Post one: part one, Where we are and a little on how we got here
Human Resource Management is a social grid within organizations which when in proper working order, leads to at least four human outcomes: respect for employee rights, equitable treatment of employees, increased employee potential, and increased employee effectiveness.
Employee rights include the right to a work environment free from hostility, bigotry, oppression, danger, abuse, or other adverse working conditions. Equitable treatment means hiring, promoting, training, and compensating on the merits of individuals under consideration not other factors. Increased employee potential means all employees are given opportunities to develop their own knowledge, skills and abilities for the purposes of both helping the organization and their individual careers. Finally, increased employee effectiveness is the culmination of the three other outcomes, that is, each employee performs better due to a positive work environment, equitable treatment, and improved potential. This last outcome has, of course, financial implications for the employing organization.
People do not buy the products or avail themselves to the services of an organization mainly out of sympathy for the organization. People do not primarily apply to work at a company because they want the company to be better at its business. Organizations do not employ people mostly as a good-will gesture toward the community. However, loyalty does often develop in all these situations. Customers will sometimes pay a little more because they like shopping at a particular store. Employees do stay with an employer when mutual respect exists and employers are often more gracious toward high-performing employees.
The most important part of any social grid is careful maintenance of relationships. People become friends because they treat one another in a trustworthy manner. Customer loyalty, employee morale, and even employee and organizational performance are all based in relationships that must be handled with care. The Human Resource Manager (HRM) is in one business and one alone: the relationship-maintenance business. Other managers are in this business too, but the human resource manager acts solely as the servant of the relationship between the organization and its employees. Any other outcome of HRM is secondary.
HR managers maintain relationships by keeping (the previously-mentioned) four things in mind: rights, justice, development and performance. All employers in a liberal democratic capitalistic country are expected to afford every human being with whom they interact, the same set of basic rights; every person should be rewarded above their basic rights opportunities equivalent to their effort and ability; every person should be freed up and supported, within reason, to increase their potential; and every person should be given ample opportunity to reach that potential.
On August 14, 2003, electric power in Vermont, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Massachusetts, and Ontario failed. When an electrical grid fails you are in the dark until power is restored. But when social grids fail the failure often goes unidentified. When social grids fail, as happens when community members let one another down; that is, when they do not maintain the grid of connection; often those who are “let down” do not have a loud voice, a public forum in which to complain or they may see it as their own failure, and therefore do not organize to protest the “failure of the social grid”.
Human biology forms another type of grid. I am using grid here as a synonym for support system. As humans we infer selfness from the chemical and biological processes that go on beneath our skin. These processes can fail us, causing physical or mental ailments, problems with our “selves”. Some of these ailments are considered involuntary by society, leading to our hospitalization. Some of the ailments are considered voluntary by society, leading to our incarceration. We do not like to delve deeply into the issue of why some things are considered voluntary and some not.
Scientists can demonstrate that the brains of drug addicts are chemically different from those of non-drug addicts (Leshner 2001). [Addiction is a brain disease Alan I Leshner. Issues in Science and Technology. Washington: Spring 2001.Vol.17, Iss. 3; pg. 75, 6 pgs , The original mistake to begin taking drugs, results in physical addiction, a punishment in itself. The poor, even those who have committed criminal acts owing to a chemical or physical problem in their mind or body (their internal grid has failed?), or the otherwise compromised people, are there for society to judge as victim or culprit. Either way, these vulnerable members of communities, must be somehow acknowledged and their needs addressed.
A nation’s (organization’s too) character can be seen in the way it treats its “broken” people. By this standard, the U.S. electrical is not the only grid in need of repair. Those of us with internal grids not broken, owe it to those whose are, to keep the social grid fixed. That’s the contract that goes with being a human being. What better reason to exist than to keep your finger in the dike long enough for those drowning to swim ashore? Who knows, maybe the social grid you help repair today may benefit someone you love, or perhaps even you.
Are we correct to blame people in desperate straits due to circumstances brought on by social or even biological forces? Should we blame a young man so bewildered by poverty that he spends a few years finding himself? These pages are written in the spirit of compassion and forgiveness, as schmaltzy as that may sound. You will be able to detect my answer to the questions above, sooner rather than later. It is my belief that social networks or grids are an essential component of a healthy society which we may often undervalue.
All I say or write is based on the assumption that everything humans think, say or do must be about making human existence better. Whatever you bring up, I will put to this test. Does it improve human existence? What about other living things you ask? I put this question to the same test. Does harming other life improve or hurt human existence? If harming other life systems on earth undermines the long-term well being of human beings, it must cease.
A second assumption I will base my beliefs on is that near term well-being of human beings should not be used as an excuse for sacrificing long term well being or vice versa. The two should not be divorced one from the other.
What human beings do to survive, centers in most modern societies, around work. To say it another way, employment is one of the main ways people in developed economies are protected from the vagaries of ongoing events. Those of us in developed countries with wealthy economies might do well to observe the plight of others around the world with less elaborate social grids and admit that but for the grace of God, there go we.
Some problems in our world require a “community grid”, poverty, mental health, drug dependency, to say nothing of homeland security. Responses to these issues will never be effective if they are piecemeal and local. The folks in Zanesville, Ohio may do well by their poor, but those in Orange California may fall through the cracks. If our social grids could be lit up, where might the dark spots be?
How does this relate to HRM? All HR activities had their birth in one of the four areas mentioned above: rights, justice, development or performance. All of these require a social grid of support. For example, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act is an example of legislation designed to establish legal requirements for a social grid within and across employing organizations, to defend individual rights (protection from racial and other forms of mistreatment), provide justice (equitable HR decisions) and ultimately create optimum conditions for development and realization of human potential.
It is perhaps unusual to think of employment as commensurate with drug addiction or concern with ones career as a type of vulnerability or neediness, but there are benefits to thinking this way.
Veterans of the workforce who have been downsized by companies closing or moving operations, are keenly aware of the tremendous psychological strain that accompanies such an experience. Many college graduates enter the job market each year. They tend to compete against others with similar backgrounds and while some resumes will look quite impressive, every one of them, if they are honest, will admit to being quite uncertain and stressed by the whole process. In other words, not only is HR as type of social grid, you might say employment itself is a type of social support system.
Back into the History of HR
HR is a house built at the corner of justice street and inequality avenue. Inequality is the natural condition of human relations and justice must be imposed by intelligent action. HR functions came into existence because organizations are not naturally disposed toward just treatment of the human beings they employ. A safe house had to be built, a place for the people to come for protection. It is also true that employees can take advantage of their employers. HR serves on this side of the balance issue too.
The relationship between an organization and its employees is necessarily imbalanced. History is replete with examples of how management exploits labor for the sake of profit, unless steps are taken to protect employee interests. An employee has little counter power without legislation, HR programs or a union. Of course, employees steal from their employers, under-perform (another form of theft), exaggerate their attributes or seek to hide blemishes. Under the protection of distance or behind walls, employees may not operate in the best interest of the organization or the other members of the organization.
