Business vs. Revolutionary Unionism

“When the working class unites, there will be a lot of jobless labor leaders.” –Eugene Debs, 1905 speech

Unions are a modern concept, a product of industrial society. The idea is a simple, but important one — namely that the weak majority must organize collectively to battle the powerful minority — the capitalist, whose will is backed by the power of the State. The individual worker is almost powerless in a non-union workplace, with the choice of obeying the boss or quitting their job for another one.

Unions upset this blissful state of affairs, when these weak, individual workers banded together against the boss, they had considerable strength indeed. Note that this right to collectively bargain was hard-won by workers — much worker blood was spilled by capitalists (through their lap-dog, the State), in order to protect their privilege, power, and profits, which depended on a disorganized, and above all, weak workforce.

Make no mistake: unionism was a powerful, effective social force, and it has always been reviled by capitalists and management, because it cuts into their absolute workplace authority, which they seem to feel is theirs by right, in the style of kings of times past.

In the course of the fight for unionism, different schools of thought emerged — those who looked at the big picture of capitalist society saw that no class peace with Capital was possible; others, unwilling to embrace such a radical, revolutionary agenda, felt that workers and capitalists could reach an understanding of sorts — these folks became business unionists, represented most notably by unions like the AFL-CIO, the UAW, and the Teamsters.

Business Unionism vs. Revolutionary Unionism

With the demise of the Knights of Labor and the Industrial Workers of the World, and countless bloody crackdowns on radical labor organizing, the business unionism view prevailed, becoming, for a time, the most successful labor movement in history.

However, business unionism is in a bad state these days, as they find, to their dismay, their power continually being eroded, particularly as globalization is accelerated, in which Third World workers can be pitted against First World unionized ones, invariably a losing a battle for the First World workers — the company simply says “do as we say or we’ll relocate to another country” — and business unionists are forced to take one more step backward.

It is my belief that business unionism will eventually die out, and we’ll be back to where we were at the turn of the century, where Capital dictates the conditions under which we work without consideration of the consequences — which are invariably measured in the lives of working people everywhere.

Business unionism won out in the past struggles between Labor and Capital, but in the long run, their vision of worker/owner solidarity is a false one, which is unravelling as we speak, particularly in the wake of NAFTA, GATT, and now MAI. Increasingly, it is Capital who calls the shots, and Labor who takes the lumps — which explains why hundreds of thousands of working people have been “downsized” for the sake of corporate profits.

Before I talk about what revolutionary unionism is, it’s important to first talk about what it isn’t, which brings me to business unionism.
THE BUSINESS UNION

What is business unionism? It is, at root, the belief that workers and bosses have common interests, focusing on rhetoric like “getting the job done” and “a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay.” Business unions function to keep workers working, and profits flowing smoothly into the pockets of business owners. Business unions have long been businesses themselves, with entrenched and powerful bureaucracies, and their conduct over the years has created the image of labor unions as corrupt, inefficient, self-serving agencies (of course, this view is foisted on us by the corporate press, who are by no means neutral or objective in their coverage). Peaking in membership in the 50s, business unions have suffered a long, slow decline since then.

The heart of the business union is the labor contract, under which workers are to labor for the profit of the bosses. The contract phase of labor/management negotiations is notoriously complex, with both groups haggling over pay levels and job retention.

Business unions hold that there is such a thing as a fair wage, and work to ensure the best possible deal with management, in terms of pay and pay raises, and benefits. Business union jobs (those that are left) still remain better paid than their non-union equivalents — this reflects the power of collective bargaining, which remains strong, despite enormous setbacks over the decades.

However, business unions pit workers against workers — if you’ve ever been in a business union, you’ll find a distinct hierarchy evident within the union, favoring the older, higher-paid, senior workers over the younger, lower-paid workers. Make no mistake — if you’re on the lower rungs of this hierarchy, you are cannon fodder in the event of hard negotiations — it will be your job that is sacrificed if push comes to shove, while senior union members will retain their privileges and protections.

Even within this seniority system, there are still higher levels of hierarchy — a business union reserves all decision-making action to labor leaders — the rank-and-file are not to engage in independent activity, but are to remain in lock-step behind their respective leaders — who, particularly as unions grew in power — came to resemble management itself, more and more. All workplace initiative is kept safely at the top of the business union pyramid.

The business union has always revolved around the trade union principle of organizing. That is, they hold that each trade has its own distinct interests, which are independent of those of other workers. As such, they organize around a particular profession or trade, thereby dividing workers into manifold smaller unions, focusing exclusively on their particular interests.

The ultimate weapon of the business union is the strike. Only business union leaders are authorized to declare a strike — when the rank-and-file do so, these unauthorized actions are called wildcat strikes, and are not looked on favorably by business union bosses, because it undermines their power.
THE REVOLUTIONARY UNION

“It was not by gold or by silver, but by labor, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased.”
–Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

The revolutionary union has become a historical relic — the last active revolutionary union is the IWW — the Industrial Workers of the World — which, founded in 1905, was sacked in 1919 by the US government and has not recovered since then. It’s been around, but hasn’t been a major force in Labor for many decades.

Revolutionary unionism remains the great untried experiment — its vision of the world — a world without Capital and capitalist exploitation of workers — hasn’t yet come about. We seem amazingly far from this vision as we reach the close of the 90s.

Will it come about again? Who knows? In some respects, I doubt it, at least in the way it did before, because the State has created a variety of secret police organizations, namely the FBI (created in 1919) and the CIA (created in 1948), who actively work to prevent large-scale social organizing for change. The lesson learned by authorities in response to the great labor upheavals of times past was to infiltrate and destroy popular movements before they get too powerful.

Any new radical unionism must organize under the watchful eye of these and other organizations, which will affect the way these new unions operate. It’s not impossible for a new revolutionary unionism to come about — but it will be a formidable challenge. But then, such is the case with any progressive social movement. The powerful never give up their privileges easily, or out of the goodness of their withered hearts.

Clearly, the revolutionary union view of the reality of relations between workers and bosses is more accurate than that of the business unionists, as recent history only too clearly shows, in the flood of pink slips and factory relocations which have left a devastated workforce in its wake.

So, what is a revolutionary union? It’s easier to say that “revolutionary” describes the tactics and outlook of this type of unionism, which focuses on an unending battle between Labor and Capital (not an endless battle — rather, one where either Capital wins, reducing us to the level of serfs, or Labor wins, in which case capitalism ends), and recognizes that Labor produces all that is of value in society.

The revolutionary union is centered around direct action, as opposed to the strike. The strike is seen as the last weapon of the worker, and not even the most effective one. Workers are most effective in pushing their agendas while still on the job, using a variety of direct action tactics.

In revolutionary unions, there is no status hierarchy between workers — no distinction between senior and junior workers. Moreover, there is no union bureaucracy or leadership to decide for workers what does or does not get done. All initiative comes from below — from the rank-and-file, who, by their own efforts, make their wishes felt and known. This approach produces a considerably more democratic union, with an active, informed membership.

Revolutionary unions practice industrial unionism; that is, the idea that instead of workers dividing themselves into manifold trades, and defending their interests to the exclusion of others, there are, instead, only two classifications in working society — workers and capitalists. That is, those who work for a living, and those who live on others’ work. Those who take orders, and those who give them.

The revolutionary unionist seeks One Big Union, instead of many little ones. The logic behind this is that capitalists tend to close ranks and defend their common class interest — against so unified a foe, can a divided workforce possibly prevail? The history of business unionism reveals that it cannot. It was this idea that led to the IWW slogan, “an injury to one is an injury to all.”

