Partnership and militancy as a contradictory dialectic in the labour process

Tony Dobbins (Bangor University),Tony Dundon (National University of Ireland Galway),

Paper for 30th International Labour Process Conference (ILPC)

University of Stockholm, March 27-29, 2012

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Introduction

Much of the extant literature on workplace partnership has tended to focus on

managerial-sponsored forms of enterprise voice (Wilkinson et al., 2010; Dobbins and

Dundon, 2011). But there has been little contemporary scrutiny of employee

perspectives: for example how groups of workers engage in conflictual behaviors to

challenge employer-led partnership when employer power is in the ascendancy

(Darlington, 2001; Danford et al., 2009).

The paper utilizes an in-depth and longitudinal single case study to analyze the

contradictory dialectic of cooperation and militancy in the labour process. Many (but

not all) employees in the case organization actively opposed a union-management

partnership agreement. It adds to labour process theory by explaining the coexistence

of contradictory social relations at the point of production: workers not only actively

resisted management change but also opposed official union policy and agreement.

For reasons of confidentially the company is given a pseudonym of Omega and the

union is called Industrial Union (IU). The paper will address two research themes: i)

the dynamic interplay of moderate and conflictual labour relations, and ii), the

implications of these contradictory postures for workforce orientations.

The evidence shows that the dynamic interplay of moderation and militancy is more

nuanced than described in much of the literature. It is subsequently argued that radical

pluralist perspectives are best placed to address deficiencies in neo-Marxist and neo-

pluralist conceptualization of the complexity of the effort-reward exchange. In doing

so, the contribution will be two-fold. First, the paper will explain that the dynamics of

moderation and militancy often co-exist rather than constituting either/or dichotomies.

Second, the evidence will show how workforce orientations contain a mixture of

multi-layered, uneven and fluid behaviours that shape the balance between militant

and moderate postures. It will add to knowledge on patterns of workforce behavior

and orientations in complex social workplace settings (Daniel, 1973). The theoretical

contribution is a greater and more refined understanding of the processes and

orientations affecting the balance as well as the tension endemic in the labour process.

This not only involves considering the contradictions facing management in

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regulating employment relations, but also the contradictions of conflict and

accommodation facing union activists and workers when pursuing multiple interests.

Moderation and militancy: a brief overview

There remain key differences of opinion among scholars as to the interplay and

balance between moderation (cooperation) or militancy (conflict), and the

implications for workforce orientations. For analytical purposes, militancy and

moderation can be seen as two points on a continuum. Moderation is defined here as

an accommodation between employers, unions and employees, based on a realization

that their respective interests are best fulfilled by pragmatically cooperating in

response to uncertain economic conditions. In an employment relationship

characterized by moderation, management engage employees, both directly as

individuals and indirectly through representatives, in a cooperative and integrated

relationship to pursue mutual gains such as participation, employment security and

productivity (Dobbins and Gunnigle, 2009; Rittau and Dundon, 2010). With regard to

militancy, conceptualizations remain imprecise and often tied to political forms of

left-wing activist-led conflict. A broader definition of militancy is provided by

Edwards (1986:226): “‘Militant’ does not mean politically left-wing, but refers to the

extent to which workers perceive themselves as having interests opposed to or

inconsistent with the interests of management, and act accordingly”. For Edwards

(1986:7), “conflicts in work relations carry no necessary connotations for wider class

conflict”. Resistance and a challenge to managerial prerogative can therefore be

understood as the extent to which confrontational methods are adopted or deployed in

advancing worker interests over particular concerns. This broad conceptualization

allows for a more nuanced appreciation of the varieties of militant behaviour, and how

such behaviours interact and mediate with various consensual actions.

Notwithstanding oversimplification, contemporary Marxist scholars (Darlington,

1994, 2001; Kelly, 1996, 1998; Gall, 2003; Danford et al., 2009) focus on how

workers come to define their interests via politically motivated left-wing activists

committed to a radicalized adversarial agenda in opposition to management. Neo-

Marxist contributors retain the belief that the role of activists in fermenting class

consciousness and spearheading workplace class struggles can provide fertile ground

for the potential mobilization of broader challenges to capitalism. For example, Kelly

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(1996) suggests militant unions are defined by a willingness to engage in industrial

action and have an ideology of conflicting interests. As a staunch critic of

management-union partnership, Kelly’s (1996) argument for militancy is predicated

on a number of assumptions: employers are increasingly hostile to unions; there are

irredeemable conflicts of interest between employers and workers; union moderation

has achieved negligible benefits for workers; and the institutionalization of

partnership reduces workers’ capacity to mobilize and resist employer proposals. In

subsequent work Kelly (1998:60) outlines the key components of alternative militant

and moderate union postures, summarized in Table 1.

