Union Bust 1
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From: Hong Kong
Union Bust 1
The military believe that ?there is no such thing as a bad soldier; just bad officers?. The implication is that leadership and man management are a responsibility of the officer and even the most wayward of soldiers can be retrained within the system ? sometimes resorting to the disciplinary process if necessary.
I have seen quite diverse methodology in meeting this responsibility over the years and it hasn?t all been good. It is fair to say however, that the behaviour of our Company?s management is perplexing in the extreme. I was not satisfied that this behaviour could be explained away just with the label of incompetence; there had to be something more to it.
I had not really understood the concept of "union-busting" until I read the book by Marty Levitt (Confessions of a Union Buster, Martin J. Levitt). The most important thing that I learnt from this book is that the human conditionings upon which we employees base our thinking are actually the union-buster?s greatest weapons against us ? impatience, anger and ignorance. The union-buster in fact fuels these weaknesses in the knowledge that we will usually go down the road of conventional industrial action. Reading and understanding this book has opened my eyes dramatically.
What remained for me was to confirm that management had in fact engaged a ?union-buster? consultant and, if so, to find out something about them.
Ansett New Zealand
I started by looking into an aviation dispute that happened just after the time that we were in dispute in 1999. I had a vague recollection that there had been a ?lock-out? and the union was defeated at Ansett New Zealand. Not being my part of the world I found plenty to read from all perspectives on the internet. Apparently Ansett NZ was then wholly owned by Ansett. The then Ansett CEO, Ken Cowley, wanted to slash costs in order to sell the airline to Qantas for a higher price.
This ?corporate restructuring? was to take the form of reduction of pilot numbers, extended working hours, easing of flight and duty time limits, pay cuts and reduction in superannuation provisions. Needless to say the restructuring was worthy of discussion and the union, NZALPA, fielded a team to negotiate. Then a peculiar thing happened, management refused to admit four pilots into the talks as observers. This despite the fact that the pilots were entitled to attend under a negotiations protocol agreed between the company and the union.
All very interesting and uncomfortably familiar so far ? but what about union-busting? I then found these couple of paragraphs with the information I needed.
NZALPA advocate Adam Nicholson said Ansett had deliberately set out to scuttle the negotiations and lock out the pilots. "This is about destroying the pilot?s conditions of employment and preparing the Company for sale".
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/se...-s02_prn.shtml
Cowley is being assisted by management consultant Francis Wevers, a former leading official in the Public Service Association and Wellington region chairman of the Combined State Unions. Wevers is one of a number of senior union bureaucrats who shifted easily from one side of the bargaining table to the other in the last decade. He established his own industrial relations consultancy in the wake of the deregulation of the state sector by Labour governments in the 1980s.
The Airline Pilots Association has been seeking to find a way to shut down the dispute with two conciliatory offers to Ansett management in as many weeks. Firstly, the Pilots? union suggested that it was prepared to halt all action if the company agreed to negotiate a new contract through a mediator. When that was rejected, the union leaders offered their members as a free workforce for Ansett during the school holidays, saying the "disruption to the public?s holiday plans is of major concern". It was also knocked back.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/se...-s29_prn.shtml
So the formula is straight forward for this dispute. A parent Company directs a subsidiary Company to drastically cut costs in order to sell it off. A professional consultant (union-buster) is engaged to devise a strategy to undermine the contracts. Negotiations are commenced however management are not there in good faith. Rather, they prohibit union pilot access to the negotiation in breach of an agreement and drag out the process. The pilots become frustrated and impatient, carry out a series of sickouts and strikes. Now management has them where they want them and locks them off the property. The dispute is now, for all intents and purposes, over.
Now I had proved to myself that these people do exist. But Marty?s book explained that modern union busters are often legal firms and they often have people on secondment to the Company in question. I decided to continue with the antipodeans theme and investigate the big Australian union-bust of late ? the war on the waterfront.
I have seen quite diverse methodology in meeting this responsibility over the years and it hasn?t all been good. It is fair to say however, that the behaviour of our Company?s management is perplexing in the extreme. I was not satisfied that this behaviour could be explained away just with the label of incompetence; there had to be something more to it.
I had not really understood the concept of "union-busting" until I read the book by Marty Levitt (Confessions of a Union Buster, Martin J. Levitt). The most important thing that I learnt from this book is that the human conditionings upon which we employees base our thinking are actually the union-buster?s greatest weapons against us ? impatience, anger and ignorance. The union-buster in fact fuels these weaknesses in the knowledge that we will usually go down the road of conventional industrial action. Reading and understanding this book has opened my eyes dramatically.
What remained for me was to confirm that management had in fact engaged a ?union-buster? consultant and, if so, to find out something about them.
Ansett New Zealand
I started by looking into an aviation dispute that happened just after the time that we were in dispute in 1999. I had a vague recollection that there had been a ?lock-out? and the union was defeated at Ansett New Zealand. Not being my part of the world I found plenty to read from all perspectives on the internet. Apparently Ansett NZ was then wholly owned by Ansett. The then Ansett CEO, Ken Cowley, wanted to slash costs in order to sell the airline to Qantas for a higher price.
This ?corporate restructuring? was to take the form of reduction of pilot numbers, extended working hours, easing of flight and duty time limits, pay cuts and reduction in superannuation provisions. Needless to say the restructuring was worthy of discussion and the union, NZALPA, fielded a team to negotiate. Then a peculiar thing happened, management refused to admit four pilots into the talks as observers. This despite the fact that the pilots were entitled to attend under a negotiations protocol agreed between the company and the union.
All very interesting and uncomfortably familiar so far ? but what about union-busting? I then found these couple of paragraphs with the information I needed.
NZALPA advocate Adam Nicholson said Ansett had deliberately set out to scuttle the negotiations and lock out the pilots. "This is about destroying the pilot?s conditions of employment and preparing the Company for sale".
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/se...-s02_prn.shtml
Cowley is being assisted by management consultant Francis Wevers, a former leading official in the Public Service Association and Wellington region chairman of the Combined State Unions. Wevers is one of a number of senior union bureaucrats who shifted easily from one side of the bargaining table to the other in the last decade. He established his own industrial relations consultancy in the wake of the deregulation of the state sector by Labour governments in the 1980s.
The Airline Pilots Association has been seeking to find a way to shut down the dispute with two conciliatory offers to Ansett management in as many weeks. Firstly, the Pilots? union suggested that it was prepared to halt all action if the company agreed to negotiate a new contract through a mediator. When that was rejected, the union leaders offered their members as a free workforce for Ansett during the school holidays, saying the "disruption to the public?s holiday plans is of major concern". It was also knocked back.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/se...-s29_prn.shtml
So the formula is straight forward for this dispute. A parent Company directs a subsidiary Company to drastically cut costs in order to sell it off. A professional consultant (union-buster) is engaged to devise a strategy to undermine the contracts. Negotiations are commenced however management are not there in good faith. Rather, they prohibit union pilot access to the negotiation in breach of an agreement and drag out the process. The pilots become frustrated and impatient, carry out a series of sickouts and strikes. Now management has them where they want them and locks them off the property. The dispute is now, for all intents and purposes, over.
Now I had proved to myself that these people do exist. But Marty?s book explained that modern union busters are often legal firms and they often have people on secondment to the Company in question. I decided to continue with the antipodeans theme and investigate the big Australian union-bust of late ? the war on the waterfront.