When the ocean of humanity sends in a wave of civil unrest (as it did in the 1960s in the US) you never know what it might leave on the beach. Left on the beach by the civil rights, women’s rights, voter’s rights, and other grassroots campaigns, were plans, programs, initiatives, laws, orders, rather than lichen, shells, coral reef, or jelly fish. Many of the things the tide brings in, go back out with it, but some of them remain. For the most part, HR departments in corporations are made up of what remains from the movements (tides) that have come in over the years, e.g. union reaction to management and governments reactions to management recalcitrance (the Wagner Act and the Taft-Hartley Act http://www.reikinurse.com/union/acts.html ) , workplace safety laws that resulted from horrific events like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (follow this story by using the following link: http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire )
The following excerpt is from encyclopedia.com:
[Taft-Hartley Labor Act
Related: Labor
1947, passed by the U.S. Congress, officially known as the Labor-Management Relations Act. Sponsored by Senator Robert Alphonso Taft and Representative Fred Allan Hartley, the act qualified or amended much of the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act of 1935, the federal law regulating labor relations of enterprises engaged in interstate commerce, and it nullified parts of the Federal Anti-Injunction (Norris-LaGuardia) Act of 1932. The act established control of labor disputes on a new basis by enlarging the National Labor Relations Board and providing that the union or the employer must, before terminating a collective-bargaining agreement, serve notice on the other party and on a government mediation service. The government was empowered to obtain an 80-day injunction against any strike that it deemed a peril to national health or safety. The act also prohibited jurisdictional strikes (dispute between two unions over which should act as the bargaining agent for the employees) and secondary boycotts (boycott against an already organized company doing business with another company that a union is trying to organize), declared that it did not extend protection to workers on wildcat strikes, outlawed the closed shop, and permitted the union shop only on a vote of a majority of the employees. Most of the collective-bargaining provisions were retained, with the extra provision that a union before using the facilities of the National Labor Relations Board must file with the U.S. Dept. of Labor financial reports and affidavits that union officers are not Communists. The act also forbade unions to contribute to political campaigns. Although President Truman vetoed the act, it was passed over his veto. Federal courts have upheld major provisions of the act with the exception of the clauses about political expenditures. Attempts to repeal it have been unsuccessful, but the Landrum-Griffin Act (1959) amended some features of the Taft-Hartley Labor Act.
But if we want to explore further back, into the ideological underpinnings of HR, we should probably go back to the words of one of the people that helped usher in the French Revolution. What follows was found at: http://www.thehistorychannel.co.uk/classroom/alevel/french.htm
Rousseau
It was only after the king's flight to Varennes (in 1791) had undermined his liberal reputation that republicanism came to the forefront of the revolutionary agenda. As Rousseau replaced Montesquieu, the former's conception of the meaning of liberty replaced the latter's. Montesquieu had understood freedom as being unconstrained in doing what one chooses, so long as it is lawful; Rousseau defined freedom as ruling oneself, living only under a law which one has oneself enacted. On Rousseau's philosophy of freedom, there was no question of the people dividing and diminishing sovereignty, because the people were to keep sovereignty in their own hands. In Rousseau's conception of a constitution, the nation became sovereign over itself.
The second phase of the French Revolution, from September 1792 to Napoleon's coup d'etat in November 1799, is the republican phase for which Rousseau not only furnished the terminology of revolutionary discourse but also provided arguments which served the purposes of the "Terror". For while he said a people could only be free if it ruled itself, Rousseau also said that a man could be forced to be free; he suggested the cult of a civil religion being established in place of Christianity; he authorised the head of the republic to overrule the dictates of private consciences together with the use of state powers to suppress immorality as well as crime. It would be unfair to Rousseau to say that Robespierre put the theory of The Social Contract into practice, but he used Rousseau's language and exploited - while distorting - several of Rousseau's ideas in the course of his Reign of Terror.”
Here are some more of the words of Rousseau from: http://www.bartleby.com/34/3/1.html
“What shall we say of agriculture, an art which requires so much labour and foresight; which depends upon other arts; which, it is very evident, cannot be practised but in a society, if not a formed one, at least one of some standing, and which does not so much serve to draw aliments from the earth, for the earth would yield them without all that trouble, as to oblige her to produce those things, which we like best, preferably to others? But let us suppose that men had multiplied to such a degree that the natural products of the earth no longer sufficed for their support; a supposition which, by the bye, would prove that this kind of life would be very advantageous to the human species; let us suppose that, without forge or anvil, the instruments of husbandry had dropped from the heavens into the hands of savages, that these men had got the better of that mortal aversion they all have for constant labour; that they had learned to foretell their wants at so great a distance of time; that they had guessed exactly how they were to break the earth, commit their seed to it, and plant trees; that they had found out the art of grinding their corn, and improving by fermentation the juice of their grapes; all operations which we must allow them to have learned from the gods, since we cannot conceive how they should make such discoveries of themselves; after all these fine presents, what man would be mad enough to cultivate a field, that may be robbed by the first comer, man or beast, who takes a fancy to the produce of it. And would any man consent to spend his day in labour and fatigue, when the rewards of his labour and fatigue became more and more precarious in proportion to his want of them?”