Table 1: Components of militant and moderate posturing

Component Militancy Moderation

Goals Ambitious demands with few concessions

Moderate demands with some or many concessions

Membership resources Strong reliance on mobilization of union membership

Strong reliance on employers, third parties, law

Institutional resources Exclusive reliance on collective bargaining

Willingness to experiment with/support non-bargaining institutions

Methods Frequent threat or use of industrial action

Infrequent threat or use of industrial action

Ideology Ideology of conflicting interests

Ideology of partnership

Source: Kelly (1998:60)

In contrast to Marxist perspectives are a variety of pluralist interpretations of

industrial relations. Again notwithstanding oversimplification, a core assumption here

is that assertive and more adversarial methods are unsuitable for generating the deeper

consensus required under new competitive work regimes. Accordingly, workforce

orientations are assumed to gravitate towards preference for cooperative relations over

militancy (Kochan and Osterman, 1994; Bacon and Storey, 1996; Guest and Peccei,

2001; Ackers, 2002, 2005). Faced by competitive pressures, collaborative

employment relations are viewed as producing mutual gains outcomes for employers,

unions and workers (Kochan and Osterman, 1994; Donaghey and Teague, 2007).

Positive workforce orientation outcomes for employers include higher commitment

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and productivity and less conflict. Kochan and Osterman claim that workers also

benefit, principally through enhanced employment security and opportunities for

direct participation and representative voice, which, in turn, can promote consensual

workforce orientations. Donaghey and Teague (2007) assert that accommodation

through social partnership remains the most attractive option for unions seeking a

voice, despite the potential diminution in union influence and power as a result of the

general shift towards moderation.

Ackers (2002) argues that neo-pluralism offers a superior theoretical paradigm to

what he calls the narrow Marxist theory of economistic workplace militancy. Ackers

(2002:5) criticizes the “obsession of the British sectarian left with economic

workplace militancy” and their expectation that major societal change can grow “from

the germs of purely workplace grievances”. Individual workers are supposedly led

into collective action by a politicized cadre, but Ackers suggests scant regard is paid

to other societal influences shaping workforce orientations, notably the role of the

community and family. For Ackers (2002:3-15) there is a better way of reviving IR

theory in that neo-pluralism “revives Durkheim’s fundamental question about how

moral communities and social institutions can bond work and society together”, and

thereby rejuvenate the institutional pluralist analysis of Clegg (1979) and Flanders

(1970). In this way the dynamics of moderation focus on the problem of order, not

conflict. This, argues Ackers (2002:16-17), provides “a new justification for old IR

concerns, such as strong trade unions, effective channels for employee ‘voice’, good

wages and stable working conditions” and “furnishes an explicit ethical foundation

for policies like social partnership which have been too easily dismissed as short-

term, opportunist accommodations to business power”.

Other scholars who adopt what might regarded as a ‘radical pluralist perspective’

(Fox 1985; Edwards, 1986, 2003; Wenman, 2003; Watson, 2008) focus on both the

organization of conflict and cooperation, and the often ambivalent and diverse

implications for workforce orientations. While Marxists have a default tendency to

question pluralism per se because antagonistic class relations between labour and

capital is their analytical concern, radical pluralists acknowledge the diversity of

interest groups in work and society and seek to explain why conflict and cooperation

have deeper structural roots underlying power relations and inequality in the

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employment relationship (Wenman, 2003; Watson, 2008).

Edwards (2003) has theoretically outlined how conflict and cooperation are

contradictory and complex elements inherent in the employment relationship.

Distinguishing radical pluralism from Marxism, Edwards (1986:26) argues that “It is

certainly necessary to criticize the pluralist notion that there is an automatic sharing of

interests and that no interest group will pursue its aims beyond some limit set by what

is socially acceptable. But all groups plainly have some interest in the continued

operation of society so the means of subsistence continue to be available”.

Accordingly, managers and workers are locked in a relationship that is contradictory

and antagonistic: “It is contradictory not in the sense of logical incompatibility but

because managements have to pursue the objectives of control and releasing

creativity, both of which call for different approaches” (Edwards, 2003: 16-17).

Management face the continuous problem of trying to reconcile the contradictions of

control and cooperation in the people management process, and the search for

solutions will likely encompass a combination of policies, none of which can be

permanently successful. Edwards (2003) explains that the employment relationship is

underlain by a basic ‘antagonism’ between capital and labour over ways in which

workers’ capacity to work is transferred into actual effort. Workers do not usually

determine how their labour is deployed, Edwards argues, because authority over most

workplace decisions resides with employers. Employers and workers are thus locked

together in a relation of ‘structured antagonism’: they enter into an employment

relationship because they depend on each other, but they also have divergent interests.