Solidarity is the glue that holds the revolutionary union together, which is both an asset and a liability. It is a liability because it depends on workers closing ranks and working together as a whole, which doesn’t always occur. Scabs, or workers who cross the picket line during a strike, are always a threat to organized labor solidarity. Because unions represent large numbers of people, organizing solidarity is a daunting task, and is often unsuccessful. When it works, it works well.
THE FUTURE OF LABOR

The revolutionary unionist seeks more than simply increases in pay or benefits — the revolutionary unionist pursues longer-ranging workplace changes. A long-standing revolutionary union goal was more leisure time for the worker, measured in a shorter workday. It was the efforts of revolutionary unionists that cut the 16-hour workday in half, and radical unionists today would like to see the workday cut in half yet again. This wish can only come about in the wake of intense, large-scale organizing, something which has been impossible for nearly 70 years.

However, with the continued withering away of business unions, an opening has grown for renewed radical unionism. The challenges are enormous, but the opportunity is there. This has been made possible, conversely, by the greed and machinations of Capital itself — as the bosses seek to reduce American workers’ pay, increase their hours, and slash their benefits, they have themselves created a revolutionary situation.

Management is very aware of this situation, however — which is why there has been a proliferation of “empowerment sessions” and “team-building” initiatives in companies, where they seek to buy off the workers they still retain with union-style benefits without the unions. In other words, the appearance of empowerment, versus actual workplace empowerment. This masterful PR effort by management reveals the extent to which they’ll go to see unionism finally destroyed. Companies want workers to think they’re on the same team as their bosses, the way business unions believe. But it’s a lie, and always will be.

No amount of bogus empowerment conferences can change the static environment in which workers operate — where all initiative comes from above, and where their pay continues to stagnate, and they are forced to work longer hours in increasingly precarious jobs. Fear is what binds the non-union workplace, just as solidarity is what holds together the union shop.

Will this continue indefinitely? I don’t believe it will. It can’t, because working people are being screwed right and left by management, no matter how many happy faces they try to put on their schemes. It simply isn’t part of human nature to take it on the chin so many times without wanting to take a few swings yourself. Big Business has had it coming for a long time — with the State behind them, they’ve grown arrogant with power, and think they can grind people into the ground with impunity. This can’t go on forever.

The challenge for the revolutionary unionist is to adapt to these new conditions and bring real improvements in the lives of workers. One thing that killed revolutionary unionism in the past was the inability of such unions to consistently bring real benefits to working people — something business unions could do in the form of contracts and pay increases. The new revolutionary union will have to keep a focus on meat and potatoes issues at the same time it focuses on actual radical unionizing efforts.

Business unionism is dead; it just doesn’t know it yet. It will keep losing as we move through this transitional period of the globalization of Capital. Does this mean there’s no hope for working folks? Not at all — it only means there is no middle ground between Labor and Capital — a position mistakenly occupied by the business unionists. It will mean that the revolutionary union, so long considered a fossil of a bygone age, will become the only possible avenue left for working people who want a real say in what goes on in the workplace.

http://www.infoshop.org

An important right for stewards is protection against employer retaliation for statements made during the course of grievance meetings. Ordinarily, an employee can be disciplined for disrespect to a supervisor. Disrespect may be insubordination. However, the Board has generally held that a steward cannot be disciplined for abusive remarks made to a supervisor or management officials during a grievance meeting or in a bargaining session. The steward may use profanity or even accuse the employer of lying without fear of discipline. The Board applies this rule so that a steward may speak freely without having to weigh every word said or hold back arguments for fear of stepping over the line.

An important right for stewards is protection against employer retaliation for statements made during the course of grievance meetings. Ordinarily, an employee can be disciplined for disrespect to a supervisor. Disrespect may be insubordination. However, the Board has generally held that a steward cannot be disciplined for abusive remarks made to a supervisor or management officials during a grievance meeting or in a bargaining session. The steward may use profanity or even accuse the employer of lying without fear of discipline. The Board applies this rule so that a steward may speak freely without having to weigh every word said or hold back arguments for fear of stepping over the line.

There are, however, a few exceptions to the steward’s very broad rights. The steward cannot threaten an employer representative with physical violence. Also, a steward may be disciplined in extremely aggravated situations if the steward is disrespectful to the employer in the presence of rank and file employees to the point that an employer is no longer able to exercise proper control over the work force.

Weingarten Rule

The Weingarten rule comes from a 1975 Supreme Court decision. This is the right of a worker to union representation when being questioned by management on a matter that could result in disciplinary action. The worker must ask for such representation; the employer is not required to tell the worker of his or her rights. The worker can request union representation before or at any time during the investigatory interview.

The rule is subject to the following:

1. The right arises only when the employee requests union representation;
2. Exercise of the right to union representation may not interfere with “legitimate employer prerogatives” such as the employer’s right to conduct an interview without undue delay;
3. An employer need not justify its refusal to permit union representation but may go forward with the investigation from other sources;
4. The employer is under no duty to bargain with the union representative during an investigatory interview and may insist on hearing only the employee’s account of the matter being investigated. The steward may participate in the interview, but can not negotiate the discipline being considered.

Not every discussion with management is an investigatory interview. For instance, a supervisor may speak with an employee about the proper way to do a job. The supervisor may even ask questions. But because the likelihood of discipline is remote, the conversation is not an investigatory interview.

Union’s Right To Information

A union cannot effectively represent its members in contract negotiations if it is denied basic information about the bargaining union. The union has a right to information controlled by management and federal labor law requires employers to supply certain information upon request, in order that the union can bargain intelligently.

The information listed below is a guide for when to request information and what kind of information you can request. For specific questions speak with your local union officers and/or legal counsel.

As a steward, you as a union representative may request information:

· When investigating a grievance.

· When preparing for a grievance meeting.

· When deciding whether to drop a grievance or move it up the ladder.

· When deciding whether to arbitrate a case.

· When preparing for an arbitration.

The employer’s obligation to supply information is extremely broad. However the union’s request must be specific … so no fishing expeditions! Here are examples of information the union may request:

Here are some examples of types of information the union can request from the employer:

1. Factual Information: Name of subcontractor, date of contract, description of the work, and the amount of the contract. The union is also entitled to a copy of the contract and correspondence with the subcontractor.
2. Data: In a sex discrimination grievance, the union can require the company to produce a list of women employees promoted in the past, along with names of those denied promotions. When it comes to data, employers are not excused from compliance because of the size of the union’s request.
3. General Inquiries: “Please supply all documents or records which refer to or reflect the factors causing you to reject this grievance” and “Please supply all factual bases for the company’s decision.”
4. Disciplinary Grievance: When grieving a warning, suspension, or discharge, request a complete copy of the grievant’s personnel file. You do not want to be surprised if management relies on past offenses. Also, since unequal punishment is usually a potential argument, request information concerning workers discipline for the same offense in previous years. Ask for the names of any workers who committed the offense but were not disciplined, names of witnesses, and notes made by supervisors concerning the offense.
5. Contract Interpretation Grievance: If the grievance requires interpretation of contract language, the union can request the employer’s notes from the negotiating session that led to the disputed clause, as well as the dates and contents of any conversations with the union upon which the employer is relying.
6. Past Practice Grievance: If you are grieving management’s failure to adhere to a past practice and management contends that the practice has not been consistently followed, request dates and descriptions of each time the company claims a departure from the practice in question.
7. Health and Safety Grievance: If you are grieving an unsafe chemical, request a list of workers made sick by the substance, the material safety data sheet (MSDS) supplied by the chemical manufacturer, copies of any OSHA citations, and all studies by the company of the effects of the chemical, including medical examinations of affected employees. Arrange for a union industrial hygienist to conduct a health and safety inspection of the workplace.

