The Berkshire Eagle, Sunday April 10, 2011

The Berkshire Eagle

Sunday April 10, 2011

The Berkshire Eagle

As state legislators across the country struggle to manage serious budget deficits, there has been a scrutiny of the cost of benefits for public sector employees and the enduring role of organized labor. Emotion and resentment runs high over the costs of pensions and salaries. This is not because people believe hard-working people everywhere do not deserve dignified retirement and good wages. Rather, bad economic policy over the past 30 years has left the deepest income inequality in our nation since 1929. It is little wonder that emotions run high!

In addition, there are increasing attacks on collective bargaining agreements in states such as Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio. In many ways, the approaches favored by some state governments are largely retributive. Reforms aim to "get back at" unions rather than to find a sustainable approach to cutting costs while developing growth strategies that include improving the quality of services and care.

The roadblock that labor, management, and state legislation are currently facing is that the adversarial tactics of the past will no longer resolve our significant fiscal problems. Cutting health-care benefits for state workers while increasing co-payments will not reduce health-care costs. This strategy will only continue to fund a broken system without implementing real cost-saving measures such as chronic disease prevention, health education, and coordination of services.

For all of us consumers of state services the exploitation of a financial crisis to achieve ideological goals is a losing game. Are we willing to stand in line longer at the motor vehicles bureau to get our registration renewed? Are we willing to remain in the emergency room longer due to reduced staffing? The focus on union-legislator vendettas only impedes us from finding solutions that will help mend our country's economic fabric.

What is needed is a radical change in how labor, management and government address service cost and delivery issues. "Business as usual" will not work any longer.

To start, unions have an opportunity to look beyond their primary functions of collective bargaining, grievance handling, and concession bargaining to find specific ways to radically reduce the cost and augment the quality of services for the communities that employ them. Unions have often been stymied by an atmosphere in which bureaucratic decision-making has reigned supreme. Union members have intimate and unique knowledge of their workplaces and work processes which can be utilized to create real improvements. Unions have an opportunity to utilize these intellectual assets. The very real problem of creating high- quality, cost-effective public service in a time of fiscal crisis can begin to be solved through the empowered creativity of the work force.

At the same time, it is imperative that management and state legislators be open to including union leaders and their members as resources for change. Stripping away collective bargaining rights and outsourcing are quick fixes at best and not conducive to long-term financial stability and growth. In fact, such narrow strategies only serve to alienate the work force, resulting in poorer services and care. Lawmakers must be willing to value the role and input of public sector employees and unions rather than viewing them as enemies.

Making the necessary sea changes in labor-management problem solving will not be easy. Nevertheless, there is some precedent for methods which harness the power of labor, management and legislators to improve our economy.

During the economic imbroglio of World War II, the U.S. encountered significant trouble in producing high-quality, cost effective tanks and airplanes. Walter Reuther, past president of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, relied upon a team of skilled machinists and assembly workers to develop a proposal to address the underutilization of American auto plants and the need for military equipment. This initiative took federal government support in order to succeed, but demonstrated the profound importance of the skills and insights of auto workers to maximize the resources of auto plants.

Today, several labor-management partnerships have been established to meet the fiscal and quality challenges facing the health-care industry. Through innovative collective bargaining methods and labor and management leadership agreements, Kaiser Permanente, the largest care management organization in the U.S. and its unions representing nearly 100,000 workers, have created "unit-based teams" comprised of managers and frontline staff to tackle problems in its hospitals and clinics. These teams have resolved problems from quality of patient care to environmental issues, creating more productive workplaces and more cost-effective patient care. Other health care unions are initiating similar activities in cities from Los Angeles to Burlington, Vermont.

We do not need to build more airplanes and tanks, nor is labor-management partnership a magic bullet. We are, however, facing a crisis that demands an innovative path to achieve appropriate changes. In countries such as Germany, Sweden, and Norway collaborative work between labor, management and government has enabled these countries to thrive during a time when most of Europe is, like us, in a deep recession. It is time for the U.S. to join them.

Peter Lazes is director of the Healthcare Transformation Project and Programs for Economic Transitions, Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations.