Industrial
Relations: Ideological Perspectives
Femi
Aborisade
Centre
for Labour Studies
&
The
Polytechnic, Ibadan
INTRODUCTION
This paper identifies the key theories in industrial relations and
draws out their implications on the concern for achieving ‘basic needs for
all’. The following
theories are examined: the political theories of Unitarism and Pluralism; the
economistic theory; the democratic and political theory; the moral and ethical
theory, and the Marxist theory. A conclusion is drawn on the note of
identifying the weakness and strength of labour struggles in the striving to
improve the wellbeing of the working class.
THEORIES IN INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS
Political Theory of
Unitarism
The essence of the unitary theory
is that the larger social system or the work enterprise as a sub-system of the
larger social system is a unitary
organisation. The larger social system or the work enterprise is likened to a
football team or a family which shares a common goal. Just like the head of the family supposedly
knows what is best for all members of the family and acts at all times in the
interest of the family as a whole, so also the government (in the case of the
larger society) or the management (in the case of an enterprise) symbolizes the
common good of all parties in the enterprise. On this basis, as members of a
football team should unquestionably listen to the coach or as the troops must obey
the command structure in the army without complaining, and as the children (and
possibly the wife, in many cases) should not query the authority of their
parents (and husband), so also the workers should be absolutely loyal to the
government or management as the case may be.
From the unitarist perspective,
all the ideas, perceptions and actions of management or government are
legitimate and rational and all the ideas, perceptions and actions of the
workers that conflict with the command of the management or government are
illegitimate and irrational. Trade
unions are seen as a product of sectional greed or an imperfect
understanding of the common (or national) interest, which the
management/government represents.
In some political context, unions
may be viewed as a vehicle for those who want to overthrow the existing order.
To a unitarist advocate, trade unions and their political organisations are an
aberration and should be suppressed. Where they cannot be suppressed
successfully, they should be used to serve as a means of effective
communication, regulation and compliance.
The use of legal regulations backed by coercive sanctions by the
management is therefore desirable, legitimate and rational to force the workers
in line with governmental/managerial prerogatives.
From the standpoint of meeting
basic welfare needs, the unitarist theory supports unilateral determination of terms and conditions of work by the
employer. The will, ideas and perceptions of the employer/government in
this regard are to be accepted unconditionally by the workers.
It can therefore be seen that the
unitarist ideology is the ideology of conservative ruling classes. It is based on the asserted and enforced
legal right of the employer (the master) over the worker (the servant) which
has found its way into the employment contract.
It is the conception that views the King/Sovereign as supreme over the
subjects. The pronouncement or will of the Sovereign is law, regulating the
behaviour of others. The ideas,
perceptions and interest of management or government are superior and must be
imposed and obeyed without questioning because they represent the interest of
the people as a whole. The goal of the
unitarist is to domesticate the whole of the social unit (society, industrial
enterprise, family, school, etc) under his control. The unitarist ruler alone (as the guardian
of the society) can determine how society is to be organized, what the goals
should be and what changes are desirable.
Sectarian agitations/activity by workers, students, peasants,
professionals, market women, etc, can only dissipate the national will and
energy.
Political Theory of Pluralism
The political theory of pluralism
is a by-product of the concern of bourgeois oriented social scientists for
‘democratic’ and ‘stable’ political institutions in the face of the threats
posed to the continued survival of capitalist democracies (parliamentary or
military dictatorship) by the pressures of the struggles of the deprived
working masses. The Pluralist doctrine
is therefore a political theory which seeks to redress the shortcomings of a
capitalist political order in order to prevent its overthrow and safeguard the
status-quo.
Pluralism’s major concern is a
safeguard of existing production relations and power structure. It is the ideology of those who preach ‘end
of ideology’, that is end of class based politics and the possibility of
harmonious relations between the oppressed and the oppressor. That instead of class domination and class
antagonism, it is possible to have a neutral, central sovereign authority, the
State, which can be lobbied by competing pressure groups to satisfy the
interests of all classes equally.
Just as the name, pluralist,
connotes multiple, so also there are many variants of what is called the
pluralist theory. But Alan Fox (1973:
185 – 231) offers a generalized picture.
The pluralist theory is the
direct opposite of unitarism. The
pluralist theory maintains that the social system (or an industrial enterprise
as a sub-system of the social system) is not a unitary organisation but a
coalition of individuals and groups with sectional interests and distinct
perception of the social structure. However, the coalition of groups that make
up the enterprise shares the commitment to maintain a structure which allows
each group to pursue its aspirations through bargaining.
The pluralist ideology does not
claim perfection of the social structure.
A certain amount of conflict is expected as an assurance that no group
is being suppressed. Hence, there is
recognition that it may be necessary to reform the system in terms of making
marginal adjustments in rewards or in work rules. However, where one party, particularly the
working class, coerces the other to accept claims outside the bargained
normative consensus, it will be justifiable to apply legal sanctions.
On this premise, pluralist
advocates see unions not as a regrettable historical carry over but a
manifestation of one of the values of competitive and democratic societies in
which freedom of association, assembly and action is guaranteed within legal
limits. Thus, trade unions are welcome
to play a role in job regulation, collective bargaining, and so on.
Advocates of pluralism seem
confident that given patience and skill, mutually agreed and fully legitimized
procedure, agreements can always be reached to resolve grievances when they
arise.
The Pluralist perspective asks
managers or state functionaries to be tolerant of unions or labour based
political organisations, and to realise that from the point of view of the
trade unions, legitimacy of their rule is not automatic but rather the
management control function should be shared with labour.
Pluralists do not see
transgressors of the general existing societal norms as aberrants but as non-conformers
whose punishment would be counter-productive. Therefore what should be done is
a re-negotiated reconstruction of those norms - provided they are within the
pluralist frame-work rather than a separate ideology altogether. Thus, the need
for procedural agreements to resolve conflicts before they degenerate is rooted
in pluralism.
From the foregoing, the central
idea that runs through pluralism is the notion that: traditional rights and
liberties are under threat from increasing state authoritarianism produced by
unitarist ideology and that a reinforcement of the status of intermediate
associations is a pre-condition for the protection of individual freedom as
well as a guarantee for political democracy and stability.
The pluralist doctrine regards
each of the intermediate sectional interest groups (e.g. political parties,
trade unions, employers organisations, consumers associations, students unions,
peasant organisations, cooperative societies, community organisations,
professional bodies, human rights groups, etc) as centres of power whose
existence cannot allow state despotism to hold sway and in that situation,
there will be adequate diffusion or distribution of power in society at any
point in time.
Within the context of the goal of
poverty reduction and providing basic needs to all, the pluralist ideology advocates determination of terms and conditions of
work through the framework of collective bargaining in contradistinction to the
unitarist’s unilateral fixation by the employer.
Implicit in the pluralist
ideology are the following weaknesses:
-
The assumption of ‘equal
bargaining parties’. But the parties in the industry are not equal. As
Lenin puts it, whereas the employer may do away with one worker and employ
another, the worker can only leave one
capitalist employer for another; he cannot escape the capitalist class as a
whole without renouncing his own existence.
-
The illusion that there is ‘power
balance’ between the employer and
the trade unions. While it cannot be disputed that unions check the
exploitation of the workers by the employers, there is no such thing as
equality of power. The employer has behind it the support of the state
apparatus of coercion – the regular police, the secret police, the judiciary,
the army, the civil service bureaucracy – which can be used at various times,
overtly or covertly, to bend the workers towards the position required by the
employer. As Fox (1973:211) aptly puts it: ‘capital can, as it were, fight with
one hand behind its back and still achieve in most situations a verdict that it
finds tolerable. Only if labour were to challenge an essential prop of the
structure would capital need to bring into play anything approaching its full
strength, thus destroying at once the illusion of a power balance...’
