ORG Blog

We didn’t want to be right.

Part 2 of 3 in an Interest-Based Leadership series

Part 1 of 3 in an Interest-Based Leadership series

Tuesday, September 10, Tennessee U.S. Senator Bob Corker told the Associated Press that he “was a little worried” Volkswagen could become “a laughingstock in many ways” if they continued their discussions with the United Auto Workers about creating a German-style works council at their Chattanooga plant.  Likening the idea to “inflicting a wound,” Corker characterized management’s participation in the discussion as “naïve” and went on to single out the UAW as having created an “us versus them” mentality in plants.

It has been 119 years since a federal holiday was established to celebrate the economic and social contributions of workers, and it is worthy of celebration, indeed. Without the American worker fueling the economic engine of our country, we would never have become the most productive, affluent nation in the world. But in today’s global economy, regaining that status– and recapturing U.S. jobs– will require more than the mighty muscle and ingenuity of American workers.

As I put down my morning paper and pondered a labor-management divide so great that it merited intervention of the California Governor to stall a strike of the two largest unions at the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system, and turned my attention instead to the opening plenary session at the Florida Labor Management Conference, I was struck by the picture of stark contrasts.

While the question raised in a recent article in TIME magazine’s on-line edition titled “Americans Are Warming Again to Unions. Will the Relationship Last?” is an interesting one, the more pressing question has not so much to do with how unionism fares in public opinion polls, but rather with how the relationship between labor leaders and their management counterparts at unionized companies can be leveraged for their mutual benefit and the good of the country. The future-critical question is: What can organized labor as an institution and their management counterparts do TODAY to restore our nation’s competitive capacity and preserve jobs that fuel our economic engine?

Amidst the barrage of sequestration-related negativity confronting the federal sector, there are bright spots that deserve not just notice, but celebration. Take, for example, the Federal Aviation Administration which, as the largest sub-component of the Department of Transportation, helped propel DOT to the top of the list of Most Improved Large Agencies in the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government® rankings. Of particular note is the fact that the agency made significant progress at a time when a majority saw their employee satisfaction levels decline. As noted on the Best Places website, “Employee satisfaction decreased in 66 percent of agencies. A few agencies, however, defied the government-wide convention, including the Department of Transportation, a large agency which raised its score a full 4.1 points.”

The following blog appeared in the January 9 edition of The Hill, a congressional newspaper that publishes daily when Congress is in session, and was also included in its Congress blog.