Union Approach to Health and Safety: - United Steelworkers

The fundamental concept behind win-win is that labor and management have common interests
which can be met if only we can get beyond our "bickering" - if we can set adversarialism aside and
focus on “moving forward” to meet the challenges of the “new economic reality.” Many win-win
supporters argue that in fact the areas of common interest have grown because of increasing global
competition, because of changing technology, because of an increased need for highly skilled workers,
etc. They say that our common interests have grown because we have a common enemy – the
competition. Issues that are described as common interests include a safe workplace, keeping the
worksite open (a profitable company), better quality, satisfied customers, a satisfied workforce, etc.
Common interests are typically illustrated as overlapping circles:
Union Goals
Joint
Goals
Management
Goals
While it may be true that, in certain situations, there are ways to achieve both management and
union goals – for example increasing profits while improving job security and wages - this does not
mean that there is a merger of interest between labor and management. Management continues to
pursue profit (and more profit) while labor needs to watch out for wages and job security (and should
be watching out for the strength of the union). If today they can increase their profit by being nice, that
doesn’t mean that they won’t turn on you tomorrow. If union members become convinced that a
merger of interest exists, they will naturally lower their defenses in dealing with management. They
won’t pay attention to union-building. We have seen many cases where “mutual interests” are high on
the agenda during the period when management needs to cooperation of the union and the members as
they harvest worker knowledge and make the changes in the work process that give management more
control. But once they have harvested the knowledge and increased control – watch out!
The bottom line is that in too many cases, particularly in the long run, so-called mutual interest
really translates as management’s interest. Part of the problem is that our sense of our own interest,
particularly in the arena of workplace change, is not well-developed. We often look at the short term