Chrysler is struggling and is reportedly up for sale. So here's a radical idea: let the UAW buy it.
I never understood why American unions have not expressed more interest in ownership and management until I interned for a labor law firm in the 1980's. There, I found that the lines separating "labor" and "management" were bright, clear and sacrosanct. These two groups were so strongly self-identified and mutually antipathetic that it would have made Karl Marx proud. My opinions that it would be a good thing to have substantial union representation on corporate boards of directors and that ESOPs (Employee Stock Option Plans) were a good thing and a potentially valuable union tool were dismissed as advocacy of an unthinkable breaching of the labor/management dialectic. Although my sympathies and politics will always be far more pro-union than pro-management, I learned then that labor organizations could be just a pig-headed, entrenched and conservative as corporations can be.
A union takeover of Chrysler today could revive the company, enabling it to operate much more efficiently. There would be substantial incentives for employee-owners to find ways to cut costs and improve quality. The Toyota philosophy of continuous improvement would be reinforced if each employee had a direct financial stake in the process. A new kind of corporate organization would emerge, one that might well point the way to saving American manufacturing jobs in other companies and other sectors of the economy.
I don't know about making Marx proud, but I do agree with your point about unions being conservative. I'm guessing the antipathy of labor unions to ownership is more a residue of the "good ol' days" of Fordism - the time when management and labor came to an agreement not to meddle with one another. Of course, companies have since developed a lot of tactics to undermine labor - solidifying the border, globalizing, etc - and labor is still stuck in the 1950s.
Posted by: Rob Gehl | March 01, 2007 at 12:14 AM