"The World's Most Modern Management"... with no union?
On Friday, CNN Money reported on an Indian IT company, HCL Technologies which practices some rather progressive managerial policies. Check this: workers can publicly rate and provide critiques of their management, and submit grievances on anything from benefits to office furniture, and managers are judged by how much workers are giving - the more the better. Sounds pretty good, right? The trouble is, I kept waiting to see which Indian union had the foresight to bargain for these contract clauses... but there wasn't one.
And there was no mention in the article about that other primary concern of working people... pay. Where was the company's stance on benefits and salary scales? Here we get the interesting caveat of "worker-friendly policies" in the globalized IT sector - white-collar and other professional workers typically don't see a need for a union, thinking themselves different from unionized industries. Oddly, this kind of unorthodox management style reinforces that idea, suggesting that worker input is valuable in company operations, but individually, and not with regards to compensation.
Interesting note -After a little bit of research, I saw that HCL has actually "outsourced" some of its operation to Ireland, going in the opposite direction of most sourcing trends. Unlike their Indian counterparts, these Irish workers benefit from a union contract with Connect, a UK-based communications workers' union.
Any thoughts?
tags:labor union labor union india india labortech hcl technologies outsourcing
- Francisco Cendejas's blog
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This was Pretty Interesting
It seems that a number of business leaders have placed a great deal of weight on both motivation and innovation in regards to operations. They have been fooling around with internal idea markets, flatter hierarchies, eliminating departments and building teams. These are good things in and of themselves.
However, these structures are still imposed from the top and the rug can, and has been, pulled out from under the workers when conditions change. Property and Capital still rule. Nevertheless, has a union contract stopped companies from pulling the rug out? Not recently. Look at GM, look at the Airlines, plenty of examples of concessionary give-backs. Flexibility means viability in the world economy and workers need to figure out how to turn this to their advantage.
What I think is going on in some businesses is that they realize there is quite a bit of untapped value in employees heads. They realize that they will need to bargain for this information if they want a strategic advantage. Since it is impossible to force people to be enthusiastic and proactive, businesses feel the need to offer something in exchange. Stock, profit-sharing, game rooms, trips for the family, are the old school motivators.
What many businesses are offering now is more worker control over both their jobs and their work environment. Sometimes this means more compensation/security and sometimes not. Flexible schedules, for example, can actually be worth something to working mothers and fathers.
I think it is important to be open to new intitatives and evaluate them on whether they build cooperation or competition. Competition just builds the cult of the individual and masks the social nature of of work but cooperation reinforces collective action.
whose values?
"worker input is valuable in company operations, but individually, and not with regards to compensation" -- well put.
Reminds me of David Montgomery's article: "the manager's brains are under the worker's cap." (quoting Big Bill Haywood) Management searches constantly for ways to gain access to and control over skill and knowledge. As Montgomery showed, workers fight back, using/creating a "worker's code of ethics" and a range of tactics (including adding superfluous steps to the work process so that manager's can't Taylorize it).
It would be interesting to see a "worker's code of ethics" for the new technology...