-
Workers are expected to accept
the status-quo. The concept of collective bargaining demands of the workers
to accept the system of wage slavery and
not to oppose it. Thus, bargaining
may be about marginal adjustments in hierarchical rewards but not about the
existence of the principle of hierarchical rewards. (Fox, 1973: 219).
-
The false assumption of parties sharing common ideas. Thus, Dunlop (1958: 380) opines that an industrial
relations system at any one time in its development comprises, among others, an
ideology, which binds the industrial relations system together. He defines
‘ideology’ as ‘a body of ideas and beliefs commonly held by the actors that
helps to bind or integrate the system together as an entity’. The Dunlopian
conception merely reflects the weight and influence of the ideas of the ruling
class on the working class. This shows that the ideas of the ruling class are
the ruling or dominant ideas in the society. Thus, the ruling ideas tend to
condition the working class to feel it is futile attempting to change the
traditional ways in which things are done. For example, it may be inconceivable
for some workers to challenge so called managerial prerogatives.
Based on the above
weaknesses in the pluralist ideology, it should be clear that though pluralism
represents some advance over unitarism, it is equally deficient in certain
respects.
Economistic Theory of Trade
Unions
The economistic theory looks at
trade unions as purely organisations concerned with the employment relations.
It therefore denies workers or trade unions of political consciousness. The perspective restricts the responsibility
of the union to the purely sectional (trade) interests of the workers. To this
theory, workers are and should just be concerned with ‘negotiable’ employment
issues – wage increase, improvement of working conditions, etc. To this
spurious theory, trade unions should just be concerned with collective
bargaining, lobbying legislators and government to pass favourable legislation,
embarking on ‘responsible’ strikes aimed at settling terms and conditions
related to problems arising out of the employment relationship. This kind of reasoning informed Abacha’s
dictatorship berating the oil workers’ unions that led the strikes over the
annulment of June 12 elections and the incarceration of the acclaimed winner –
Chief M.K.O. Abiola, because according to the regime, the issue of June 12 was
outside the scope of ‘trade unionism’. The Obasanjo regime, like all regimes in
Nigeria that increased fuel prices, maintained the same position on strikes
called in protest against perennial price increases on petroleum products. A
court judgment also backed up this economistic perspective. This was the case in the June 2007 nationwide strike action. As
recorded in the judgment of the Court of Appeal in Adams Oshiomhole and Nigeria Labour Congress V. Federal Government of
Nigeria and Attorney-General of the Federation (2007) 8 NWLR (Pt. 1035) at
page 58, the court declared the strike illegal. The major issue in the case was
the imposition of a N1.50 fuel tax with effect from 1st January 2004
by the Obasanjo regime. Labour and other civil society organizations declared a
strike against it. The court held that the Nigeria Labour Congress had no right
to call out workers on strike against general economic and political decisions
of the Federal Government because such have nothing to do with breach of
individual contracts of employment with various employers as envisaged in the
Trade Disputes Act.
The above decision of the court runs counter to the principle
established by the ILO Committee on Freedom of Association, which stated that
the occupational and economic interests which workers defend through the
exercise of the right to strike do not only concern better working conditions
or collective claims of an occupational nature, but also the seeking of
solutions to economic and social policy questions (ILO, 1996a, para. 481, cited
in Gernigon, Odero, and Guido, 2000). In the same spirit, the Committee stated
that workers and their organizations should be able to express their
dissatisfaction regarding economic and social matters affecting workers’
interests in circumstances that extend beyond the industrial disputes that are
likely to be resolved through the signing of a collective agreement (ILO,
1996a, para. 484). Thus, in its examination of a particular case, the Committee
concluded that ‘[a] general protest strike demanding that an end be put to the
hundreds of murders of trade union leaders and unionists during the past few
years is a legitimate trade union activity and its prohibition therefore
constitutes a serious violation of freedom of association’ (ILO, 1996a, para.
