CONTENTS - ouroboros ponderosa

important local collahorativL: setups involving the building trade unions,
like Columbus' MOST (Management and Organized Labor Si riving
Together), Denver's Union Jack, and PEP (Planning Economic Progress)
in Beaumont, Texas. Rusiness Horizons editorialized in 1981 about "the
newly established lndustrial Board with such luminaries as Larry Shaprin
of DuPont and Lane Kirkland of the AFL-CIO" as a "mild portent" of
the growing formal collaboration " The board, a reincarnation of the
Labor Management Board that expired in 1978, is chaired by Kirkland
and thc chairman of Exxon, Clifton C. Garvin Jr.
The defeat in 1979 of the Labor Law Reform Act, which would have
greatly increased government support to unionization, was seen by many
as almost catastrophic given labor's organizing failures. But the economic
crisis, perhaps especially in light of generous union conccssions to the
auto, airlines, rubber, trucking and othcr industries, may provide the
setting for a "revitalization" of the national order including a real
institutionalization of labor's social potential to contain thc mounting
anti-work challenge."
There is already much pointing to such a possibility, beyond even the
huge worker participation-QWL movement with its vital union compo­
nent. The 1978 Trilateral Commission on comparative industrial relations
spoke in very glowing terms aboul the development of neo-corporatist
institutions (with German "co-determination" by unions and management
as its model)." Business Week of June 30, 1980, a special issue on "The
Reindustrialization of America," proclaimed that "nothing short of a new
social contract" between business, labor and government, and "swecping
changes in basic institutions" could stem the country's industrial decline."
Thus, when the AFL-CIO's Kirkland called in late 1981 for a tripartite
National Reindustrialization Board, a concept first specifically advanced
by investment banker Felix Rohatyn, the recent theoretical prccedents
are well in place. One of the main underlying arguments by Rohatyn and
others is that labor will need the state to help enforce its productivity
programs in its partnership with management.
Thus would spreading "worker involvement" be utilized, but shepherd­
ed hy thc most powerful political arrangcments. Wilber and Jameson's
"Hedonism and Quietism" puts the mattcr in general yet historical terms
"Ways must be found to revitalize mediating institutions from the bottom
up. A good example is Germany's efforts to bring workers into a direct
role in decision-ma k ing.""
A change of this sort might appear to be too directly counter to the
ideology of the Reagan government, but it actually would be quite in line
with the goal of renewed social control minus spending outlays.
I I I l\ 11 I I I "
I · I . Iter -lil h . . , HIli r '
\V ;I"; 1I11'. OIl, .1 "
,' I \
I II I, I I I 1',,\ 1
. . I .. IlyilJl' t() rnllH:r its illslnllllcilialitil"s
.
I' . t 1 'tWOI k. ul pro!;.'rams is p.tS "
!W\";llISl' t liS glat I L
1I1i1lla)..',l, .iust as Its cuthac.::ks also ft.:. cc C
lm'nl social pacificati(n programs,
Mcanwhilc, the relusal of \Ol k gr
t th ' practical failure or govcrn
e
e :wig awareness that a very big
. One final example is the
"':e which continues to climb
g
f rk
'
espeeiallY low-skill work, by the
th
t deserihe the habits of teenagers
. b t
. db h b·tual tardiness a chromc a sen ee-
d· ct for supervIsors an eus , .
ism, lsrespe
d 1 'tomers et Which recalls the
. k H b· rg in his "New PerspectIves on
larger picture drawn by Fred Cfl
bl
c . er e
k motivation-all over the world.
the Will to Work": "the pro em IS wo
It's simply a matter
f people not wantmg to wor .
. .
The gravity of the antl-wor
.
k ,,42
k situation seems now to be approaching an
unprecedented structural counter rer: lO :
e t the addition of a mass­
World War 1, to Coohdge 10 . pc e
I r Tripartism dales back to
u t e:nerge as a national hypothesis.
participation schema IS Just beg1Omn 0 t. with a political tide of nOI1-
. . .
Of course, t IS na
h· scent rcachon mterscc s
. .
( 0 dechmng voter urnou , .
parhclpatlOn e .., . , , .
the draft rolls, growmg tax c;aSl(; .
from the state as from wor ,
d
Wl
.
f
I
t t massive non-registration or
) The larger c ulture of withdrawa ,
ke this integration effort highly
;nore effective exposure of capital's
problematic, and may even pro uce . fon's heightened dependence on
oroanization of life, given that orgamza 1
o
. . .
its victim's partlClpahon.