In years gone by it was comparatively easy to understand what was happening in industrial relations. Unions would organise workers to engage in strikes, pickets and other industrial action to pressure the "bosses" to improve wages and conditions. It was a form of orchestrated "class war" in which everyone seemed to know their place and their role. The business of being a union was structured entirely around the maintenance of this class war.
But things have changed because of one basic fact: union membership in the private sector is now down around 18 per cent. More importantly, union membership and influence in most businesses is now so small (often non existent) that unions have enormous difficulty starting, let alone maintaining, class war within individual companies.
The outcome is that the business of being a union is under severe stress. And to survive, some unions have undertaken far-reaching reconceptualisation of their processes and campaign models. In applying these new models against targeted firms and industries, unions have changed the nature of the game in ways that firms do not understand. One of these new campaign models creates industrial leverage by attacking a company's brand name.
Recently, the media monitoring company Rehame was subject to such an attack. The campaign against the company is the early phase of a union push to capture the media monitoring industry and it closely follows campaigns conducted against call centres and the clothing industry. In this new industrial warfare, nothing is what it seems and it takes business some time to understand what is happening and to sort out how to respond.
Media monitoring businesses engage people to read newspapers and magazines, listen to radio and watch television and to pull out material that names or affects the business of its subscriber clients. In the industry, transcripts of media reports are usually delivered to clients within hours (sometimes minutes) of a media report appearing. Some aspects of the business involve high-tech monitoring, but much entails people simply sitting and reading or listening. The low-tech aspects ideally suit people who want to work from home -- including students, retirees, parents and others who want the lifestyle and income benefits of such work.
The trouble for unions is that industrial organisation of people who work from home is almost impossible. Unions need employers to operate sweat-shop like factories if the business of being a union is to survive. If a company follows family friendly type practices where people can work from home, unions have difficulty leveraging for members. Hence the campaign against Rehame where unions alleged that people who work in their own homes are working in sweatshops. This, "your home is a sweatshop" slogan, confuses community perceptions and masks union agendas. And in their efforts to stop people having the right to work from home, the Victorian Government has been lobbied to discriminate against Rehame to stop them offering people these small business options.
To achieve the end game, the company's name is likely to be subject to considerable and sophisticated attack on a wide variety of fronts from coalitions of community groups organised through unions. The company may risk losing clients and its competitors will duck for cover (all the while claiming that they are well-behaved) or could use the situation to gain increased market share at their opposition's expense. The campaign intent is to stop the offering of work to small business people who operate from home.
Eventually a "white knight" industry association will negotiate a "peace" which, in effect, will deliver the union's agenda. A "code of practice" will be established in conjunction with government and legislation stipulating the price of media monitoring operations in minute detail will likely follow. The "settlement", operating outside normal industrial relations legislation, will effectively control vital aspects of how the industry is able to operate. The campaign loop will be closed. The industry will be captured.
How do we know this? Because this is what transpired in the clothing industry over ten years, and in part, in the call centre industry in just fours years. It will probably happen much faster in the media monitoring industry.
These campaign and control mechanisms effectively destroy domestic outsourcing operations. But, paradoxically, there is no evidence that unions win more members as a result. Instead, domestic outsourcing stops. Companies shift their focus offshore and external outsourcing proceeds apace. Witness the trends with call centres and the collapse of domestic clothing manufacturing! The campaigns actually destroy local jobs.
In the electronic age, most media monitoring can be done in India, Malaysia, Hong Kong or wherever fluent English-speakers reside.
Industrial relations is no longer just about class warfare controlled through industrial relations legislation. There is an entirely new paradigm of aggressive war in which every business is lined up for targeting. And the process is just in its infancy!
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