At the most basic level an element of cooperation is necessary because each side

ultimately depend on the other for the future success (or survival) of the firm.

Importantly, ineradicable antagonism does not directly dictate outcomes and

workforce orientations at the surface level, which depends on the actual work regime

in a given context. In sum, conflict and accommodation are in contradiction and the

balance can vary over time and space. Significantly, whereas the Marxian use of the

concept of contradiction fixates on socialist revolution and capitalism’s possible

collapse, radical pluralist interpretations use the concept in a broader less-politicized

way to describe a constant and evolutionary dynamic that generates adaptation,

variability and uncertainty.

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Research context

Using a case study research method, this research explores the dynamics of workplace

moderation (cooperation) and militancy (conflict) at a single company, which we call

Omega. Following Yin (2008) the data provides a rich and unique context to test the

two core research themes considered above for several reasons. First, it is a new

Greenfield location and therefore the employer could design the work regime from

scratch. Second, and even before employees entered the organization and commenced

work, a ‘pre-employment’ collective agreement was signed between Omega

management and Industrial Union (IU). Significantly, this agreement sought to

socially engineer mutuality by regulating for a no strike clause, binding arbitration,

single union recognition and, importantly, a partnership forum to promote cooperative

behaviours. However, the attempt to design a social structure around moderate or

expected cooperative behaviours was fractured by post-employment issues. In

particular, two unofficial work groups sought to challenge the Omega-IU collective

agreement by advocating distinct oppositional postures to those of expected

cooperative behaviours. The two unofficial work groups were also in opposition to

one another as well as resisting the official union (IU) and management.

Given the dynamics and interplay of cooperative and oppositional behaviours, from

the outset we felt it was critical to use a context-sensitive research method. We were

afforded access to employees and managers with an important longitudinal element,

which involved follow-up contacts with different respondents. In-depth semi-

structured interviews were held with 18 informants, which amounted to a total of 18

interviews. Additional data sources included scrutinizing extensive documentary

material including collective agreements, a short employee attitude survey completed

by all employees, company policies, the personnel handbook, and newsletters and

press statements issued by militant groups.

The first militant group we call the ‘Opponents’, who are the more active and possibly

larger of the two unofficial worker-led groups. The second or rival unofficial work

group we call the ‘Masked Resisters’ after the workers who picketed company

premises wearing masks to protect their identity. The Masked Resisters group became

vociferously anti-union after the IU entered a partnership/cooperative agreement with

management.

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Findings

Under the first research theme noted above, the data shows how moderation and

militancy co-existed in tandem and was refined and mediated over time. Prior to the

commencement of Omega operations in the Greenfield site, management and IU

officials negotiated a five-year pre-employment collective agreement in the early

2000s. The objective was to establish the rules of the game prior to commercial

operations and have in place formal policies of how work relations would be

conducted. By their very nature, pre-arranged collective agreements exclude

enterprise-level employees from the terms of the bargain. The IU negotiated a single

(closed shop) agreement for staff at three grade levels: operators, controllers and

supervisors. The collective agreement stipulated that it is “a condition of employment

that each employee covered by this agreement becomes and remains a member of

[IU] for the duration of his/her employment with the company”. The agreement

provides recognition for 5 shop stewards who are elected by the workforce.

Workplace representatives conduct their role primarily through an enterprise

committee and are supported by the IU full-time official.

The five-year collective agreement contained a highly controversial continuity of

service, or no strike clause; which sparked almost immediate dissent among workers.

The Managing Director admitted it was controversial but defended the idea on the

basis of commercialization:

It is fair to say that it caused tension in the workforce. They say they wouldn’t go on strike but would like the right.

Meanwhile, the IU official remarked:

To this day we come in for an awful lot of criticism for signing the industrial peace/continuity of service clause. But the negotiators were right to do the deal.

The no strike deal, coupled with limited utilization of structures for cooperative

dialogue through the partnership forum, provided fertile ground for the emergence of

oppositional values and attitudes among pockets of employees. For some workers,

managements’ application of discipline, the manner in which attendance patterns were

implemented, and health and safety concerns, galvanized momentum for what can be

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identified as more militant orientations amidst a system pre-designed to elicit

cooperative behaviours. For these employees, the attribution of blame for a growing

number of concerns was also directed towards the official IU machinery. Importantly,

as the withdrawal of labour or other forms of action short of a strike were prohibited,

one manifestation of conflict was increased absenteeism. One shop steward explained:

I was representing people who were going off sick because they felt they were being pushed by the company. They felt they were being harshly dealt with in disciplinaries. Your last alternative is not to come to work.