Now back to my own words.
I do not believe it to be a stretch to say that the French Revolution, which occurred on the heels of the American Revolution, was instrumental, along with the latter, in helping to set the minds of Americans toward freedom and self rule. It is this assertion of freedom by the majority from the oppression of a few powerful ruling class, that helped fuel the anti-slavery movement in the US, the women’s movement, the civil rights movement, workers rights movements, safety battles, and ultimately such major overhauls of power as what happened in South Africa. At the very least, all of these events are in the same spirit.
Having said that, however, I must also acknowledge the value brought to the free men by collectivities, by enterprises that owned the material, capital and power to help guarantee ongoing subsistence as well as freedom.
Organizations grant individuals or families steady income, at the price of some of some of their natural freedoms. The question of how much income and how much freedom lies at the heart of the relationship between individuals and their employing organizations and has become the primary concern of Human Resource Management.
I will use the banking institution as an example. What value does the bank offer a member of society? It agrees to keep and protect the individual’s money, offer a variety of financial services, e.g. interest-bearing savings accounts; and in return, the individual must abide by the rules of the bank and remain in good standing, e.g. not write bad checks. Employers or sort of like banks in that they agree to take some of the freedom (money) of the individual in exchange for valuable services.
Sometimes organizations, like loan sharks or unscrupulous banks, wind up providing little value while exacting a stiff price in individual freedom (life quality). Individual members of society have the law to turn to as a protection from such abuse.
Let’s go back to the earliest days of unions.
The first unions, shoemakers (cordwainers), printers and carpenters, were not the most oppressed workers, nor were there wages the lowest. These unions came into existence because of transportation improvements, which meant that workers could move and cause problems for shoemakers, printers and carpenters in other geographical locations. Unions were also designed to keep unskilled people from doing the job.
Union shops made their members pledge to work for no less than a certain wage and to not work beside anyone who did work for that wage. You could get blacklisted by the union if you did not abide by these rules.
There was no collective bargaining in the early days, but rather the union would agree on a wage rate and if management did not accept it, the union struck. During this time, unions did poorly if the economy did poorly. Except for hard economic times, the unions were highly successful in the early days. They began to lose political favor early on and became associated with such a hothead mentality that the unionists and their sympathizers came to be seen by most of the public as the bad guys while management was considered the good guys.
The most exploited early laborers were cotton-mill workers and home-workers on piece rates, but they did not organize until later, partly because they were not among the most mobile in the society, they were not highly skilled, and they were under-educated.
The history of unions is chocked full of violence; cat and mouse games among government agencies and officials, labor union members, and managers; as well as ups and downs in terms of membership. Obviously entire books have been written on the subject, but rather than detailing the saga, I will make a few assertions about unions and accompany them with related questions that we might discuss in class.
Unions began as craft guilds and trade associations. Eventually industrial unions came into being, which tended to be populated by lower-skill workers, the rank and file, hourly wage earners at large factories, such as those in the automobile and related industries. Trade unions tended to be less exclusive of minorities and neither type of union had much to do with the admission of women until after the merger of AFL (trade side) and CIO (industrial side) in 1955. Why do you suppose ethnicity (national origin), gender, and race were obstacles to power within unions, especially on the AFL side?
Recently unions have tended to spend a lot of their dues money on organizing new chapters, electing politicians, and promoting seniority pay systems. This, coupled with their assumed affiliation with organized crime, their reluctance to take on quality of life issues, despite great opportunities in this area, has led to their decline, with current union membership across non-agriculture jobs residing at around 13%, down from 36% in 1956 or so. As unions have declined, HR departments have been on an increase since the middle part of the twentieth century. Can you think of other factors that have helped render unions less popular today?
Employee rights include the right to a work environment free from hostility, bigotry, oppression, danger, abuse, or other adverse working conditions. Equitable treatment means hiring, promoting, training, and compensating on the merits of individuals under consideration not other factors. Increased employee potential means all employees are given opportunities to develop their own knowledge, skills and abilities for the purposes of both helping the organization and their individual careers. Finally, increased employee effectiveness is the culmination of the three other outcomes, that is, each employee performs better due to a positive work environment, equitable treatment, and improved potential. This last outcome has, of course, financial implications for the employing organization.
People do not buy the products or avail themselves to the services of an organization mainly out of sympathy for the organization. People do not primarily apply to work at a company because they want the company to be better at its business. Organizations do not employ people mostly as a good-will gesture toward the community. However, loyalty does often develop in all these situations. Customers will sometimes pay a little more because they like shopping at a particular store. Employees do stay with an employer when mutual respect exists and employers are often more gracious toward high-performing employees.
The most important part of any social grid is careful maintenance of relationships. People become friends because they treat one another in a trustworthy manner. Customer loyalty, employee morale, and even employee and organizational performance are all based in relationships that must be handled with care. The Human Resource Manager (HRM) is in one business and one alone: the relationship-maintenance business. Other managers are in this business too, but the human resource manager acts solely as the servant of the relationship between the organization and its employees. Any other outcome of HRM is secondary.
HR managers maintain relationships by keeping (the previously-mentioned) four things in mind: rights, justice, development and performance. All employers in a liberal democratic capitalistic country are expected to afford every human being with whom they interact, the same set of basic rights; every person should be rewarded above their basic rights opportunities equivalent to their effort and ability; every person should be freed up and supported, within reason, to increase their potential; and every person should be given ample opportunity to reach that potential.
On August 14, 2003, electric power in Vermont, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Massachusetts, and Ontario failed. When an electrical grid fails you are in the dark until power is restored. But when social grids fail the failure often goes unidentified. When social grids fail, as happens when community members let one another down; that is, when they do not maintain the grid of connection; often those who are “let down” do not have a loud voice, a public forum in which to complain or they may see it as their own failure, and therefore do not organize to protest the “failure of the social grid”.
Human biology forms another type of grid. I am using grid here as a synonym for support system. As humans we infer selfness from the chemical and biological processes that go on beneath our skin. These processes can fail us, causing physical or mental ailments, problems with our “selves”. Some of these ailments are considered involuntary by society, leading to our hospitalization. Some of the ailments are considered voluntary by society, leading to our incarceration. We do not like to delve deeply into the issue of why some things are considered voluntary and some not.
Scientists can demonstrate that the brains of drug addicts are chemically different from those of non-drug addicts (Leshner 2001). [Addiction is a brain disease Alan I Leshner. Issues in Science and Technology. Washington: Spring 2001.Vol.17, Iss. 3; pg. 75, 6 pgs , The original mistake to begin taking drugs, results in physical addiction, a punishment in itself. The poor, even those who have committed criminal acts owing to a chemical or physical problem in their mind or body (their internal grid has failed?), or the otherwise compromised people, are there for society to judge as victim or culprit. Either way, these vulnerable members of communities, must be somehow acknowledged and their needs addressed.
A nation’s (organization’s too) character can be seen in the way it treats its “broken” people. By this standard, the U.S. electrical is not the only grid in need of repair. Those of us with internal grids not broken, owe it to those whose are, to keep the social grid fixed. That’s the contract that goes with being a human being. What better reason to exist than to keep your finger in the dike long enough for those drowning to swim ashore? Who knows, maybe the social grid you help repair today may benefit someone you love, or perhaps even you.
