Sober Thought labour-management relations

Labour-management relations in Sober Thought are characterised by a peculiar constellation of apparent anomalies which disappear upon closer examination but still perplex those unfamiliar with them.

Public sector employment

The constitutional scope of the Community, provincial and municipal governments is broad in Sober Thought, so a right-winger might suspect and fear that nationaised industries are the norm here. This is not the case, because the goverments prefer to be regulatory (setting the conditions of the market) than participatory (being an active agent in the market).

True public sector employees, i.e., those directly employed by one of the four superministries and their subsidiary vice ministries and multi-level directorates, are no more common here than in RL North America or RL Britain. This trend continues, with some polar exceptions like Cholmestay and Hochelaga, at the provincial and even municipal levels.

Public sector management

The highest level of oversight, analogous shareholder annual general meetings in the private sector, are respectively the elected officials of the House of the Federation, provincial legislature or municipal council. They set the over all policy objectives and tone which the elected cabinet ministers and permanent civil servants of all levels must work to achieve.

Cabinet, the next highest level, is analogous to the monthly boards of directors meetings. Elected cabinet ministers work with senior civil servants to provide more hands-on governance but still with an outlook longer than the next quarterly report. Of course, dissention in the ranks of representatives mostly elected by one form or another of proportional representation can present challenges, but no more so than a private sector board packed with a mixture of incompetent but compliant old cronies, flexible but self-interested managers and independent but incorruptible outsiders.

Lower still are the civil servant directors of all stripes (general, chief, plain and vice) whose analogues are the managing directors, presidents, chief executive officers and management boards. They manage the day-to-day operations and bear the most direct responsibility for how the specific government agencies or private businesses perform.

Public sector labour

At the federal level at least, public sector managers have it easier because they never have to deal with unions. Left-wing readers might recoil in horror at this apparent travesty of collective bargaining and union organising rights.

However, more forward thinking people might agree with the people of Sober Thought who reason that the people as a whole elect the attendees of the government AGM and indirectly the government board chair, and these in turn choose the managers. Therefore, unionisation is not required because the workers are already owner-operators in a sense. Sometimes, however, directors would benefit from the stabilising and moderating influences of unions as described in the next section.

Parapublic and regulated sector employment

This area of the economy is otherwise called the parapublic service, the broader public service, regulated industry or Community corporations. Each of these terms have slightly different meanings, so clarification is helpful.

The parapublic service is limited to those institutions which were created by governments and whose employees are paid through the institution and not the government directly, e.g., Community corporations like CommunitAir, school boards, government-funded hospitals, etc.

Regulated industry is limited to private enterprises whose prices (not things like product safety, financial accounting or governance) are regulated by one or more levels of government. For practical purposes, these two separate sectors are treated simultaneously because they behave in an exactly similar manner.

PPRP management

Those bodies closest to the government sector use pseudo-AGMs and board chairs while those closest to the private sector use real ones. After that, the differences disappear. Ordinary board members are selected the same way in both, and with their differently chosen chairs they chart the course for the enterprise. Monthly or even quarterly meetings are typical for this level of oversight.

For daily oversight, boards hire presidents to run the show between board meetings. These CEOs put a personal stamp on the corporation, and set the tone for each subordinate tier even if they may only be personally involved in hires at the vice presidential or equivalent level. When the financial or general reporting of their company or agency is good, they are demigods; and when it is bad, they are archdaemons.

Junior management and supervisory workers are often put in a precarious position where they must enforce a corporate policy they have little control over on employees with which they share greater understanding and empathy. This is especially true when both high-level employees and low-level management realise an upper management directive is impossible, impractical or illadvised.

PPRP sector labour

The main gravitational pulls in this constellation of enterprises are, self-evidently, the government and the free market. When these two pulls are in the same direction, there is no stress but instead greater harmony because each reinforces the other. However, this is rarely the case. So where does one go when Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan wants to go in a different direction than Adam Smith's Unseen Hand? Frequently the answer is "bonkers."

Thankfully, the worker representational and collective bargaining benefits of labour unions help resolve or at least reduce the friction when the two-headed beast is trying to walk in both directions at once. Contrary to popular belief among left- and right-wingers, unions are paradoxically conservative, not liberal. Consider this: If a new product line fails, a worker has the comfort of an unemployment cheque while a CEO has the comfort of a golden parachute. Which one is likely to be more realistic and conservative, and which more fantastic and liberal?

Unions, acting as collective bodies of ordinary workers, place a great emphasis on precedent and demand proof of efficacy for new things, all typical hallmarks of conservatism. They are naturally self-interested in wages and benefits, but no more so (and often less so) than executive suits at the corporate compensation trough. In contrast, management is normally radically liberal, considering new ideas, implementing untried procedures or expanding into new markets.

So if creative but sound management had to make a convincing business case to traditionalist but reasonable labour, the likely outcome would be a synthesis better than either the current state of affair or the initial future proposal. Of course, if the management side is not sound, the labour side is not reasonable or communication fails, all bets are off.

Private sector employment

This represents the most even playing field in existence for Sober Thought. This free market is restrained only by considerations of safety and honesty, and even then the minimum standards are applied impartially and consistently to all so no individual or sector in the market receives any external handicap or advantage.

Like all level markets, Sober Thought's is dynamic. Companies form, operate and dissolve on a regular basis. High achieving employees are headhunted from job to job, middle-of-the-road employees try to ride the gravy train of a specific job as long as they can, and low-achieving employees are traded forth and back by short-term thinking retailers. Executive stars wax then wane (and sometimes get snuffed out by an accounting scandal or fraud conviction). But through it all, the market plods along on its perpetual passionless yet inexorable manner.

One cannot neatly divide this sector like the other two above, because the line between labour and management tends to be either blurred or nonexistent. Sole proprietorships, with or without paid employees, abound in small businesses; lonewolf entrepreneurs seek their fortune in venture capital; and solo artisans form, fabricate and flog their wares. Even where the division theoretically exists, say at an automotive repair garage, the interests of the two parties are often so close together that no meaningful aggregate distinctions can be made.

Under these circumstances, unions are neither necessary nor missed by either side. A legal secretary knows that her continued employment is contingent upon the clients the solicitor can attract and the work she and the barrister do for the clientele. How could a union help her, especially in a small law firm where she may be the sole "worker" outnumbered by several "management"? Even in a large legal partnership, the same idea holds true.

Less obviously but no less importantly, the lawyers are under the same constraints as their employees. Without a union, they are free to adopt personnel policies that violate natural justice such as unequal wages for equal work, nepotism or employee favouritism. However, should they do so they are likely to experience high employee turnover, increased training, greater severance packages and perhaps a breach of contract lawsuit. It is amazing what a mistreated and wrongfully dismissed paralegal can do with all the time and motivation they have been given by a bad boss!

When enterprises get very large, both employer and employee lose the daily contact and common cause that make informal management possible. Both develop a practical need for using agents or spokespeople to communicate with one another, and begin to replace informal management with formal management. On the owner side, it is usually a multi-tiered level of managerial and supervisor staff. On the worker side, it is usually a union which performs the same functions as its counterpart in the parapublic and regulated industry sectors. This process is hastened when the management is especially bad, but even with competent management becomes almost inevitable when corporate size exceeds several hundred employees.