The union can make an information request orally; however, it is best to put it in writing. Be as specific as possible in identifying the records or data for which you are looking.

Duty Of Fair Representation

The Duty of Fair Representation is the legal duty of a union to fairly and equally represent every employee in a bargaining unit, whether or not the employee is a union member. The duty of fair representation applies to all employment matters where the union is the exclusive bargaining representative, including grievance processing and contract bargaining. Federal law says that unions that do not represent a worker fairly can be charged with an unfair labor practice (referred to as “ULP”) or sued.

The basis of fair representation is honesty, equal treatment, and good record keeping.

The union must represent workers in the bargaining unit without discrimination, arbitrariness, hostility, bad faith or dishonesty.

Discrimination can occur on the basis of race, sex, national origin, sexual orientation or identity, age or political standing of the grievant. Political discrimination includes not just party politics but whether the grievant has been active politically in the union, e.g., is a failed candidate for union office and on the basis of membership and non-membership in the union.

Arbitrariness can occur if the union sets up some artificial method of selecting grievances for arbitration, e.g., only taking every tenth grievance to arbitration. Or, if the union cannot offer any legitimate reason why it acted as it did in pursuing or withdrawing a grievance.

If a union fails to provide fair representation by using tactics that undermine good faith, it can become embroiled in legal action. A steward acts as the union’s agent and has the responsibility of upholding the union’s duty of fair representation. The steward must listen to grievances without being swayed by personal feelings that may include favoritism or dislike.

Sometimes a steward will make a legitimate mistake while handling a grievance. Reasonable errors of judgment are not violations of law.

When a decision not to file a grievance or to withdraw a grievance is made, however, it must be made honestly based on facts demonstrating that the grievance doesn’t warrant pursuit. The grievant should be thoroughly apprised of the reasons for the withdrawal. A good rule of thumb is to keep all events regarding grievances in writing.

A union breaches its duty of fair representation when, for example, they:

· Process similar grievances differently without a documented reason.

· Fail to explain to the grievant why the union did not appeal or arbitrate their grievance.

· Do not return phone calls.

· Fail to speak to potential witnesses or examining grievant evidence.

The good news is that unions almost never violate their duty of fair representation. The law is very favorable to unions, so let us look at ways the union can avoid being charged with an unfair labor practice.

A union avoids breaching their duty of fair representation when they:

· Service members well.

· Communicate with members.

· Return phone calls promptly.

· Obey time limits for filing and appealing grievances.

· Communicate throughout entire process especially when union decides not to appeal or arbitrate grievances.

· Include members in grievance meetings.

· Document each step with notes or meaningful letters.

The duty of fair representation does not apply to employment matters where the union does not represent bargaining unit members or where members may pursue on their own such as:

· Unemployment Compensation

· Workers Compensation

· Wage and Hour Claims

· Race/Sex/Age Discrimination Claims

The cardinal sin of representation is committed by the steward who, when approached on a serious matter by an employee wanting to file a grievance, says, “Get the hell out of here, I’ve got better things to do than listen to your nonsense.”

http://www.ufcwlocal186d.com/new_page_61.htm

The standard clinical test for psychopathy, Robert Hare’s PCL-R, evaluates 20 personality traits overall, but a subset of eight traits defines what he calls the “corporate psychopath” — the nonviolent person prone to the “selfish, callous, and remorseless use of others.” Does your boss fit the profile? Here’s our do-it-yourself quiz drawing on the test manual and Hare’s book Without Conscience. (Disclaimer: If you’re not a psychologist or psychiatrist, this will be a strictly amateur exercise.) We’ve used the pronoun “he,” but research suggests psychologists have underestimated the psychopathic propensity of women.

Can you hear your boss murmur this in his cube? Apparently, you and Homer from “The Simpsons” are not the only ones. According to a recent Fast Company article, psychopaths –- defined as those unburdened by conscience who selfishly use people “callously and remorselessly for their own ends” –- don’t merely exist in corporate America, but are now more than ever harbored in the business environment. In his study involving a half-dozen companies, renowned industrial psychologist Paul Babiak found that the rapid changes the economy has recently undergone have fed corporate psychopaths, who thrive on the thrills of fast transformations.

Apparently, these people succeed because those around them assume they are not fundamentally different from the average compassionate person and that they do care about others’ feelings. This assumption allows corporate psychopaths to prey on those around them. “They have an element of emotional intelligence, of being able to see our emotions very clearly and manipulate them,” says Michael Maccoby, a psychotherapist interviewed for the article who has consulted for major corporations.

But how do you know if your boss is afflicted with this state of mind? Take this quiz, which is based on the standard clinical test for psychopathy. The quiz focuses on the so-called nonviolent “corporate psychopath.” Fast Company notes that this quiz is a “strictly amateur exercise.”

Quiz: Is Your Boss a Psychopath?

[1] Is he glib and superficially charming?
Is he a likable personality and a terrific talker — entertaining, persuasive, but maybe a bit too smooth and slick? Can he pass himself off as a supposed expert in a business meeting even though he really doesn’t know much about the topic? Is he a flatterer? Seductive, but insincere? Does he tell amusing but unlikely anecdotes celebrating his own past? Can he persuade his colleagues to support a certain position this week — and then argue with equal conviction and persuasiveness for the opposite position next week? If he’s a CEO, can he appear on TV and somehow get away without answering the interviewer’s direct questions or saying anything truly substantive?

SCORE__

[2] Does he have a grandiose sense of self-worth?
Does he brag? Is he arrogant? Superior? Domineering? Does he feel he’s above the rules that apply to “little people”? Does he act as though everything revolves around him? Does he downplay his legal, financial, or personal problems, say they’re just temporary, or blame them on others?

SCORE__

[3] Is he a pathological liar?
Has he reinvented his own past in a more positive light — for example, claiming that he rose from a tough, poor background even though he really grew up middle class? Does he lie habitually even though he can easily be found out? When he’s exposed, does he still act unconcerned because he thinks he can weasel out of it? Does he enjoy lying? Is he proud of his knack for deceit? Is it hard to tell whether he knows he’s a liar or whether he deceives himself and believes his own bull?

SCORE__

[4] Is he a con artist or master manipulator?
Does he use his skill at lying to cheat or manipulate other people in his quest for money, power, status, and sex? Does he “use” people brilliantly? Does he engage in dishonest schemes such as cooking the books?

SCORE__

[5] When he harms other people, does he feel a lack of remorse or guilt?
Is he concerned about himself rather than the wreckage he inflicts on others or society at large? Does he say he feels bad but act as though he really doesn’t? Even if he has been convicted of a white-collar crime, such as securities fraud, does he not accept blame for what he did, even after getting out of prison? Does he blame others for the trouble he causes?

SCORE__

[6] Does he have a shallow affect?
Is he cold and detached, even when someone near him dies, suffers, or falls seriously ill — for example, does he visit the hospital or attend the funeral? Does he make brief, dramatic displays of emotion that are nothing more than putting on a theatrical mask and playacting for effect? Does he claim to be your friend but rarely or never ask about the details of your life or your emotional state? Is he one of those tough-guy executives who brag about how emotions are for whiners and losers?

SCORE__

[7] Is he callous and lacking in empathy?
Does he not give a damn about the feelings or well-being of other people? Is he profoundly selfish? Does he cruelly mock others? Is he emotionally or verbally abusive toward employees, “friends,” and family members? Can he fire employees without concern for how they’ll get by without the job? Can he profit from embezzlement or stock fraud without concern for the harm he’s doing to shareholders or pensioners who need their savings to pay for their retirements?