495). Enomistic
unionists or advocates of pure trade unionism or trade union economism are
interested in maintaining collective bargaining that ensures ‘routinisation of
conflict’. Theoretically, with
collective bargaining, none of the parties to collective bargaining can take
the other by surprise. Forms of action
and reaction can be generally predicted. As a result, the process of resolving
conflicts that cannot be prevented undermines actions that may pose a threat to
the capitalist order.
It is within the economistic
ideological framework that Professor J. T. Dunlop (1958) defined an industrial
relations system in terms of three actors and their representatives, namely,
(a) hierarchy of management; (b)
hierarchy of workers’ organisations; and (c) public or private agencies
concerned with the regulation of the affairs of the former two. Dunlop recognizes
that each of the actors may have independent ideologies but that these
ideologies should be sufficiently compatible and consistent to permit a common
set of ideas which recognizes an acceptable role for each actor within the
existing social order. In other words,
this means that trade unions should never aspire to acquire political power,
either within individual enterprises or in the larger society. Each of the actors (in their various groups)
should continue to perform their known constant role on a permanent basis. It is on that basis that a stable society can
be maintained and to that extent each of the sectional groups need each other
and they are therefore unavoidably interdependent. Here lies the basis of the popular deception
that workers and employers are partners in progress.
To Hugh Clegg (1960: 21) an
assured place for trade unions in society is dependent on the condition that
unions do not concern themselves with the question of ownership of industry for
this has no bearing on ‘good’ industrial relations. To him, ‘trade unions are an opposition that
can never become government’ (1951: 19 – 36).
The classical definition of trade
unions offered by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, almost a century ago also
subscribes to this view of trade unions as economistic organisations: ‘a
continuous association of wage earners for the purpose of maintaining or
improving the conditions of their working lives’.
But the issue is that life
outside work place is determined by the life (the living standard offered)
inside the work place.
The Nigerian legal definition of
trade unions in The Trade Unions Act also restricts the role of trade unions to
the economic disputes/issues at the workplace. The Act defines a trade union as
‘any combination of workers or employers … the purpose of which is to regulate
the terms and conditions of employment of workers’.
From the foregoing, those who
restrict unions to economistic roles do so for either of two reasons as Lenin
(1970) pointed out: hypocritical screen for counter revolution or a complete
lack of class consciousness. This means
either a conscious attempt to ideologically enslave the working class to the
bourgeoisie, or (ii) unconscious enslavement of the working class to the bourgeoisie.
The latter reflects a low level of class consciousness.
However, the weakness and
bankruptcy of the economistic theory is that economic decisions are products of
political decisions. The wage structure and pricing of petroleum products,
prospects for job security, pension and gratuity matters, and so on, are
politically determined. Why then should
the workers and their unions not be involved in conscious political activity to
reshape their future? In situations where the oppressed classes are not
significantly involved in political decision making processes, meeting basic
needs and solving poverty issues will remain a mirage.
Democratic and Political Theories
of Trade Unions
This perspective recognizes the
role of power in human relationship. It
recognizes that the balance of forces within individual enterprises could
largely be determined by the political decision at the level of the larger
society. The perspective therefore
maintains that the union has a role to play in extending workers’ rights to
have a say in decisions which affect them both in the micro and macro
environments. Some scholars have in fact
noted that from the workers’ point of view, this political role which accords
‘dignity’ to the worker is more important than the economic gains of pure trade
unionism.
Chamberlain (1951) for example
identifies two main ‘political activities of trade unions – industrial
government and industrial management.
‘Industrial Government’ refers to viewing collective bargaining as a
constitution-making institution which makes rules governing the
workers–employers/government relationship in order to prevent one party being
taken by surprise. ‘Industrial
management’ refers to seeing union representatives participating in the
management function of the enterprise in the areas of mutual, rather than
competing interests.
Allan Flanders equally argues
that the basic social purpose of trade unions is ‘job regulation’ not only
within the confines of the industry but also at the national level in order to
influence overall levels of employment, economic planning, etc. The role of ‘job regulation’ was not to be an
end itself but ‘as a means for the free development of the individual worker
during the course of working life per se’ (cited in Poole, 1981: 18).
