Union Approach to Health and Safety: - United Steelworkers

process. If a member disagrees with or has concerns about the direction the discussion is taking, rather
than having the opportunity to check their disagreement with their union sisters and brothers, they are
subjected to intense pressure to fold or to come up with an "acceptable" alternative. Divisions within
the union are exposed to management, weakening the union and undermining solidarity.
The idea that people ever enter into a discussion with management as equals is of course
ridiculous. The idea that we can ever safely enter into discussions with management as individuals is
destructive of the union. Because consensus decision-making implies that everyone, as an individual,
is equal and equally powerful – it tends to move us away from paying attention to union-building.
Another problem with consensus (or any other joint decision-making process) as it is generally
applied in the workplace is that the scope of decision-making is often not well defined. The company
has a great deal of leeway as to what issues are brought into the process. Decisions that it wants to
complete control over, or decisions where they don’t feel a great need for workforce knowledge and
acceptance, can be kept to management alone.
Which decisions are presented to the consensus process and which are reserved for
management may well be more important than how the process itself is run. Key questions that should
be asked about the process include:
Can anyone bring an issue to the consensus process?
Must management bring all issues to the process (or can they pick and choose and
invoke management rights when they want to control the decision)?
What happens if consensus is not achieved, or if management doesn’t get what they
want?
Can the union insist that an issue be submitted to the consensus process (remember that
even if we can bring an issue to the process, management has veto power)?
The appearance of democracy is used to cover up the reality of management control.
The way that consensus is applied in involvement settings often includes two other assumptions
or operating principles that tend to undermine the union: