Societal Demands on the Workplace
The workplace has become the central institution in American
society. A higher proportion of the population than ever before is in
the workplace, as women have taken jobs to support their families as
principal breadwinners or as part of dual-earner households.
Workplaces reflect the racial and ethnic diversity of the population
more than any other institution. The workplace distributes earned
income to most of the population. In contrast with many other advanced
countries, where the state provides benefits for citizens paid from
general taxation, the U.S. relies on private decision-making in the
workplace to furnish a disparate range of benefits, most notably
health insurance and vacations with pay. The U.S. also places on the
workplace the obligation to provide an increasing list of individual
rights enforceable in the courts. Americans spend more time at the
workplace than the citizens of any other advanced country, save for
Japan. Far more Americans work than vote.
Economic Performance. The workplace is a centerpiece of the nation's
economic performance, concern with productivity, quality, and
competitiveness. Our main national asset is a skilled and hard-working
workforce. In an ever more global economy, the quality of the
workplace affects not only the individual enterprise and its
employees, but also national economic growth and productivity
performance.
Training. The workplace is also the locus of vital training of the
workforce and even of considerable formal educational programs,
illustrated by instruction in math, language and basic skills,
apprenticeship, military programs, interns and residents in the
medical profession, and executive training. Continuous learning on the
job and in teamwork with multiple job tasks characterizes our most
productive work environments. This training is often best provided on
the job, learning from peers as needed or in new delivery modes that
enable a self-paced learning such as interactive media. Training in
health and safety, quality, and problem-solving are critical for the
workplace to fulfill its social role. In the world of the future, the
significance of training and education in the workplace may be
expected to be even greater than at present.and Development for U.S.
Competitiveness, The Business Roundtable, August 1993; Labor's Key
Role in Training, AFL- CIO Report of Training, September 1994.
New Forms of Work Organization. As these societal demands on the
workplace increase, a number of changes in the nature and location of
work, and in relations among workers and supervisors, make the
attainment of these objectives more complex and difficult. Indeed, the
traditional distinctions between worker and supervisor are often
without meaning in many current workplaces. New forms of organizing
work, new workplaces (including work at home), new work relations
(including with customers), new work hours, and new legal forms have
emerged and become more common in which there is ambiguity and often
no clear responsibility for training, health and safety, benefits,
legal obligations, and the other societal demands on the
workplace.Reflecting the surrounding community, moreover, the
workplace now reports an increased incidence of homicide, violence,
and verbal abuse destructive of morale, quality, and productivity.
Drug and alcohol abuse also create problems at work. One in six
violent crimes -- almost a million a year -- occur at the workplace.
In 1992 more than 500,000 employees were victims of violent crime at
their workplace. These new and more diverse relations raise questions
about the definitions of employee and employer, supervisor and
professional used in labor relations and employment law.
Workplace Regulations. Starting in the early 1900s, with concern
over accidents, a vastly expanded array of standards has been required
of workplaces by the political process. The old common law covering
worker-management relations has been replaced in many areas by state
and federal regulations that give workers an increasing body of legal
entitlements and rights enforceable against the employer in the courts
that largely places obligations on the employer. Legislation in
Democratic and Republican administrations alike as well as court
decisions regulate the terms of employment in the workplace, and many
states have specified their own rules and definitions.facilitated the
first comprehensive survey of the vast complex of legal statutes and
regulations and the reactions of employers and union representatives
to the regulations and to the regulatory and enforcement processes.
General Accounting Office, Workplace Regulation, Information on
Selected Employer and Union Experiences, Vols. I and II. June 1994.
See, Fact Finding Report, pp. 129-133.
Some federal interventions have been designed, as in the case of
statutes dealing with discrimination and harassment, to change the
mores or customs prevailing in many workplaces apart from providing
redress to affected individuals. One of the earliest pieces of New
Deal era legislation was the Wagner Act (modified by 1947 and 1959
statutes) that sought to assure workers the right to choose freely
whether or not to join a union and to encourage the practice of
collective bargaining over terms and conditions of employment. The
procedures were designed to ascertain whether or not workers wanted
democratically chosen representation at the workplace. It is to be
observed that the labor movement often provided the impetus and
political support for many of the workplace entitlements enacted by
regulatory legislation for all workers. In recent years civil rights
groups, women's groups, and religious groups have also played a role
in expanding the protection provided for workers. At their volition or
through collective bargaining, companies have also introduced numerous
policies designed to improve worker well-being as well as to raise
workplace efficiency. For instance, most large firms now have employee
assistance programs to help employees with alcohol, drug, mental
health or other problems.