However, the political role
assigned to labour by the ‘Democratic’ perspective does not give room for the
aspirations of the workers to seize political power and re-organise the whole
society on a new basis. The political
role expected of labour by this perspective is to be within the framework of
existing production relations and power structure.
In Nigeria, the predominant mode
of involvement of labour in politics by the mainstream of the movement has been
restricted to this perspective. Thus, labour has opposed authoritarian
tendencies and violation of rights; defended national sovereignty, and
democratic rights.
We can establish examples of concern for wider national issues (which
have nothing to do with employment relations) at every stage of labour’s
history in Nigeria. The point is that
while it has a lot of value, the ‘democratic’ perspective concedes the right to
govern to some so called professional politicians while labour’s role is
restricted to pressure group activity asking the government to rule with some
humaneness. The point is that the class that wields political power uses it to
advance its own interests. Therefore, unless the working class and the poor are politically
empowered, sustaining the welfare of ordinary people, in terms of basic needs
cannot be guaranteed.
Moral and Ethical Theories of
Trade Unions
This theory essentially assigns a
role to trade unions from a religious moral point of view. It is based on the Christian’s (and Muslim’s)
belief in the ‘brotherhood of man’ and the consequent mutual obligations’ based
on compassion for the unfortunate and from the belief that evil in society
emanates from incessant accumulation of riches and interpersonal competition.
From the point of view of this
perspective, the emergence of trade unions, the idea that binds unionists
together, the tonic that keeps the union going and sustains it, the rationale
and justification for the existence of the union is the extent to which it is
committed to upholding and defending certain societal ethics and morals, which
make the welfare of the disadvantaged the focus of its activity.
What sustains the loyalty of some
members to the union could be its commitment in defence of the poor. A well known human rights crusader, Chief
Gani Fawehinmi, in an interview with the Tell magazine expressed this
religious factor to explain his commitment to the people’s cause: By all
standards I am not a poor man. I am convenient and comfortable and I believe
that if I don’t do what I am doing for those who are not as opportune as
myself, God will punish me. Apart from that, I am always at home fighting for
the deprived, the neglected, the repressed and the oppressed. If I have no cause to fight for, I am like a
fish out of water. What sustains me is
the struggle. What gives me blood is my
conviction and what propels me is my dedication to that conviction And so, if I
have no genuine cause to fight for, I die.
(cited in Dateline, No. 13, March 30, 1995).
Although the influence of
religious beliefs has waned in explaining the character of trade unions in our
time, it has transformed into concern for ‘justice’. Flanders points out that the capacity of the
trade unions to survive the hostility of the State and sustain the loyalty of
union membership is hinged on commitment to justice:
The trade union movement deepened its grip on public life in its aspect
as a sword of justice. When it is no longer seen to be this, when it can no
longer count on anything but its own power to withstand assault, it becomes
extremely vulnerable. The more so since
it is as a sword of justice rather than a vested interest that it generates
loyalties and induces sacrifices among its own members and these are important
foundations of its strength and vitality (Cited in Aborisade, 1994).
The ethical and moral theory
means that the strength of the trade union movement in its activities and
struggles lies in its capacity to win popular support. Winning popular support
is also predicated on the types of issues taken up by the trade unions. A trade
union struggle that is concerned with actualizing specific basic needs for the
vulnerable groups cannot but win over, not just the support but also the
practical involvement of the poor classes in practical action.
Sam Omatseye, writing in The
Nation (10 November 2008: back page) gave us the practical lesson in the
electoral victory of Obama as President of the United States
‘I think Obama is also being rewarded for being good to his fellow
people. After a Harvard law degree, he could have earned millions of dollars on
Wall Street. But he abandoned all of that and went into community organizing,
helping people who could not find meals or homes or get education. It was the
benefit of that experience that helped him to craft the spectacular victory for
the ages. Nigerians should learn that money is not everything. Only love for
your fellow human can even give us the success we want.
That is the lesson of Obaman’s triumph. We must ponder this while we
celebrate’.