Are we correct to blame people in desperate straits due to circumstances brought on by social or even biological forces? Should we blame a young man so bewildered by poverty that he spends a few years finding himself? These pages are written in the spirit of compassion and forgiveness, as schmaltzy as that may sound. You will be able to detect my answer to the questions above, sooner rather than later. It is my belief that social networks or grids are an essential component of a healthy society which we may often undervalue.
All I say or write is based on the assumption that everything humans think, say or do must be about making human existence better. Whatever you bring up, I will put to this test. Does it improve human existence? What about other living things you ask? I put this question to the same test. Does harming other life improve or hurt human existence? If harming other life systems on earth undermines the long-term well being of human beings, it must cease.
A second assumption I will base my beliefs on is that near term well-being of human beings should not be used as an excuse for sacrificing long term well being or vice versa. The two should not be divorced one from the other.
What human beings do to survive, centers in most modern societies, around work. To say it another way, employment is one of the main ways people in developed economies are protected from the vagaries of ongoing events. Those of us in developed countries with wealthy economies might do well to observe the plight of others around the world with less elaborate social grids and admit that but for the grace of God, there go we.
Some problems in our world require a “community grid”, poverty, mental health, drug dependency, to say nothing of homeland security. Responses to these issues will never be effective if they are piecemeal and local. The folks in Zanesville, Ohio may do well by their poor, but those in Orange California may fall through the cracks. If our social grids could be lit up, where might the dark spots be?
How does this relate to HRM? All HR activities had their birth in one of the four areas mentioned above: rights, justice, development or performance. All of these require a social grid of support. For example, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act is an example of legislation designed to establish legal requirements for a social grid within and across employing organizations, to defend individual rights (protection from racial and other forms of mistreatment), provide justice (equitable HR decisions) and ultimately create optimum conditions for development and realization of human potential.
It is perhaps unusual to think of employment as commensurate with drug addiction or concern with ones career as a type of vulnerability or neediness, but there are benefits to thinking this way.
Veterans of the workforce who have been downsized by companies closing or moving operations, are keenly aware of the tremendous psychological strain that accompanies such an experience. Many college graduates enter the job market each year. They tend to compete against others with similar backgrounds and while some resumes will look quite impressive, every one of them, if they are honest, will admit to being quite uncertain and stressed by the whole process. In other words, not only is HR as type of social grid, you might say employment itself is a type of social support system.
Back into the History of HR
HR is a house built at the corner of justice street and inequality avenue. Inequality is the natural condition of human relations and justice must be imposed by intelligent action. HR functions came into existence because organizations are not naturally disposed toward just treatment of the human beings they employ. A safe house had to be built, a place for the people to come for protection. It is also true that employees can take advantage of their employers. HR serves on this side of the balance issue too.
The relationship between an organization and its employees is necessarily imbalanced. History is replete with examples of how management exploits labor for the sake of profit, unless steps are taken to protect employee interests. An employee has little counter power without legislation, HR programs or a union. Of course, employees steal from their employers, under-perform (another form of theft), exaggerate their attributes or seek to hide blemishes. Under the protection of distance or behind walls, employees may not operate in the best interest of the organization or the other members of the organization.
