Power Sharing: Protection of Self-Interest

Let us begin with two realities: the first is that most of us are employees. Whether we are company presidents or union leaders, managers or assembly line workers, teachers or ministers of education, our wages and salaries, pensions, vacation, and other terms and conditions of employment are determined by others. We are all employees. What distinguishes us from one another in the employment situation is the degree of authority that we have over one another. Therefore, it is the exercise of authority by employees over other employees that is involved in the examination of labour—management relations. When management employees oppose the organisation of other employees in the enterprise, or reject demands for negotiation on some issue, or deny workers participation in decision-making on issues that effect their welfare, they simply manifest their unwillingness to share their authority.’ This is as true of the manager of the profit-seeking private sector enterprise as it is of the manager of the public institution or the senior bureaucrat of a government department. Indeed, an examination of the record may establish that resistance to the sharing of authority is perhaps greater in the public sector than in the private sector.