How Many of These Are Anti-union Practices?: A US Perspective

Until fairly recently Australian labour history and academic industrial relations (the two constituting almost a single field) focused almost exclusively on workers, unions, and the operation of arbitral tribunals. It was assumed that management's role was uniformly reactive and negative and therefore not worth studying. The recent broadening of the fields to include managers and management strategies represents a healthy development and a realistic recognition that today it is management which often has the upper hand. Only recently have Australian scholars become interested in deunionisation and this suggests an important difference between our two countries since union decline has been a major subject of scholarly interest in the United States (US) for many years. The present symposium, with four very different cases, raises some interesting questions, especially as to what we mean by 'anti-union'. Do we approach this question from the perspective of unions or of management? Are anti-union strategies those which are designed with the intent of weakening unions or are they those which have the effect of doing so? 'Intent' is difficult to prove or even define, as any lawyer will tell You. As for 'effect', management strategies designed to weaken unions may backfire and actually strengthen them. On the other hand, those designed for other purposes, for example to facilitate recruitment of skilled workers in a tight labour market, may eliminate causes of worker dissatisfaction and so make them more resistant to unionisation. For some Marxists and many economists, the sole goal of managers is to maximise profits. Further many of the same people believe that having a union automatically reduces profits. Thus for suspicious people almost everything management does in the broad human resources area is ipso facto anti-union. I think this conclusion overbroad. Management has other things to do besides fight unions. It needs to make and sell things, and faces a variety of pressures - not just from its employees, but from its customers, its stockholders, and the government. Thus - and this is my main point - management's motivation is often more complex than just antiunionism, as the four articles in this collection illustrate.