SCORE__

[8] Does he fail to accept responsibility for his own actions?
Does he always cook up some excuse? Does he blame others for what he’s done? If he’s under investigation or on trial for a corporate crime, like deceitful accounting or stock fraud, does he refuse to acknowledge wrongdoing even when the hard evidence is stacked against him?

SCORE__

Total____

If your boss scores:

1-4 | Be frustrated
5-7 | Be cautious
8-12 | Be afraid
13-16 | Be very afraid

http://buddhaspeaksbiz.blogspot.com/2005/07/quiz-is-your-boss-psychopath.html

Are you under attack? Are you really under attack? Is it a “personality clash” or is your nose out of joint after being reprimanded at work. Sometimes people think they are bullied, but they aren’t. That is a fact. It is also a fact that you can be bullied. Bullying is not a once-off clash or a fair reprimand. It is typically unfair, humiliating, malicious and vindictive and intended to harm the victim. Furthermore bullying is persistent, prolonged and happens over a period of time and is likely to challenge the physical and emotional health, safety and well being of the individual. The bully has the power to bully – whether the power is sanctioned, perceived or real.

Once you have become the object of the bully’s unhealthy interest, it could be the beginning of hard times. At first, you may think that it is temporary and that it will pass soon. But as the days and weeks pass by, you will come to the conclusion that you are dealing dysfunctional behavior. You will try to adjust, to “handle” the situation and in the trial and error phase you may find that your best intentions could actually make things worse.

The mistake most targets make is to deny their reality when dealing with a workplace bully. Don’t try to explain bullying behavior in logical terms, because it is neither logical nor decent. It is not the same as schoolyard bullying either. This is a different ball game. The silence, shame and denial accompanying workplace bullying are exactly what the bully needs to succeed.

You start doubting yourself. You could even wonder whether you have done something wrong or could at least be partially blamed for the situation. It is always good to do some self-examination and it won’t harm you to take stock and remove some of the cobwebs in your life before starting the battle against the bully – BUT do it for you, not for the bully.

Because whatever prompted the bully (most of the time they don’t need anything to get them going anyway) you should remember that this is not a personality issue or a personality clash. This is an infringement of your human rights and a denial of your dignity and nothing can justify bullying behavior. You are entitled to be treated with dignity and respect at all times and believe it or not, you are entitled to happiness at work. It is time to stop the silent epidemic at the workplace.

You are not alone!

Many people are or had been bullied at work. You are not the first or the last person to fall prey to this unsocial behavior. But this is said not to comfort you – how can you draw comfort from the fact that others are miserable too? I am telling you this so that you realize that, others share your ordeal too – you are not a freak or a misfit. It is very easy to feel odd when you are a target.

Now that you know you are not the odd one out, it is time to find support. A battle with the bully is uphill and you will need your friends and family to stand by you. Oh yes, you will find those that will immediately think that you are doing things wrong with advise on how to handle the bully. The best is to direct them to this website so that they can understand what workplace bullying is and then they will be able to assist you with more knowledge and empathy.

Join a target support group on the Internet and visit other sites on the topic too. Buy books on workplace bullying and read these. Knowledge is power!

Colleague support is great, but also difficult to find. Many colleagues will make themselves guilty of Groupthink and refuse to differ with the bully (especially if the bully is the boss) or they may just be too scared to support you in case they could become the next victim. But you can rest assured that it is not the first time that your perpetrator bullied someone and you may find valuable advice and support from previous targets and victims or those in the same boat as you.

Support from friends (virtual and otherwise!), family and colleagues are most important – empower them with knowledge and start building your network today! Take good care of yourself. Bullying has a devastating effect on targets or victims – most people suffer from psychosomatic illnesses after prolonged exposure to emotional abuse and you may even suffer from reactive depression, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS or Yuppie Flu) or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in cases of severe bullying. This is a bleak case scenario, but one of the realities of workplace bullying. It is very important that you take good care of yourself and avoid the situation overwhelming your emotional and physical well being.

There are many good books on stress, but I found The Alexander Technique particularly helpful. Exercises and keeping your posture in a relaxed, functional position is of great help. Learn to breathe correctly and do exercises daily. Pay special attention to the neck and shoulders when exercising. Some of the exercises recommended in The Alexander Technique can be done in the office and behind your desk. Whenever you feel the stress mounting, do the exercises – it won’t take the bully away, but it will help you through the day.

Make sure that you get enough sleep. Bullying is draining and you need to sleep well to survive a toxic workplace. If you have difficulty sleeping, try some herbal remedies and don’t eat or drink anything after 8 in the evening. Relax with a book or music before going to bed and remember to cuddle something – your hubby, your dog or a soft toy. If you are not involved or married, let a family member or a friend hug you at least once a week – you are only human and we all need affection, especially during a crisis!

Diaries events.

he worst case scenario is that you and the bully will eventually have to deal with the matter at a grievance or disciplinary hearing or even at a tribunal. Don’t think that it will not get that far. Be alert and keep a diary of events. Small incidents build up – in isolation it may not seem likely to constitute bullying, but courts do take the cumulative effect of these incidents into consideration. Remember that the strongest memory is weaker than the palest ink and you are likely to forget these incidents, especially when suffering from depression. It is very important to keep a record for your own sake. Fight back! Confront the bully

The biggest mistake targets make is to avoid confronting the bully. This is not a pleasant prospect, but you have to be firm and you have to fight for your dignity. You need not be aggressive in confronting the bully, just be assertive and make it clear that you will not be treated in such a manner. When you confront the bully, take a reliable witness with you. If necessary, put it in writing and do it face to face too. If the bully belittle your work, humiliate you are try to put the blame on you, stand your ground. Don’t be intimidated by the bully’s position, tantrums or threats – stand tall on your dignity and give yourself the respect you deserve. If the bully won’t back off, tell him or her in no uncertain terms that you will take the matter further.

Talk to the bully’s boss, if possible. Unless the bully is the MD, he or she will have a boss too. You must take the matter to the boss – either in an interview or in writing. In this case it is a good idea to take a witness with too. But don’t be secretive and tell the bully’s boss not to tell the bully that you complained. Then you might as well shut up. Be clear on what you want – a transfer, the bully transferred or a grievance hearing. If you have no joy, put it in writing and keep copies of all correspondence. If your correspondence is ignored, send reminders at regular intervals, requesting a response and referring to your previous correspondence.

Grievance hearings are geared towards resolving interpersonal conflict rather than bullying and because of a lack of knowledge on the part of management, many victims don’t find any joy at such hearings. In many cases, management would side with the bully, who may be a person in a senior position. Don’t put all your hope for justice on the grievance hearing, but this is an alternative you will have to explore before going onto more drastic steps.

Medical records.

At this point your medical records may become very relevant. If you had been seeing your GP or psychologist about stress-related illnesses or if you are undergoing treatment for depression and stress as a result of the workplace bullying, these records are important. Most countries’ laws – whether under the health and safety act or under labor laws – require that the employer provide a safe and healthy place of work. These relate to emotional health and safety too. Your employer can be brought to book for jeopardizing your emotional health and safety by allowing the bullying and find them ultimately in the position of paying huge sums of money for not protecting employees.

Assistance.

At this point you may want to consider legal advice. There are labor law consultants and attorneys (other countries may have different titles) in South Africa who can advise you on how to go about solving your workplace problem. It is very important to find a good legal representative, but be careful in finding the right person. Some legal eagles gear their business towards corporate clients (it is big money) and may even hope to impress your employer with their “skills” in order to get an account. In the process they may let you down. Spend some time to investigate the prospective representatives before making a choice. Find a legal representative that cares for employees, have ample experience in labor law and preferably specialize in labor law.

Disciplinary hearings.

It is also possible that the bully will drag you to a disciplinary hearing. At this point you should have consulted a legal representative and have this person assist you at the hearing if necessary. Depending on circumstances in the organisation and whether management is open or protects the bully, the disciplinary hearings can, like grievance hearings go wrong because of alliances in the organization. It is not fool-proof and the chances are 50/50 that you will get a fair hearing. However, this remains one of the safeguards provided for in the law to ensure that every possible effort had been made to solve the issue internally.

Tribunals

A tribunal is an independent hearing – in the case of South Africa, by a commissioner of the Council for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) or a Bargaining Council but there is also no guarantee that you will be successful. We all celebrate when someone had been successful at a hearing but statistics indicate the opposite. Very few people are successful and I recommend that you only pursue this option if: you have overwhelming evidence, preferably in writing; good legal presentation – check the legal representative’s past successes and talk to previous clients; reliable witnesses; that you are not too emotionally wounded and that you are very clear in your recollection of events;that you do not have any skeletons in your cupboard that could damage your case (e.g. a record of bad performance); that you are being truthful at all times and are not influenced or pressurized by others.

Workplace Bullying is not defined in the law books. Another problem is that victims sometimes forget what happened or may at times suffer from amnesia and therefore appear not be reliable as witnesses. Time lapse may play a role and witnesses are hard to find – after all, your colleagues simply would not want to sacrifice their careers for you. There are few people who are strong enough to do this for another person – this is the harsh reality. When legal presentation is poor, you could be doomed.

It is important to remember that a tribunal is not a money-making racquet, but that it is there to see that you and the employer are treated fairly and that, if they rule in your favor, you be compensated for losses. But presiding officers and commissioners are human beings with likes and dislikes and could make mistakes and you may need to appeal if they rule in favor of the perpetrator. Understand the risks – while we would like to see justice, these cases tend to go the way of the best legal presentation and the strongest evidence. Your case must be waterproof. Do your homework and don’t take risks.

When it carries on.

But what if the bullying carries on and there is no way out, you’ve tried all the avenues and it is too difficult or cumbersome to prove your case? Although I firmly believe that you have to fight back, expect setbacks but never give up, I also believe that it is not worth the damage should your emotional and physical health deteriorate to the extent that you become dysfunctional. Some people resign, giving their reasons clearly and then go to the department of labour to claim constructive dismissal, or find another job and resign. These are options and resignation is not recommended if you are not comfortable with the idea that you may not find another job again, it is a last resort – ultimately, you cannot let a toxic environment destroy you. Fight it to the bitter end, but don’t let it destroy you and get out as soon as you can, but be sensible about your financial position.

Personal empowerment and survival tips
You are more resilient than you think…
I advised a victim some time ago:

Thought I’d let you have some extracts on empowerment from Corporate Hyenas at Work for the group’s benefit. Although we use the term fighting, this includes empowerment and professional help – anything that will help the victim turn to victor is part of the fight and Gary and Ruth are rightly concerned about the woman’s ability to deal with the problem while she is in tears even before going to work. Here are some excerpts that could be useful and you and the other victims:

FROM SURVIVAL TO EMPOWERMENT:

Thousands of years ago, the San (Bushmen) realized that the only way people stood some chance against the hyena during a hunting trip was to be taller than the animal”. (Children were not allowed to hunt with parents unless they were at least a head taller) “Today this age-old truth still applies at the workplace. Mental and not physical power is required when you are locked in a battle for survival.

There is a lot to be learn from observing animals in nature when the fight for survival is on. When endangered, they run for dear life. Without any training or guidance they also know not to run in a different direction from the rest of the pack”. (Collective bargaining, standing together and caring for one another) “They instinctively know there is safety in numbers. When the hunt is over, even if one of their members did become a victim, they regroup and continue with their daily lives. They also know that the strongest and the swiftest will survive and that special protection is necessary for the young. Animals know we live in the beauty and dangers of our world”

STAY ALIVE

“When lions are injured, they muster their last bit of strength to stay alive and keep the hyenas at bay. They take shelter in a safe place to recover in isolation, and join with the pack when they are well again. This lesson applies to the Corporate Ecosystem too”.

“When a Corporate Hyena is after your blood, survival becomes top priority, even if it means that you have to spend time in strange and inconvenient places”.

“Remember that even strong predators like lions take shelter in trees should they be outnumbered by hyenas. Don’t be proud or preoccupied with and concerned about your image when your general well-being and financial survival are at stake.”

“Take “shelter” if necessary. Don’t do, say or sign anything foolish. Work wisely with your emotional resources. To stay alive is your responsibility. To fight back is your right”

“Studies relating to the role of personal factors in people who survived tragedies and setbacks have identified certain attitudes, beliefs and values, together with a strong conviction of their own ability to overcome it. They also seemed to have a positive approach to life and the will to overcome adversity. Once again, look at the recovery process in nature. If a thorn tree is damaged, it uses its own gum as ointment in the healing process over a period of time. The scars are the only reminders.

Healing is in our hands. With the right attitude and using the remedies life itself provides. Tragedy does not mean the end of the road. It can lead to new territory, new problems, new challenges, possibilities and opportunities. It takes bold courage, but through the centuries many people have dared to do it.

To bounce back from adversity is the ideal attitude. For most people, handling setbacks is a gradual, step-by-step process”……. “When experiencing a setback at work, try the following

- see things for what they are – put it behind you as soon as possible
- don’t let your world crumble
- go to gym or do something to vent your frustrations
- rise above your circumstances
- live for today
- realize that the situation is temporary “this too will pass”
- react positively to rays of sunlight during these dark days
- never give up.

On a very personal note, during my darkest days I made the song “Just hold on tight to your dreams” my personal slogan and I never stopped singing the phrase. Pick a song or a slogan and believe in it.

Nothing beats determination.

And remember, you are stronger and more resilient than you think: very few people ever scratch the surface of their ability, many go through life without ever discovering themselves – make this a time to discover your strengths. We’ve watched a baboon in a tree being threatened by a jaguar. The baboon did not have a chance, but then he jumped to the thinnest branch and hung on there because he knew that if the jaguar tried to get hold of him there, the jaguar would fall. Create safe havens for yourselves, as a group and as individuals. Hope this gives you courage for the battle.· Remember that you are more than your job. Don’t define yourself in terms of the position you hold. It is dangerous. According to Richard Bolles (“What is the colour of your Parachute”) we are all likely to lose a job to retrenchment or dismissal at least two times in our careers.· Get a theme song like that crazy TV character, Ally McBeal. When the bully gets you down, replay this in your mind for empowerment. Choose an encouraging slogan for yourself like “I never give up” and if you have a cartoon to go with it, even better. Put it in a prominent place and live it!· When you feel that you cannot cope, visit a psychiatrist or psychologist and ask them to help you strengthen your resilience to fight the bully or talk to friends and loved ones. Having support and someone listening to you as very important.· Take a break and don’t stay at home. Get in touch with nature, go for long walks, see the sun rise, hear the waves break… get in touch with nature to heal from the hurt.· Read about workplace bullying.· Visualize yourself as being protected against the bully. Many believers visualize a protection by a Deity from your religious background and belief system – this is powerful in reducing the hurt inflicted by the bully.· Don’t be bitter and don’t hate. Get rid of your anger and hate the behavior, not the person doing it to you.· Find strength in your spirituality or faith and believe that you will grow from the experience – and you will.