If fighting for the vulnerable
classes can earn an individual such victory, how much more would the trade
union movement advance the cause of fighting to win basic needs for all?
THE MARXIST THEORY
The import of the Marxian theory as far as
achieving basic needs for all is concerned is that only if organized labour leads
the other poor strata in actions can meaningful changes occur in living
standards.
Hyman (1975) explains that capitalism
constitutes a complex of work and social relations of production. The main
features of the capitalist structure of work relations consist of the
following: private ownership of productive forces; concentration of ownership
in the hands of a small minority, the obligation of the majority of society to
sell their labour power as a commodity; the domination of profit as the fundamental motive of economic
activity; and top-down hierarchical control over production processes by the
few owners or their managerial representatives. The structure of the capitalist
work relations thus presents an exploitative relationship – the wages and
salaries paid to the employees represent only a portion of the value they
collectively produce. The remainder is
appropriated by the employer as profit. The capitalist context of production is
therefore an inherently conflictual class relation. Given the employee status
(as opposed to a producer status) of the worker in the capitalist context of
production, the workers, individually and collectively, are alienated from
having a say in what is produced (product or service), how what is produced is
produced (that is, the process) and deciding on the allocation of resources or
profit, the surplus value.
Based on the capitalist structure of work relations,
Marxists consider that capitalist societies are increasingly characterized by
two major antagonistic classes, defined by their economic status. These are the
ruling class (capitalists) and the subject-class (workers). Capitalists own
and/or control the means of production, distribution, consumption and exchange,
as well as the means of political domination. The workers on the other hand are
the subordinate class who neither own nor control significant property, but are
subjected to the servitude of the interest of the ruling class, and is thereby
politically, economically, and socially exploited and dominated.
Bukharin explains that based on the
exploitative and conflictual class relationship, the capitalist system is by
nature a violent system. Any system based on the exploitation of the
overwhelming majority by a tiny minority can only survive by repressing the other
class violently. A system that thrives
by the imposition of the interests of the minority on the entire society can
only engender social chaos, turbulence and war. To Bukharin, the capitalist
society is unthinkable without armaments, as it is unthinkable without wars. He
posits that war is nothing but another method of competition at a specific
level of development and that conflictual economic interests give rise to the
inevitability of the existence of arms and wars (See IST in Africa, 2007)
The Marxian theory of the state maintains that the state is an
instrument of class domination. Whichever class wields political power uses it
to advance the interests of its members by oppressing the other class. In a
capitalist society, the state is ‘the executive committee of the bourgeoisie’;
it protects the property of the capitalist classes and adopts whatever
policies, including violence, to sustain the status-quo. Within the capitalist
context, the property-less class is taught to understand that it is in its interest,
and within the limits of its capability, to revolt, in the striving to defend
its interests by fighting against political and/or economic exclusion. Hence,
to Marx and Engels, classes seek to protect the self interests of their
members:
The bourgeoisie
…has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked
self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment’. It has drowned the most heavenly
ecstasies of religious fervor, of chilvarous enthusiasm, of philistine
sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation (Marx and Engels,
1933:62).
Friedrich Engels expresses similar idea in explaining that social
classes pursue the self-interest of their members:
Bare-faced
covetousness was the moving spirit of civilization from its dawn to the present
day; wealth, and again wealth, and for the third time wealth; wealth, not of
society, but of the puny individual was its only and final aim (cited in Bober,
1948:72).
