VERTICAL RECRUITMENT IN WHITE‐COLLAR TRADE UNIONS: SOME CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES
| Author | Paul Blyton,Gill Ursell |
| Date | 01 July 1982 |
| Published date | 01 July 1982 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1982.tb00096.x |
VERTICAL RECRUITMENT IN WHITE-COLLAR TRADE
UNIONS: SOME CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES
PAUL
BLYTON*
AND
GILL
URSELL?
THIS
paper reviews and evaluates some aspects
of
vertical recruitment in white-collar
unions; that is, the organising of employees from different levels of individual work
hierarchies. In particular, the relative significance
of
this pattern of recruitment.
for
the performance
of
a union's administrative and representative functions, is
considered. Illustrative material
is
drawn from an extensive case study within the
white-collar local government union,
NALGO.
1.
INTRODUCTION
Many writers concerned to understand the nature
of
democratic organisation.
usually political parties and trade unions, have identified two equally desirable but
sometimes antagonistic organisational objectives. One is that the commitment to
democracy be not merely rhetorical but real,
i.e.
that participation in and influence
over the organisation's decision processes should
in
fact
be equally available to all
organisational members. The other objective is that, any heterogeneity of members
notwithstanding, the organisation in its external dealings be able to concert its actions.
present a united front and press with all the vigour
of
its combined forces. Child
et
al,
have identified these twin goals as coterminous with two types of rationality:
representative rationality, the concern to be democratic; and administrative
rationality, the concern to be efficient and influential in external dealings.
'
But it is not at this point that the twin objectives are seen
to
contain
incompatibilities. However improbable, it
is
not impossible that,
on
any particular
issue, all organisational members should equally determine to act in a particular and
united fashion. Indeed it could be and has been argued that there is not administrative
rationality without representative demands being met. and that representative
demands cannot be met unless there is also a high degree of administrative rationality.
Rather, the incompatibilities are seen to reside in the emergence of formal leadership.
That a formal leadership will emerge is guaranteed by the universal recognition that a
mass of people acting spontaneously will not invariably,
or
even often. respond
to
the
same issue in the same fashion at the same time. Some formal mechanism for the
identification
of
issues and the direction of action needs, therefore, to be instituted.
But leadership, however hedged in with constitutional guarantees for democratic
control, implies an element
of
autonomy for the leaders and requires that they have
some degree of priviledged information and specialised skills. Thus we arrive at the
basis on which the Michelian thesis poses the inevitability with which would-be
democratic organisation moves towards oligarchy, bureaucratisation and a growing
insensitivity
of
central leaders to members at the periphery.'
The Michelian thesis
poses
a dichotomy of organisational forms
-
either it is
democratic
or
it
is
oligarchic. This dichotomy appears not to be substantially contested
in certain more recent writings
-
for example, that
of
Child and his colleagues,
already cited.3 Indeed for analytic purposes Child's categorisation
of
different types
of
rationalities at work within organisations, and the recognition that these may generate
*
Lecturer in Industrial Relations, Department of Business Administration and Accountancy,
t
Lecturer in Communication, Trinity and
All
Saints Colleges, Leeds.
UWIST,
Cardiff.
I86
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