If the system (grievance hearing, disciplinary hearing or tribunal) failed you, don’t be despondent – keep on fighting, know when to give and do it for your own and others’ sake.

Dr Susan’s Guide

Generally, a group will cycle through four distinct stages. In the stage of Pseudo-Community, the group is characterized by polite interaction as individuals “test the waters” of relationship, operating on the assumption that group members have few differences that divide them. As the group continues to talk, the previously unspoken differences begin to emerge. Typically, participants deal with the discomfort caused by the discovery of difference by seeking to “fix” others or to “convert” people to their point of view. In this stage, there is often limited listening, high emotional energy, and a significant level of frustration. This stage has been labeled chaos.

Groups regularly deal with the confusion of chaos by retreating to the stage of pseudo-community or by attempting to organize in some way. Neither of these avenues leads to a deep level of connection with others. A difficult, but effective way to transcend the barriers to relationship lies through emptiness. Emptying happens when individuals begin to notice what they are carrying within themselves that prevents them from being authentically present with the group and fully accepting others. As people begin to share what is real for them, personal experience of the present moment in the group, prejudices, stories of past pain or joy, unfulfilled expectations, group members begin to come together in a new way. In this stage, a group will often feel like it is dying but, in the painful struggle to let go of the barriers to relationship, there is opportunity for something new to emerge.

The process of emptying provides room for a group to receive the gift of Community. In this stage people experience a deep acceptance of others and find themselves accepted as well. Individuals come to know themselves and others in new ways. Differences still exist but they are transcended and celebrated rather than suppressed. The group is characterized by a sense of profound respect, appreciation and joy.

Each of these stages is part of healthy community. A group will not rest undisturbed in the fourth stage but continue to cycle through all the stages. A gift of this process is that people acquire skills to enable continued movement through the stages instead of being stuck in places of division. Community Building provides an opportunity for people to learn how to come together authentically and truthfully in ways that encourage wholeness in relationship.

Peck says that community has three essential ingredients:

Inclusivity
Commitment
Consensus

Based on his experience with community building workshops, Peck says that community building typically goes through four stages:

Pseudocommunity: This is a stage where the members pretend to have a bon homie with one another, and cover up their differences, by acting as if the differences do not exist. Pseudocommunity can never directly lead to community, and it is the job of the person guiding the community building process to shorten this period as much as possible.

Chaos: When pseudocommunity fails to work, the members start falling upon each other, giving vent to their mutual disagreements and differences. This is a period of chaos]. It is a time when the people in the community realize that differences cannot simply be ignored. Chaos looks counterproductive but it is the first genuine step towards community building.

Emptiness: After chaos comes emptiness. At this stage, the people learn to empty themselves of those ego related factors that are preventing their entry into community. Emptiness is a tough step because it involves the death of a part of the individual. But, Scott Peck argues, this death paves the way for the birth of a new creature, the Community.

True community: Having worked through emptiness, the people in community are in complete empathy with one another. There is a great level of tacit understanding. People are able to relate to each other’s feelings. Discussions, even when heated, never get sour, and motives are not questioned.

The four stages of community formation are somewhat related to a model in organization theory for the five stages that a team goes through during development. These five stages are:

Forming: where the team members have some initial discomfort with each other but nothing comes out in the open. They are insecure about their role and position with respect to the team. This corresponds to the initial stage of pseudocommunity.

Storming: where the team members start arguing heatedly and differences and insecurities come out in the open. This corresponds to the second stage given by Scott Peck, namely chaos.

Norming: where the team members lay out rules and guidelines for interaction that help define the roles and responsibilities of each person. This corresponds to emptiness, where the community members think within and empty themselves of their obsessions to be able to accept and listen to others.

Performing: where the team finally starts working as a cohesive whole, and effectively achieve the tasks set of themselves. In this stage individuals are aided by the group as a whole where necessary, in order to move further collectively than they could achieve as a group of separated individuals.

Transforming: This corresponds to the stage of true community. This represents the stage of celebration, and when individuals leave, as they must, there is a genuine feeling of grief, and a desire to meet again. Traditionally this stage was often called “Mourning”.

It is in this third stage that Peck’s community-building methods differ in principle from team development. While teams in business organizations need to develop explicit rules, guidelines and protocols during the norming stage, the emptiness’ stage of community building is characterized, not by laying down the rules explicitly, but by shedding the resistance within the minds of the individuals.

Peck started the Foundation for Community Encouragement (FCE) to promote the formation of communities, which, he argues, are a first step towards uniting humanity and saving us from self destruction.

The Blue Heron Farm is an intentional community in central North Carolina whose founders stated that they were inspired by Peck’s writings on community, although Peck himself had no involvement with this project.

The meaning of true community:

Peck describes what he considers to be the most salient characteristics of a true community. Inclusivity, commitment and consensus: Members accept and embrace each other, celebrating their individuality and transcending their differences. They commit themselves to the effort and the people involved. They make decisions and reconcile their differences through consensus.

Realism: Members bring together multiple perspectives to better understand the whole context of the situation. Decisions are more well-rounded and humble, rather than one-sided and arrogant.

Contemplation: Members examine themselves. They are individually and collectively self-aware of the world outside themselves, the world inside themselves, and the relationship between the two.

A safe place: Members allow others to share their vulnerability, heal themselves, and express who they truly are.

A laboratory for personal disarmament: Members experientially discover the rules for peacemaking and embrace its virtues. They feel and express compassion and respect for each other as fellow human beings.

A group that can fight gracefully: Members resolve conflicts with wisdom and grace. They listen and understand, respect each others’gifts, accept each others’limitations, celebrate their differences, bind each others’wounds, and commit to a struggle together rather than against each other.

A group of all leaders: Members harness the “flow of leadership” to make decisions and set a course of action. It is the spirit of community itself that leads and not any single individual.

Spirit: The true spirit of community is the spirit of peace, love, wisdom and power. Members may view the source of this spirit as an outgrowth of the collective self or as the manifestation of a Higher Will.

Bibliography:

he Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth (Simon & Schuster, 1978)

People of the Lie: The Hope For Healing Human Evil (Simon & Schuster, 1983)

What Return Can I Make? Dimensions of the Christian Experience(Simon & Schuster, 1985) (republished by Harpers in 1995 under the new title, Gifts For the Journey: Treasures of the Christian Life)

The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace (Simon & Schuster, 1987)

A Bed By the Window: A Novel of Mystery and Redemption (Bantam, 1990)

The Friendly Snowflake: A Fable of Faith, Love and Family (Turner Publishing, Inc., 1992)

A World Waiting To Be Born: Civility Rediscovered (Bantam, 1993)

Meditations From the Road (Simon & Schuster, 1993)

Further Along the Road Less Traveled (Simon & Schuster, 1993)

In Search of Stones: A Pilgrimage of Faith, Reason and Discovery (Hyperion 1995)

In Heaven As On Earth: A Vision of the Afterlife (Hyperion, 1996)

The Road Less Traveled and Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety (Simon & Schuster, 1997)

Denial of the Soul: Spiritual and Medical Perspectives in Euthanasia and Mortality (Harmony Books (Crown), 1997)

Golf and the Spirit: Lessons for the Journey (Harmony Books, 1999)

Glimpses of the Devil: A Psychiatrist’s Personal Accounts of Possession, Exorcism, and Redemption (Free Press, January 19, 2005)

A performing model of group development was first proposed by Bruce Tuckman in 1965, who maintained that these phases are all necessary and inevitable in order for the team to grow, to face up to challenges, to tackle problems, to find solutions, to plan work, and to deliver results. This model has become the basis for subsequent models of group development and team dynamics and a management theory frequently used to describe the behavior of existing teams. It has also taken a firm hold in the field of experiential education since in many outdoor education centers team building and leadership development are key goals.

