Freedom in the Workplace: Freedom Talks Series

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Democracy and Participation, or Benevolent Dictatorship?

by Elaine Bernard

The worksite is also a place where workers learn about the relations of power. They learn that they actually have few rights to participate in decisions about events of great consequence to their lives. As power is presently distributed, workplaces are factories of authoritarianism polluting our democracy. It is no surprise that citizens who spend eight or more hours a day obeying orders with no rights, legal or otherwise, to participate in crucial decisions that affect them, do not then engage in robust, critical dialogue about the structure of our society. Eventually the strain of being deferential servants from nine to five diminishes our after-hours liberty and sense of civic entitlement and responsibility. Thus, the existing hierarchy of employment relations undermines democracy. Of course, this is not to suggest that all workers are unhappy, or that all workplaces are hellish. Rather, the workplace is a unique location where we have come to accept that we are not entitled to the rights and privileges we normally enjoy as citizens. Consider how employers, even very progressive employers, feel when asked how they would react to an effort by "their" employees to form a union. The normal response is that such an act is a personal rebuke, a signal of failure and a rejection of their management. Why is such a paternalistic attitude, which would be quickly recognized as such in politics, so widely accepted in employment relations? But is the workplace really so autocratic? Why such an extreme characterization? Some illustrations of the uniqueness of the work environment, in which the normal rules of our legal system simply do not apply, are worth noting. For it is in the workplace that citizens are transformed into employees who learn to leave their rights at the door. Take, for example, a fundamental assumption in our legal system - the presumption of innocence. In the workplace, this presumption is turned on its head. The rule of the workplace is that management dictates and workers obey. If a worker is accused of a transgression by management, there is no presumption of innocence. Even in organized workplaces the rule remains: work first, grieve later. Organized workers protected by a collective agreement with a contractual grievance procedure can at least grieve an unjust practice (or more specifically, one that violates the rights won through collective bargaining). Unorganized workers, on the other hand, have the option of appealing to their superiors' benevolence or joining the unemployment line. The implied voluntary labor contract - undertaken by workers when they agree to employment - gives management almost total control of the work relationship. "Free labor" entails no rights other than the freedom to quit without penalty. That's one step up from indentured servitude, but still a long distance from democracy. There is not even protection in our system against arbitrary and capricious actions by management. There is no general right to employment security and no prohibition against unjust dismissal in the private sector such as exists in most other advanced industrial countries. The law of the US workplace is governed by the doctrine of "employment at will." There is some protection to ensure that an employee may not be dismissed for clearly discriminatory reasons of race, gender, disability or age. But that same employee can be Black, female, older, white, male or whatever, and as long as the dismissal is for "no reason," it's legal. Most Americans believe that there is a law that protects them from being fired for "no cause." But they're wrong. Free Speech for Whom? A most glaring example of the power imbalance on the job concerns the freedom of speech. Often celebrated as the most cherished right of a free citizen, most Americans are astonished to learn that freedom of speech does not extend to the workplace, or at least not to workers. It is literally true that free speech exists for bosses, but not workers. The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights applies only to the encroachment by government on citizens' speech. It does not protect workers' speech, nor does it forbid the "private" denial of freedom of speech. Moreover, in a ruling that further tilted the balance of power (against workers) in the workplace, the Supreme Court held that corporations are "persons" and therefore must be afforded the protection of the Bill of Rights. So, any legislation (e.g. the National Labor Relations Act) or agency (e.g. the National Labor Relations Board) that seek to restrict a corporate "person's" freedom of speech, is unacceptable. Employers' First Amendment rights mean that they are entitled to hold "captive audience meetings" - compulsory sessions in which management lectures employees on the employers' views of unions. Neither employees nor their unions have the right of response. It's almost as if the worksite is not a part of the United States. Workers "voluntarily" relinquish their rights when they enter into an employment relationship. So, workers can be disciplined by management (with no presumption of innocence) and they can be denied freedom of speech by their employer. The First Amendment only protects persons (including transnational corporations designated as persons) against the infringement of their rights by government - but not the infringement of rights of real persons (workers) by the private concentration of power and wealth, known as corporations. Such limitations on workers' rights are incompatible with the requirements of a genuine democracy. In comparison to European countries, the legal rights of workers in the US are remarkably limited. For a country that prides itself on individual rights, how can we permit the wholesale denial of those rights for tens of millions of American workers?