Freedom, Inc_ - Brian M. Carney [105]
It may seem hard to believe that fairness and respect can be appreciated by people even more than a bigger paycheck. Needless to say, in a perfect world you would want all three—fairness, respect, and maximum remuneration. But we do not live in that world, and so we have to make choices. On at least two occasions that we know of, unions at liberated companies, when given the choice, did, in fact, choose fairness and respect over their pocketbooks.
THE “THEORY Y” UNIONS
The first comes from GSI. A large chain of stores had solicited bids for outsourcing its payroll services. In an arrangement typical to this type of outsourcing, the chain’s whole payroll department, complete with its union, would be integrated into GSI. But the chain had outsourced several other back-office functions in the past, and in one case the integration of the chain’s employees with the new company had gone very badly. As a result, the chain’s trade unions were on their guard. They insisted on conducting their own investigation of the candidates, including meeting ADP-GSI’s union representatives. When the contract was awarded, ADP-GSI got a pleasant surprise: Not only had it won the bid, but ADP-GSI learned that it was the only candidate that had passed the union’s vetting. Given the sour outsourcing history, the chain’s management was definitely not ready to go against the unions and risk a strike, so the union’s favorable opinion of GSI had played an important role in winning the contract.
Most people assume that unions are focused single-mindedly on extracting material “goodies” for their workers from their employers. And yet this French union put GSI’s ability to satisfy their higher needs—for fairness and respect—above those material considerations. Perhaps many other trade unions would do the same—if only they were offered a similar choice and not simply “goodies.” At any rate, Jean-Luc Barbier, chief of ADP-GSI’s corporate clients division, was certain about the economic benefits of treating people well in the company: “It surely provides us a competitive advantage in getting clients.”10 That’s more than you can say about denying a traveling salesman pocket money for snow boots in Norway.
The second story comes from Harley, in the midst of Rich Teer-link’s liberation campaign. In early 1994, the news at Harley-Davidson seemed so good that management started to worry about the bike maker’s future. Demand had driven up the waiting list for a new bike to a whopping eighteen months, and Wall Street—grown quickly accustomed to Harley’s fat margins—had started to hold the company to ever-higher standards of performance. Pressure was mounting, and without new capacity, Harley seemed in danger of overheating. This meant a new plant. But Teerlink didn’t want just any new plant. He envisioned one that was radically different from the existing ones, built from the ground up to encourage work flexibility, more employee involvement, and more freedom of action.
For most American companies, all this would point in one direction—south—to build a union-free facility in a right-to-work state. Most of Harley’s executives and managers liked the idea of going to a southern state, too. But for Rich and some of his colleagues, such a move seemed likely to disrupt the relationships with the unions that they had been building over the years. They convinced their colleagues and—even harder—the board of directors not to write off the unions, and presented the idea for the radically different new plant to the