Forming:

In the first stages of team building, the forming of the team takes place. The team meets and learns about the opportunity and challenges, and then agrees on goals and begins to tackle the tasks. Team members tend to behave quite independently. They may be motivated but are usually relatively uninformed of the issues and objectives of the team. Team members are usually on their best behavior but very focused on themselves. Mature team members begin to model appropriate behavior even at this early phase. Sharing the knowledge of the concept of “Teams – Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing” is extremely helpful to the team.

Supervisors of the team tend to need to be directive during this phase.

The forming stage of any team is important because in this stage the members of the team get to know one another and make new friends. This is also a good opportunity to see how each member of the team works as an individual and how they respond to pressure.

Storming:

Every group will then enter the storming stage in which different ideas compete for consideration. The team addresses issues such as what problems they are really supposed to solve, how they will function independently and together and what leadership model they will accept. Team members open up to each other and confront each other’s ideas and perspectives.

In some cases storming can be resolved quickly. In others, the team never leaves this stage. The maturity of some team members usually determines whether the team will ever move out of this stage. Immature team members will begin acting out to demonstrate how much they know and convince others that their ideas are correct. Some team members will focus on minutiae to evade real issues.

The storming stage is necessary to the growth of the team. It can be contentious, unpleasant and even painful to members of the team who are averse to conflict. Tolerance of each team member and their differences needs to be emphasized. Without tolerance and patience the team will fail. This phase can become destructive to the team and will lower motivation if allowed to get out of control.

Supervisors of the team during this phase may be more accessible but tend to still need to be directive in their guidance of decision-making and professional behavior.

Norming:

At some point, the team may enter the norming stage. Team members adjust their behavior to each other as they develop work habits that make teamwork seem more natural and fluid. Team members often work through this stage by agreeing on rules, values, professional behavior, shared methods, working tools and even taboos. During this phase, team members begin to trust each other. Motivation increases as the team gets more acquainted with the project.

Teams in this phase may lose their creativity if the norming behaviors become too strong and begin to stifle healthy dissent and the team begins to exhibit groupthink.

Supervisors of the team during this phase tend to be participative more than in the earlier stages. The team members can be expected to take more responsibility for making decisions and for their professional behavior.

Performing:

Some teams will reach the performing stage. These high-performing teams are able to function as a unit as they find ways to get the job done smoothly and effectively without inappropriate conflict or the need for external supervision. Team members have become interdependent. By this time they are motivated and knowledgeable. The team members are now competent, autonomous and able to handle the decision-making process without supervision. Dissent is expected and allowed as long as it is channelled through means acceptable to the team.

Supervisors of the team during this phase are almost always participative. The team will make most of the necessary decisions. Even the most high-performing teams will revert to earlier stages in certain circumstances. Many long-standing teams will go through these cycles many times as they react to changing circumstances. For example, a change in leadership may cause the team to revert to storming as the new people challenge the existing norms and dynamics of the team.

Wikipedia

Guilds are sometimes said to be the precursors of modern trade unions, and also, paradoxically, of some aspects of the modern corporation. Guilds, however, were groups of self-employed skilled craftsmen with ownership and control over the materials and tools they needed to produce their goods. Guilds were, in other words, small business associations and thus had very little in common with trade unions. If anything, guilds were more like cartels than they were like trade unions (Olson 1982). However, the journeymen organizations, which were at the time illegal, may have been influential.

The exclusive privilege of a guild to produce certain goods or provide certain services was similar in spirit and character with the original patent systems that surfaced in England in 1624. These systems played a role in ending the guilds’ dominance, as trade secret methods were superseded by modern firms directly revealing their techniques, and counting on the state to enforce their legal monopoly.

Some guild traditions still remain in a few handicrafts, in Europe especially among shoemakers and barbers. Some of the ritual traditions of the guilds were conserved in order organizations such as the Freemasons. These are, however, not very important economically except as reminders of the responsibilities of some trades toward the public.

Modern antitrust law could be said to be derived in some ways from the original statutes by which the guilds were abolished in Europe.

Modern guilds exist in different forms around the world. In many European countries guilds have had a revival as local organizations for craftsmen, primarily in traditional skills. They may function as fora for developing competence and are often the local units of a national employers organization.

In the United States guilds exist in several fields. The Screen Actors Guild, Writers Guild of America, East and the Writers Guild of America, west are capable of exercising very strong control in Hollywood because a very strong and rigid system of intellectual property rights exists (as with some medieval trades). These guilds exclude other actors and writers who do not abide by the strict rules for competing within the film and television industry in America. The Newspaper Guild is a labor union for journalists and other newspaper workers, with over 30,000 members in North America.

Quilting guilds are also very common and are found in almost all areas of the United States.

Real estate brokerage is an excellent example of a modern American guild. Telltale signs of guild behavior are on display in real estate brokerage: standard pricing (6% of the home price), strong affiliation among all practitioners, self-regulation (see National Association of Realtors), strong cultural identity (see Realtor), little price variation with quality differences, and traditional methods in use by all practitioners. In September 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against the National Association of Realtors challenging NAR practices that, DOJ asserts, prevent competition from practitioners who use different methods. The DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission in 2005 advocated against state laws, supported by NAR, that disadvantage new kinds of brokers. For a description of the DOJ action, see [1]. U.S. v. National Assoc. of Realtors, U.S. District Court Norther District Illinois, Eastern Division, September 7, 2005, Civil Action No. 05C-5140.

The practice of law in the United States is also an example of modern guilds at work. Every state maintains its own Bar Association, supervised by that state’s highest court. The court decides the criteria for being admitted to, and remaining a member of, the legal profession. In most states, every attorney must be a member of that state’s Bar in order to practice law. State laws forbid any person from engaging in the unauthorized practice of law and practicing attorneys are subject to rules of professional conduct that are enforced by the state’s high court.

Other associations which can be classified as guilds, though it isn’t evident in their names, include the American Medical Association and the American Bar Association.

Scholars from the history of ideas have noticed that consultants play a part similar to that of the journeymen of the guild systems: they often travel a lot, work at many different companies and spread new practices and knowledge between companies and corporations.

Many professional organizations similarly resemble the guild structure. Professions such as architecture, engineering, and land surveying require varying lengths of apprenticeships before one can be granted a ‘professional’ certification. These certifications hold great legal weight and are required in most states as a prerequisite to doing business there.

Thomas Malone of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology champions a modern variant of the guild structure for modern “e-lancers”, professionals who do mostly telework for multiple employers. Insurance including any professional liability, intellectual capital protections, an ethical code perhaps enforced by peer pressure and software, and other benefits of a strong association of producers of knowledge, benefit from economies of scale, and may prevent cut-throat competition that leads to inferior services undercutting prices. And, as with historical guilds, resist foreign competition.

The free software community has from time to time explored a guild-like structure to unite against competition from Microsoft, e.g. Advogato assigns journeyer and master ranks to those committing to work only or mostly on free software. Debian also publishes a list of what constitutes free software.

In the City of London, the ancient guilds survive as Livery Companies, most of which play a ceremonial role. Guilds also survive in the UK in Preston, Lancashire as the Preston Guild Merchant where among other celebrations descendants of Burgesses are still admitted into membership.

