Arthur Cordell wrote,
>Ok, Ok, attached is a paper from a just over two years ago which also
>attempts, in a serious/whimsical way to get at the answer.
It's appropriate, when asked for our visions of the future, to rummage in
the archives and recall past predictions that may or may not have had a
chance to be tested by time or, at the very least, by the litmus of readers'
reception.
A little over a year ago, I wrote a technical paper on contract costing and
work time. I'd like to share the introduction to that paper now for two
reasons: 1. I'm currently wrestling with writing a new piece incorporating
what I've learned in the interim and 2. the paper had a remarkably mixed
reception, initially evoking both extravagant praise and censure and
eventually settling down into amiable neglect.
The paper I wrote a year ago focussed on how well labour unions measure the
price at which their members are selling their labour time. The answer was
"not very well at all." What I've learned subsequently is that employers are
every bit as inept as unions at answering the question "how much does it
cost?" To be more precise, neither business nor labour actually asks that
question. Instead, they both perform rituals of adversarial arithmetic aimed
only at justifying a predetermined outcome.
You don't have to take my word for it. Ask Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor at the
Stanford Graduate School of Business and author of an article in the
May/June Harvard Business Review on "Six Dangerous Myths about Pay."
Next time somebody tells you that a four day work week "would cost too
much," remember that they have magically arrived at the answer without ever
having asked the question "how much would it cost?" The irony is that in
performing their adversarial polka, business and labour have danced
themselves into a corner in which labour costs are higher and the returns to
labour are lower than they need to be.
Contract Costing and the Campaign for Reduced Working Time
Tom Walker (September 13, 1997)
At it's April 8th, 1997 meeting, the Canadian Labour Congress's Ad-Hoc
Committee on Working Time raised the question of how working time issues
could better be brought to the membership and to the bargaining table. One
strategy that has not yet been widely recognized would be to adopt the use
of contract costing methods that are more accurate and more sensitive to the
effects of changes in work hours, paid time off and overtime.
A review of contract costing methods used by some unions shows that these
methods introduce substantial errors into the calculation of contract costs.
Such errors are invariably biased against reduced work time. They tend to
understate the value of paid time off and of reductions in working hours and
they tend to overstate the value of overtime work. But, aside from their
errors in calculating the relative benefits of working time proposals, these
methods tend to significantly overstate the total cost of a settlement.
Miscalculations in costing contract proposals weaken the labour movement's
pursuit of shorter working time through collective bargaining. And they may
contribute to settlements that contain unnecessary concessions to
management. More accurate and time sensitive contract costing could help
avoid these pitfalls.
>From a broader perspective, more accurate contract costing also could
provide new insights into the efficacy of strategies that have long
dominated the labour movement's pursuit of shorter work time. These
strategies include demands for reductions in work time with no loss in pay
and legislative advocacy of increases in overtime premiums. In the
concluding section of this brief, these strategies will be re-examined in
light of the data from more accurate contract costing.
Some of the suggestions for new strategic directions may be controversial
within the labour movement, so it must be emphasized that there are two
distinct and equally important reasons to pursue better contract costing:
· more accurate and time sensitive contract costing can help achieve
better results from current strategies; and
· better contract costing can lead to adoption of better strategies.
Regards,
Tom Walker
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The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
