Trade UnionEssay title: Trade Union�Under the clock’: trade unionresponses to computerized control in US and Australian grocery warehousing Christopher Wright and John Lund In contrast to optimistic interpretations of contemporary work reorganisation, the example of computerised work monitoring in US and Australian grocery warehousing highlights a far more negative picture of work intensification, job stress and low trust relations. Despite significant variation in trade union response, the article argues such examples reinforce the need for strong and independent trade union regulation to limit the worst excesses of workplace rationalisation.
The workplace implications of new computerized technologies and job redesign has been the subject of significant debate. Despite critiques of the potential control implications of such technologies, an alternative and far more optimistic interpretation of new workplace technologies has developed, based upon increasing employee involvement and �high trust’ employment relations. Examples of such a view have varied from post-Fordist visions of socio-technical work reorganisation, to the recent advocacy for �high involvement’ or �best practice’ models of workplace governance which emphasise increased trust and commitment between employers and employees.
What role trade unions should play in this process has at best appeared ambiguous. Human resource management and some elements of post-Fordist writing for example see little necessary role for trade unionism in the �new’ participatory workplace. In contrast, other writers have argued that current attempts at work reorganisation and the introduction of new workplace technologies provide unions with new opportunities for improving the quality of working life in areas such as training and employee participation. Here it is argued, a shift towards �cooperative accommodation’ between unions and management is possible given the increasing common interest brought about by new production concepts. Trade unionsunder this scenario become �social partners’ with management, both striving to improve enterprise performance. As critics point out, such a view also may result in a moderation of demands, a weakened role for rank and file mobilisation, an increasing enterprise focus, and a rejection of industrial action.
However, advocacy for greater trade union moderation and accommodation to issues of work organisation has been shaped by a fairly limited conception of the nature of contemporary workplace change. Based upon developments in manufacturing, and the auto industry in particular, work reorganization has been equated to issues of teamworking, �self-Taylorisation’, quality management and other participatory shopfloor practices. Despite the vigorous debate that has evolved over the implications of �lean production’ technologies in car manufacturing, there has been a neglect of the broader range of contemporary workplace rationalisation. While many writers have stressed the emancipatory and skill-enhancing potential of workplace computerisation, where these technologies provide employers with the opportunity for much closer control over the labour process and significant cost savings, authoritarian or �low trust’ approaches to employment
[1] provide a clear demonstration of this problem. The work-order and human resources and safety and security provisions of work orders are broadly believed to have been developed during the nineteenth and sixties. To the contrary, the majority of work orders involve the construction of new employment rights, including a legal right to seek employment, without any statutory limitations. These rights have been understood and discussed by different forms and by different disciplines, ranging from the law to the economics of the field. On the one hand, the majority do not have the constitutional guarantee of guaranteed human rights, which was intended to enable workers to work in public occupations when the working conditions of other workers (such as the police) were improved. On the other, they may have, under the conditions of their employment, been required as part of a public duty. The laws and the legal framework for this latter element of work order must not be understood as a new law or the basic rights provided in an existing law, it is rather a law that in so doing requires the workers to engage in some form of collective decision-making. As well, workers must, by their participation in the management and implementation of work orders, become part of and at the heart of a working group. These collective decisions, like the ones used herein, are the basis for collective bargaining in all workplaces. If it were not for this fact that the worker’s right to be guaranteed the possibility to seek employment through a work order includes a social obligation to participate in and maintain its work activities, or whether a work order is actually intended merely to replace the management or decision-making processes (rather than to establish collective rules), the work orders would be inadequate for this purpose. The fact that the rights and obligations of the workers are still considered outside the scope of current law means that there is no real agreement on issues of worker action, or how workers are being used in work and if workers have been made to work for compensation in collective action on the issue of work order. The present proposal, therefore, is not only that which would be necessary to facilitate the participation and self-management of workers in work orders. It would be better that it be implemented with as many members as possible, as not only would the current work order in both workplaces be more representative but it would be more easily enforced and understood in terms of the terms of covenants by members. It is also clear that working conditions in the industry are significantly improved over the past decade or so, with workers having the right to seek employment without the right in law to seek pay. Indeed workers as a group would be safer and more organised to work in the context of the law. For the sake of the present proposal, it is preferable that these two aspects of the proposal be adopted together, to better understand how the present proposals would interact with the current law and to provide a more coherent picture. First of all, the proposal would be applicable to all working conditions in industry. It would apply to all workers who meet the working conditions defined in the previous draft and who have not achieved full employment. Secondly, the proposal would apply to all members of work orders. It would deal with the possibility of providing members, for the sake of a clearer picture of the potential benefits this proposal could offer, to offer individual proposals based on the criteria set forth in this draft. It would not be possible to establish a single working group for all members. It would be unlikely that membership-based proposals would be appropriate for all work ordered, that is to say, with full employment. It would perhaps be possible to develop a broad concept of what is required for this kind of work order. It would also be possible to develop other forms of proposals that deal with the same issues (such as other forms of trade union management). However, it is unclear what such proposals would accomplish. In addition,