Aside from absenteeism, another manifestation of alternative, non-cooperative actions

was found in the emergence of (unofficial) workgroup militancy among some

elements of the labour force. That action was not, as is reported in other literatures,

based on politicized left-wing union-led militancy espousing a discourse of class

struggle. The emergence of oppositional postures here seemed to emerge initially

from a growing sense of disillusionment relating to changes to employment terms and

conditions agreed by management and the IU. These included, for example,

attendance patterns, rest days and overtime. On one occasion, a group of employees

demonstrated at the new company facility unofficially, masking themselves with

balaclavas in the process.

Crucially, what these secretive underground workforce movements do is important,

and how they impact on worker orientations is equally significant in understanding

the interplay between what are prima facia oppositional positions. The second group

had its roots in the masked workers who picketed company premises a number of

years previous. In contrast the Opponents, regarded as the main militant protagonists,

became active later on. The two groups are rivals but both are anti-partnership and

share collective grievances around the wage-effort bargain relating to work attendance

patterns and hours, work intensity, health and safety, pay, and the no strike clause. The

main channel through which the Opponents group objects to moderate industrial

relations has been though its own regular newsletter. This is sent to management, the

union, and distributed among employees. Its first edition was written in late 2007 and

subsequent editions articulated perceived employee grievances that a number of

workers felt were not being addressed through partnership, such as concerns over

health and safety, stress and increased work pressures.

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It is not clear if the ‘Opponents’ or the ‘Masked Resisters’ are shop steward-led

entities, but it seems likely they have shop stewards (or former stewards) as

associates. What is more ambiguous, as noted earlier, is how many workers were

involved in these underground-type groupings. What is known, nonetheless, is that the

Opponents group had initially been mostly pro-union in the early days of partnership,

and then switched to become anti-union, perceiving that IU negotiators betrayed

workers in accepting a new collective agreement. In subsequent newsletters the IU

were criticized and the enterprise-based shop stewards committee described as the

“lite committee”, implying little bargaining capacity or influence over decision-

making owing to the reliance on partnership and cooperation.

Clearly, these groups of employees, opposed to partnership and cooperative

bargaining, emerged as a result of some shared collective identity among themselves.

As a result of some of the highly derogatory and personalized insults made by some

of these militant factions, management instigated an investigation of their activities.

Given the actions and language used by these opponent workgroups amounts to

potential gross misconduct and possibly summary dismissal for anyone found to be

associated to any unofficial militant faction, the organization of these workers went

further underground and their secretive nature intensified. Whilst this makes analysis

difficult, one way of assessing the interplay of oppositional posturing is to review how

they articulate their message and seek to mobilize workers around perceived

grievances.

Partly as a counter-mobilization against the challenge from below, management and

IU sought to recast and strengthen the objective of a cooperative mutual gains

employment relations regime. As might be expected, certain issues did not find favour

among the militant worker groups, notably replacing the no strike clause with a

comprehensive dispute resolution procedure. The new agreement negotiated between

management and IU officials proposed a staged process to forestall industrial action:

in-house negotiating machinery, including a company Dispute Resolution Tribunal;

joint training requirements for management and union; subsequent referral to third

party dispute resolution institutions; new union balloting procedures; and finally

extended union notification of an intended industrial action. In all, the new collective

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dispute resolution procedure has seven stages. While the no strike clause would

ostensibly go, the actual ability to strike would still seem to remain difficult in

practice.

Despite endorsement of the proposed new partnership agreement by management and

IU officials, the proposals were (initially) rejected by a two thirds majority of

workers. The scale of the rejection would suggest that the impact of oppositional

postures is not insignificant. Over two thirds of those voting were not happy with the

agreement reached by their union representatives. Following the reject result, union

members were again balloted by IU on whether to conduct a final reassessment of the

proposed agreement in local talks. From these local negotiations some modifications

were made - primarily by enhancing bonuses and management endorsing a

commitment to review attendance schedules. On a second ballot the agreement was

eventually accepted by a very narrow margin in favour.

Summary and discussion

This paper argues that partnership and adversarial militancy can and do coexist as a

fundamental (contradictory) dialectic in the employment relationship. This dialectic is

often neglected or forgotten during economic crisis, austerity or when employer

power is assumed to be ascendant. The paper contributes to knowledge in two ways.

First, it suggests that the dynamics of partnership and militancy can and do co-exist.

Moreover, these alternative opposing postures are much more nuanced than is often

espoused by either pluralist moderation or Marxist militancy perspectives. Secondly,

workforce orientations were found to contain a mixture of multi-layered and uneven

behaviours which shape the interplay between discrete orientations. Arguably,

workforce attitudes and behaviours are likely to change over both time and space, and

remain subject to various internal and external contextual factors, including

management ideology, prevailing union systems of governance, the way workers

pursue their interests, informal inter-workgroup dynamics, and both formal and

informal leadership.

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