary part of the deal.

Speaker E So this may have been a transition you had to accept unionism.

Speaker D No, I don't think he had any problem with it. The works council idea was actually driven by Wilfred Brown. That's argued very well, but unions wouldn't come at that unless there was some powerful thing in for them. They were invited into those works council in Australia. Now, the unions have always been less powerful than they were, but they've never sought that kind of representation, nor have they here. No. Yes, it does. It changes their changes their authority once you've got a works council.

Speaker E So was Wilfred able to do both councils and union?

Speaker D So he did have he did.

Speaker B He was trying to force the managers to unionize themselves as a power block. The system, he says, has power blocks. That's the reality. And the managerial group was a power block, so they needed to be brought within the constitution.

Speaker E And did they do that?

Speaker B They did in the end, yes. They unionized themselves. They called themselves the management unit.

Speaker E Has that happened anywhere else? Because certainly, to my mind, managers still think that they're part of the ownership.

Speaker D But if you look at it from an enterprise point of view, you managers in this enterprise go and organize yourself. That's one statement. But if you look at it from a national union point of view, unions, truckers in the States, they're industrially organized, it's a very different thing. Very different thing, because then you impose industry wide issues. And that's not what Brown was about. It was about representation in the institution he was concerned with.

Speaker C There are actually examples of that. As I understand it, the management of the United Steel Workers is unionized.

Speaker A Part of the management of Canada is.

Speaker C Unionized management of banks in Australia, commonwealth.

Speaker D Aluminum under Mark Kaminsky, they had a whole bunch of representative representations.

Speaker C I think Barry's comments were useful though is the distinction between a group deciding to organize as a group for the reasons of social power or authority in the business or being part of the broader political union organizational movement because they are actually quite different agendas.

Speaker A I guess my question is I have never heard Elliot talk about works councils or aggregating management into some kind of power block other than historically back at Glassford. That's not part of his model.

Speaker B That's what I'm trying to get recently.

Speaker D That'S been a secret.

Speaker B Go and talk to Mark.

Speaker D They did it quite deliberately, wasn't done in the rest of CRA.

Speaker A But I'm having trouble understanding the role.

Speaker B That would serve a policy setting.

Speaker A What kind of policy.

Speaker D Plan conditions.

Speaker B Those.

Speaker E Things are negotiated for the Stratum One people.

Speaker D Well that's right. They're negotiating on an industry wide basis. Now at Stratum one union level, traditional union as much we know it you have a triangular relationship which disrupts the delivery of the managerial variation authorities. And that's the problem in Hammersley. What you saw on that chart on the screen the other day, you saw it wasn't clear enough. But the histogram of lost time suddenly comes to an end about 1995 because Terry Palmer, the managing director took Ro right down to the front line which is when he realized that he was taking vary authorities down to the front line and the national unions battled for that ground the authority of the manager. So he had a vote and he came up with this idea that we should have civil law contracts for everybody. Everybody belong beyond staff conditions if they so wish. They can feel free to join a union if they so wish and invited them to do that. They had a vote. Company 5000 people at the time. One union member remained. But in effect that company deunionized.

Speaker B But in a very proper way.

Speaker D Absolutely through channels properly.

Speaker F When Judge was reading a lecture, the way I remember it he said the union was the result of the dysfunction within the organization and once you've redesigned organization requisite then the need for union disappear.

Speaker D Well maybe it doesn't, maybe it doesn't but what you're focusing on as a manager is my relationship with the employee.

Speaker B I'm not going to destroy the union's relationship.

Speaker D That's somebody else's business.

Speaker F No you just would simply say strengthen.

Speaker B My relationship with the employee which is.

Speaker C You'Ve created the conditions for that relationship to be the primary one if you're good enough to make it that. So therefore the third party becomes obsolete if that relationship is strong enough.

Speaker D So you could say that Rod Carnegie set out to be the manager of choice.

Speaker A But I don't understand where the works council gets into it.

Speaker B It doesn't in Hamilton because no anywhere.

Speaker D When you have a look at people systems things like performance assessments, safety, fair treatment using the mor and so on, career development, field processes, all of those systems if you like they're very heavy on policy. It's a prime opportunity for participation.

Speaker A For them to make recommendations, have input into absolutely.

Speaker B True representatives. Yes, it's parliamentary model.

Speaker A Well, no, it's not parliamentary, because in parliamentary you're voting and you're legislating.

Speaker B Well, hang on.

Speaker C Theoretically, anyway.

Speaker B Doesn'T matter what process. Basically, they were very keen on the idea.

Speaker D Whoever the representatives were representing the power.

Speaker B Blocks were the right people. There was adequate participation in the process by which they were chosen by the workers.

Speaker C Jerry's also exploring, though, the issue of what's the authority what's the actual authority boundary of the council?

Speaker D Can you implement or can you just.

Speaker C Recommend.

Speaker D Very clear on the process, obviously very detailed about the process.