The foregoing underscores the reality of life that in class societies, the ruling class
struggles to retain political power and protect the economic wealth of its
members while the expropriated, the disadvantaged are compelled to struggle to
end their exploitation and repression. Therefore, the source of development and general wellbeing of the ordinary people
in a capitalist society like Nigeria is not the ruling class but organized
labour – both the waged and unwaged when they form joint platforms for
struggles. That is why Ake (1989:43) argues that development is agency-determined: ‘somebody has to determine
that development is desirable, that a particular kind of development should be
pursued and in a particular kind of manner’. This shows that desirability of
development, the kind of development and the manner of attainment are neither
accidental nor objectively determined. According to Ake (1989), since the
capitalist state is a specific modality of capitalist domination, the ability to maintain the capitalist
hegemony on society and the capacity of the dominated and oppressed classes to
deploy effective counter force in reaction to their domination goes a long way
to condition the possibility of development. The degree of resistance put
up by the dominated tends to determine the extent to which the state uses
scarce resources, which should have been invested in developmental programs
into maintaining opulence for the bourgeoisie and building the arsenal of
terror and a militarized state.
From
the Marxian perspective, the State, contrary to the claim of pluralist
advocates, is not an organisation for the interest of the whole society but an
instrument to coerce and repress in the sectional interest of the economically
dominant class. According to Lenin, the state is ‘an organ of class rule, an organ
for the repression of one class by another’ (Lenin, 1970).
Any ruling class uses the State
apparatus of repression to defend, in the final analysis, the system of the
property relations from which it derives its wealth, influence and power and
indeed its very existence as a class.
Therefore, all classes whose interests are not served by the existing
system of production relations, in other words, all classes which stand in
antagonism to the ruling class are inevitably driven into (political) class
struggle, if not to take over political power, then at least to modify and
influence those who wield State power in their own interest. This is why as Marx and Engels (1971) wrote
in the Communist Manifesto, every class struggle is a political struggle. Therefore, the question for any trade union or unionist is not whether or not to
be involved in politics, the question is which type of politics: politics to
influence those in government or politics to seize political power?
Marxism explains that at every
acute stage of capitalist crisis when the capitalist system cannot guarantee
bare existence to the working class, only
organized labour can take society forward: ‘Of all the classes that stand
face to face with the bourgeoisie today’, declared Marx and Engels (1971), ‘the
proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class’. Unlike other sectional groups, only the working class, by virtue of
its position in the economy has the nationwide ‘organisational continuity and
experience’ (Adesina, 1994) to develop
an economic programme which represents the interest of all the oppressed strata;
a programme which is not antagonistic to the interest of the other deprived
sectional groups. Thus, the labour movement (as opposed to the narrow trade
union movement) is usually not concerned
with only the sectional demands of the workers. Rather, depending on the
quality of leadership, it tends to act
as the tribune of the people, reacting to every manifestation of tyranny
and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what situation or class
of people is affected (Lenin, 1970: 423).
CONCLUSION
This
paper has examined some key theories in industrial relations and their
implications on attaining ‘basic needs for all’ and resolving the question of
poverty. Some of the theories explain and prescribe conducts of the key parties
in the industry. Consciously or unconsciously, the principles inherent in the
theories influence the practice of unionists, in varying degrees. It is
therefore hoped that participants at this workshop would be in a position to
interpret and understand, not only the viewpoints and perspectives advanced by
the employer but also their fellow unionists.
But it
is important to appreciate that as Ake (1989) points out, development is
agency-determined. Organized labour, in unity with the
other oppressed strata, is, in the final analysis, the source of development
and any democratic gains enjoyed by the ordinary people.
It is however important for organized labour to pay attention to the
inherent shortcoming in labour’s struggles, which Marx (1958) had pointed out
long ago:
Trade Unions work
well as centres of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail
partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from
limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing
system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their
organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class,
that is to say, the abolition of the wage system (Marx, 1958: 447, cited in
Hyman, 1975:98)
The lesson in the above identified weakness of labour struggles
means that labour should not only fight against the negative indices of socio-economic policies, principles and
programs, labour should equally fight against those policies, principles and
programs, and at the same time, advocate alternative policies and an economic
system that can accommodate and sustain observance of civil, political and
economic rights for ordinary people. Attainment of ‘basic needs for all’ and
resolving the problem of poverty is predicated on being able to strongly
advocate alternative, pro-working people’s socio-economic order while fighting
against negative indices of the present capitalist order.
Femi Aborisade
November 2008.
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