When the ocean of humanity sends in a wave of civil unrest (as it did in the 1960s in the US) you never know what it might leave on the beach. Left on the beach by the civil rights, women’s rights, voter’s rights, and other grassroots campaigns, were plans, programs, initiatives, laws, orders, rather than lichen, shells, coral reef, or jelly fish. Many of the things the tide brings in, go back out with it, but some of them remain. For the most part, HR departments in corporations are made up of what remains from the movements (tides) that have come in over the years, e.g. union reaction to management and governments reactions to management recalcitrance (the Wagner Act and the Taft-Hartley Act http://www.reikinurse.com/union/acts.html ) , workplace safety laws that resulted from horrific events like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (follow this story by using the following link: http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire )
The following excerpt is from encyclopedia.com:
[Taft-Hartley Labor Act
Related: Labor
1947, passed by the U.S. Congress, officially known as the Labor-Management Relations Act. Sponsored by Senator Robert Alphonso Taft and Representative Fred Allan Hartley, the act qualified or amended much of the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act of 1935, the federal law regulating labor relations of enterprises engaged in interstate commerce, and it nullified parts of the Federal Anti-Injunction (Norris-LaGuardia) Act of 1932. The act established control of labor disputes on a new basis by enlarging the National Labor Relations Board and providing that the union or the employer must, before terminating a collective-bargaining agreement, serve notice on the other party and on a government mediation service. The government was empowered to obtain an 80-day injunction against any strike that it deemed a peril to national health or safety. The act also prohibited jurisdictional strikes (dispute between two unions over which should act as the bargaining agent for the employees) and secondary boycotts (boycott against an already organized company doing business with another company that a union is trying to organize), declared that it did not extend protection to workers on wildcat strikes, outlawed the closed shop, and permitted the union shop only on a vote of a majority of the employees. Most of the collective-bargaining provisions were retained, with the extra provision that a union before using the facilities of the National Labor Relations Board must file with the U.S. Dept. of Labor financial reports and affidavits that union officers are not Communists. The act also forbade unions to contribute to political campaigns. Although President Truman vetoed the act, it was passed over his veto. Federal courts have upheld major provisions of the act with the exception of the clauses about political expenditures. Attempts to repeal it have been unsuccessful, but the Landrum-Griffin Act (1959) amended some features of the Taft-Hartley Labor Act.
But if we want to explore further back, into the ideological underpinnings of HR, we should probably go back to the words of one of the people that helped usher in the French Revolution. What follows was found at: http://www.thehistorychannel.co.uk/classroom/alevel/french.htm
Rousseau
It was only after the king's flight to Varennes (in 1791) had undermined his liberal reputation that republicanism came to the forefront of the revolutionary agenda. As Rousseau replaced Montesquieu, the former's conception of the meaning of liberty replaced the latter's. Montesquieu had understood freedom as being unconstrained in doing what one chooses, so long as it is lawful; Rousseau defined freedom as ruling oneself, living only under a law which one has oneself enacted. On Rousseau's philosophy of freedom, there was no question of the people dividing and diminishing sovereignty, because the people were to keep sovereignty in their own hands. In Rousseau's conception of a constitution, the nation became sovereign over itself.
The second phase of the French Revolution, from September 1792 to Napoleon's coup d'etat in November 1799, is the republican phase for which Rousseau not only furnished the terminology of revolutionary discourse but also provided arguments which served the purposes of the "Terror". For while he said a people could only be free if it ruled itself, Rousseau also said that a man could be forced to be free; he suggested the cult of a civil religion being established in place of Christianity; he authorised the head of the republic to overrule the dictates of private consciences together with the use of state powers to suppress immorality as well as crime. It would be unfair to Rousseau to say that Robespierre put the theory of The Social Contract into practice, but he used Rousseau's language and exploited - while distorting - several of Rousseau's ideas in the course of his Reign of Terror.”
Here are some more of the words of Rousseau from: http://www.bartleby.com/34/3/1.html
“What shall we say of agriculture, an art which requires so much labour and foresight; which depends upon other arts; which, it is very evident, cannot be practised but in a society, if not a formed one, at least one of some standing, and which does not so much serve to draw aliments from the earth, for the earth would yield them without all that trouble, as to oblige her to produce those things, which we like best, preferably to others? But let us suppose that men had multiplied to such a degree that the natural products of the earth no longer sufficed for their support; a supposition which, by the bye, would prove that this kind of life would be very advantageous to the human species; let us suppose that, without forge or anvil, the instruments of husbandry had dropped from the heavens into the hands of savages, that these men had got the better of that mortal aversion they all have for constant labour; that they had learned to foretell their wants at so great a distance of time; that they had guessed exactly how they were to break the earth, commit their seed to it, and plant trees; that they had found out the art of grinding their corn, and improving by fermentation the juice of their grapes; all operations which we must allow them to have learned from the gods, since we cannot conceive how they should make such discoveries of themselves; after all these fine presents, what man would be mad enough to cultivate a field, that may be robbed by the first comer, man or beast, who takes a fancy to the produce of it. And would any man consent to spend his day in labour and fatigue, when the rewards of his labour and fatigue became more and more precarious in proportion to his want of them?”
