The decline of trade union membership

Only six months ago it appeared that strike action had diminished as a method of forcing settlement of labour disputes in Trinidad and Tobago.

The latest International Labour Organisation Report said membership in trade unions worldwide has correspondingly dropped from 40 to up to ten per cent of the labour force, except in the public service, where it seems to be more or less compulsory. Professional trade unions with negotiating experience chose that as the preferred option for settling disputes.

Others with professional administrative training used their management expertise to solve problems more or less to the satisfaction of both sides. There never is 100 per cent. And by and large it was effective. There is only so much money to go around during a recessionary period and methods were found to deal reasonably and logically with the state’s or the organisation’s cash flows.

Police services and other state enterprises with employees who had long been accustomed to expecting automatic increases based on longevity rather than performance are now being faced with questions such as: “If someone is employed to do a skilled function for which they are paid at a market rate, and they continue in the same secure job in the same organisation year after year, what is the reason that, when the job doesn’t change, they should expect an increase in salary every year?"

If they are represented by a trade union, of which fewer and fewer employees now have the advantage, they have someone to answer those questions and bargain for them.

But it must be recalled that union negotiators are also workers and have to be paid, and are frequently paid by results, as well. The negotiator may argue that the employee’s skills improve with practice and experience every year, and so deserve an increase.

But for many low to mid-level jobs that is simply not true. Owing to poor management skills they may do the same thing over and over in, by and large, the same way with, by and large, the same result.

So then the argument moves to the quantitative measures, and there may be a reasonable argument that the worker is now expected to produce twice the number of units in the same time or slightly less time than before.

That may not justify a substantial increase in salary, but again, it may. It depends on a dollar value, usually.

If it doesn’t, the argument may switch to a qualitative one. What the employee is producing now is expected to be of a higher quality, using more sophisticated technology which can logically justify an increase.

But once the new technology has been mastered and the new market value of the work done is established, does it justify that increase every single year?

Well, yes, in some instances it may, if the market value increases every year as a result of an increasing demand for the product, which may also result from nothing to do with an improvement in the producing workers’ skills, but may be a result of more effective advertising which increases demand, or decreased distribution costs, or a decrease in the cost of raw materials input or transport, or a hundred other things.

If the organisation is a service organisation, such as a medical one, the value of the jobs of nurses or doctors may depend on how many patients recover from the illness or disease. In the non-government sector,other factors, including environmental and quality of technical equipment, are ones that add value to the service and hence to the level of salaries.

At these professional levels, inputs such as training institutions’ reputations are also reflected in salaries.

Education attracts a similar market evaluation. In many, many countries, but not here, from primary through to tertiary levels, teachers’ values are reckoned according to the pass rate of their students – a genuine performance and skill evaluation of an ability to educate. Teachers’ market values in those jurisdictions do not depend upon the level of the quality of their own academic backgrounds, but mainly on the emotional intelligence with which they are capable of passing social and academic knowledge on to students who come to them to learn what they cannot attain otherwise at home or in the community.

All students learn first at home and in community (including in religious, sporting, cultural, social and criminal organisations). We pay in one way or another for what we get.

Research organisations dealing with child development claim, unsurprisingly, that developing brains are influenced most in those ages of greatest formation by peer communities in adolescence. Hence the recent concern about damage done to character and personality by bullying, which few people in teacher training in TT learn how to diagnose and treat.

That behaviour shows up later in industrial relations on both the supervisory and employee cadres, at trainee levels with new recruits and at professional and executive level . Industrial relations simply means power relations between and among people at work. It is not necessarily trade-union linked, although it may be. It is often inter-managerial or arises out of professional rivalry or competition.

I have experienced it in dealing with disputes at work at most levels, and it is coming to the fore recently in power struggles at essential services such as the port, at the Airports Authority and,of course at TSTT, T&TEC and WASA. It looks like there are interesting times ahead.