The Need for Cooperation. An increasing number of employers and
unions have found that the best way to compete in the marketplace and
secure both profits for the firm and good jobs for workers is through
cooperative worker- management relations. As Americans obtain more
education, and with the changing nature of some work, employers
increasingly find it appropriate to rearrange responsibilities and
tasks to employees, who work sometimes as teams and other times as
individuals. For their part, more highly educated employees express
greater desire to participate in workplace decisions and have the
knowledge and competence to undertake more tasks at the workplace. It
is clearer now than in the past that creating value at the workplace
is the joint responsibility of management and labor.
The Commission also recognizes that there is great diversity in the
seven million workplaces in the country -- variations by industry,
community, number of employees, demographic mix of workers, and union
status, with a correspondingly wide disparity in relations among
workers and management that ranges from hostility to open
collaborative partnerships.
The ability of workplaces to carry out their critical social and
economic functions is, however, diminished by the continuing conflict
that exists in some workplaces between employees who seek independent
representation and to engage in collective bargaining and some
employers who seek to prevent this outcome. The polarization between
employees and management in union representation campaigns, and the
unfair labor practices committed in some of these campaigns, poison
the attitudes in many other workplaces and detract from the attainment
of cooperative arrangements and the rational assessment of workplace
problems and mutually beneficial solutions.
The achievement of prescribed standards of protection and regulation
-- in health and safety at workplaces, freedom from discrimination or
sexual harassment, payment of minimum wages -- all too often is
equally confrontational and litigious in many workplaces. Our courts
and regulatory agencies are burdened with employment disputes that
would better be resolved at the workplace. Many workers who lack the
resources to go to court and many firms who fear the expense of
lawsuits do not get the just resolution of workplace problems that
they deserve. Hence, the attention to improved methods of dispute
resolution.
It is time to turn down the decibel count, the adversarial and
hostility quotient that all too often mars discussion of
worker-management relations. We must -come and reason together- to
devise the best ways to assure that workers have their legislatively
proscribed and socially agreed upon rights and employment norms,
without burdening the economy with excessive litigation and extended
administrative proceedings. We must develop institutions and practices
that will allow employees and firms to cooperate at the workplace in
ways that will contribute optimally to economic growth and competitive
performance and to the fulfillment of social norms.
The Commission recognizes, of course, that the interests of workers
and management are not identical: they will differ in some areas. In a
market economy buyers and sellers have different perspectives on the
terms of sale. But there are numerous ways to resolve disputes
cooperatively, or, if need be, through limited conflict such as
strikes or lockouts rather than open warfare. And there are many
leaders in business and in the labor movement to provide advice and
role models for dealing with disagreements by finding efficacious
solutions to problems.
In Chapter I of its Fact Finding Report, the Commission documented
places in which the American economy has not successfully met the
challenge of recent economic developments -- the rise in income
inequality and fall in earnings for many less skilled workers that
threatens to turn a predominantly middle-class society into a two-tier
society; sluggish growth in productivity outside of manufacturing; the
inability of the job market to offer many employees work that pays
more than crime -- as well as areas where we have outperformed other
advanced nations. To improve our national economic performance in the
areas in which we have problems and to maintain into the 21st century
our success in the areas in which we have done well requires that we
modernize our labor-management relations, bringing the best practices
to more and more firms and workers.
The workplaces that we have inherited are far too adversarial in
tone and substance for the good of the American economy. Changes must
be made in the way firms, employees, and unions interact, and in
workplace laws and regulations, to enable them to carry out
successfully the vital tasks society places on them.
This Report specifies some of those changes in the form of
suggestions and recommendations. They are a starting point on a
necessary road to adjusting the workplace to the realities of a
changing social and economic environment and to the vision of a better
future. The future of the American economy and society is vitally
dependent on the American workplace. It is important that we begin the
task of making the workplace a better and more productive place for
firms and employees alike.