Now back to my own words.
I do not believe it to be a stretch to say that the French Revolution, which occurred on the heels of the American Revolution, was instrumental, along with the latter, in helping to set the minds of Americans toward freedom and self rule. It is this assertion of freedom by the majority from the oppression of a few powerful ruling class, that helped fuel the anti-slavery movement in the US, the women’s movement, the civil rights movement, workers rights movements, safety battles, and ultimately such major overhauls of power as what happened in South Africa. At the very least, all of these events are in the same spirit.
Having said that, however, I must also acknowledge the value brought to the free men by collectivities, by enterprises that owned the material, capital and power to help guarantee ongoing subsistence as well as freedom.
Organizations grant individuals or families steady income, at the price of some of some of their natural freedoms. The question of how much income and how much freedom lies at the heart of the relationship between individuals and their employing organizations and has become the primary concern of Human Resource Management.
I will use the banking institution as an example. What value does the bank offer a member of society? It agrees to keep and protect the individual’s money, offer a variety of financial services, e.g. interest-bearing savings accounts; and in return, the individual must abide by the rules of the bank and remain in good standing, e.g. not write bad checks. Employers or sort of like banks in that they agree to take some of the freedom (money) of the individual in exchange for valuable services.
Sometimes organizations, like loan sharks or unscrupulous banks, wind up providing little value while exacting a stiff price in individual freedom (life quality). Individual members of society have the law to turn to as a protection from such abuse.
Let’s go back to the earliest days of unions.
The first unions, shoemakers (cordwainers), printers and carpenters, were not the most oppressed workers, nor were there wages the lowest. These unions came into existence because of transportation improvements, which meant that workers could move and cause problems for shoemakers, printers and carpenters in other geographical locations. Unions were also designed to keep unskilled people from doing the job.
Union shops made their members pledge to work for no less than a certain wage and to not work beside anyone who did work for that wage. You could get blacklisted by the union if you did not abide by these rules.
There was no collective bargaining in the early days, but rather the union would agree on a wage rate and if management did not accept it, the union struck. During this time, unions did poorly if the economy did poorly. Except for hard economic times, the unions were highly successful in the early days. They began to lose political favor early on and became associated with such a hothead mentality that the unionists and their sympathizers came to be seen by most of the public as the bad guys while management was considered the good guys.
The most exploited early laborers were cotton-mill workers and home-workers on piece rates, but they did not organize until later, partly because they were not among the most mobile in the society, they were not highly skilled, and they were under-educated.
The history of unions is chocked full of violence; cat and mouse games among government agencies and officials, labor union members, and managers; as well as ups and downs in terms of membership. Obviously entire books have been written on the subject, but rather than detailing the saga, I will make a few assertions about unions and accompany them with related questions that we might discuss in class.
Unions began as craft guilds and trade associations. Eventually industrial unions came into being, which tended to be populated by lower-skill workers, the rank and file, hourly wage earners at large factories, such as those in the automobile and related industries. Trade unions tended to be less exclusive of minorities and neither type of union had much to do with the admission of women until after the merger of AFL (trade side) and CIO (industrial side) in 1955. Why do you suppose ethnicity (national origin), gender, and race were obstacles to power within unions, especially on the AFL side?
Recently unions have tended to spend a lot of their dues money on organizing new chapters, electing politicians, and promoting seniority pay systems. This, coupled with their assumed affiliation with organized crime, their reluctance to take on quality of life issues, despite great opportunities in this area, has led to their decline, with current union membership across non-agriculture jobs residing at around 13%, down from 36% in 1956 or so. As unions have declined, HR departments have been on an increase since the middle part of the twentieth century. Can you think of other factors that have helped render unions less popular today?