In Australia there exists the Guild of Commercial Filmmakers, a collection of commercial, short film and feature filmmakers.

In online computer games players form groups called Player guilds.

Wikipedia

I want to talk about how healthy the people are in the United States of America, why we are less healthy now than we should be, how we used to be much healthier, in comparison to other countries, and what we need to do to regain our health ranking. To consider the reasons, we have to address issues of poverty for that is the critical concept that is related to health. I will talk a great deal about one critical form of poverty, relative poverty, how you compare to others, and how that affects our health. I will say that more than bringing the bottom up, we have to bring the top down. I will give a prescription for health.

It is really difficult to talk about poverty in the United States of America, because many people don’t identify with being poor. We are mostly all middle-class here, right? Being poor is a bad choice of words to use because it stigmatizes. So I will deal with you who are families and working people, and people with low income but who may still be struggling to make ends meet. To admit that you are poor in America might mean that you will be permanently poor, especially in the land of the American Dream, namely that before we die, we will all achieve wealth, happiness and prosperity–own our home, the big car and other symbols of success. It all depends on us, that we have to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, work hard, and we can achieve anything we want. Arent we entitled to that? That is all that Bill Gates did. Or Magic Johnson. Or Oprah Winfrey. I don’t know if that is true, some people would say that Bill Gates was born into a very privileged family. The facts show we have much more poverty in the USA today than in all the other rich countries. That is not good.

In the 1950s, my father repaired shoes, and we lived above the shoe repair store in a tiny apartment. We didn’t have a car for a long time. We also lived in a working class neighborhood, where everyone else was pretty much in the same shoes as we were. Although we had a TV by 1953, the programming back then was pretty basic, and didn’t display lifestyles of the rich and famous, so we didn’t get a sense of how little we had and we weren’t made to want. So I never thought of myself as having less than other people until I went to college and made friends with people who went off to Europe in the summer. Who had vacation homes. Then I thought of myself as working class or lower class. In fact, I remember well having a discussion with a friend of mine in graduate school at Harvard University in which I described myself as working class, or lower class. He said, there was no way you could get to Harvard and be working class as was the case in the 1960s. After graduate school, I spent a year in Nepal, a little country sandwiched along the highest mountains in the world, where Mount Everest sits. There were no roads there then, and still there are very few so to get somewhere you had to walk. There were no lodges or hotels then, so the few travelers there stayed in people’s homes, ate their food, and slept around the fire on the mud floor, just as the families did together with the children and grandparents. These people had next to nothing, yet they didn’t seem to want anything. I know now why they didn’t want anything. There was no advertising of the things they should want. I spent a whole year totally without any form of advertising. It was a profound experience. So these people had the basics, food, water and shelter, and the love and company of their family and community. And they shared this with me. They laughed, played, never let their children cry and seemed happy, and I know they were. But you would call them desperately poor if you saw their situation today.

Some of you might say I am romanticizing the situation, describing the noble savage. I used to think maybe I was wrong, but I’m now convinced that happiness and satisfaction are not something you buy.

What about poverty and health? I have been working as a medical doctor for 30 years, much of that spent in emergency rooms, trying to look after people’s health problems that arise quickly, I started doing emergency care in 1977 because I thought that is was really helpful for people.

I’ve continued to practice in emergency rooms in the US for the ensuing 25 years. I occasionally thought about the kind of people that I would see in the ER, the kind of people having accidents, or heart attacks, or as parents of sick kids. Mostly they seem to have one thing in common, they are not rich people, they aren’t wealthy.

Now much of my time has been spent working in ER’s in Burien, White Center, Tacoma, and Lakewood, as well as near the Central District in Seattle. There are a lot of low-income people living there, struggling to make ends meet. But I also worked in Bellevue, near where the richest person in the world lives, as well as the home of other billionaires, and multi-millionaires. What kind of patients did I see in the ER in Bellevue? Were they rich? Well, occasionally, I would see someone that I would surmise was well off, but for the most part, the rich didn’t come, even to a hospital in a rich neighborhood. You might say that when they were in a hospital gown, or strapped to a stretcher, that it would be hard to tell if they were rich or not. But even stripped naked, it isn’t hard to tell. For one thing, people with low incomes often interact with people differently. Often they don’t make eye contact with you, but look down. And when they do look at you, their eyes betray a tough life. Sometimes they are angry and rushed, wondering why they have to wait for so long. For another, they tend to be more obese, sometimes much more.

They tend to use words differently, when we talk. They might say “Doc I have this serious pain in my stomach,” for example, rather than saying “Doctor, I’m having some discomfort in my abdomen that is associated with some loose movements.” You might think I am saying that low-income people are dumb, and didn’t do well in English at school. They are certainly not stupid, and they speak English different from the rich, but it ain’t wrong to speak that way.

I began to think that maybe poorer people got sick more than rich people. You might counter that and say no, the rich have their own private doctors and don’t go to ER’s but call their doctors anytime of the day or night. Surely that wouldn’t be true in the middle of the night, whether at a hospital that serves the poor or one that serves the rich. You have to come to the hospital when your appendix bursts in the middle of the night, whether youre rich or poor.

What do YOU think? Are rich people as sick as working class people or people with low incomes? Raise your hands if you think so?

The studies overwhelming show that for every health condition, for every disease, for every cause of death, those who have lower incomes have it much worse than those who have fatter paychecks. In other words, if you work where you have to see sick people, such as in emergency departments, you are going to see poorer people for the most part, no matter whether your hospital sits in a wealthy neighborhood, or a poor one. Coming to see that, namely that poorer people had poorer health, was a major revelation for me. Now I’m not saying that all rich people live long healthy lives and the people of more modest means live shorter sicker lives. We all know of counter-examples to that. The tragedy of Princess Diana comes to mind. But as a statement about populations, about communities, wherever you look at it, poorer people have poorer health. The next question I asked was WHY this was so.

So why do people with lower incomes get sick more? Is it because they smoke more, which they do? Is it because they drink more, which they may do? Is it because they shoot up more heroin, which is true? Is it because they eat more, which is true? Is it because they don’t exercise as much, because they don’t?

Well, the studies show, that such behaviors that we consider bad for health explain only about 10% of the reason that poorer people have poorer health. Learning this has been a revelation for me over the last ten years. I used to get complaints in the ER for keeping harping on people to quit smoking. For a chronic lunger who continues to deteriorate and keeps his two pack a day habit, patient’s families would say to the administrator that all I would do is tell him to quit. Isn’t there something else you could do, he’s trying to quit but can’t. Like most of us, I used to blame sick people for their behaviors that made them sick. But I don’t now, I blame myself for allowing the rules that govern our society change to produce the behaviors that are bad for us.

Is it because lower income people can’t afford health care? Is that why they get sick more? It is tempting to say that is the reason, but it isn’t. I know some of you here may not have health insurance. Perhaps some of you have huge medical bills that you are struggling to pay. Health care, or the lack of it, doesn’t explain why poorer people have poorer health. Consider the Hispanic population. They don’t access health care much, they tend to not have medical insurance, they tend not to go to the doctor. Countless studies show this and it represents a cause for concern. What is often not stated is that Hispanic people tend to be healthier than non-Hispanic whites. And it isn’t because they don’t go to see doctors, although that is a tempting thought. As a rule, most Hispanics are comparatively less well off than non-Hispanic whites, so later we will consider why they may be an exception to the poorer people have poorer health concept.

I expect you to be skeptical on this, but I would like to proceed with the observation that it is people of lesser means that are sicker, and it is not their behaviors such as smoking or diet that makes them sicker, for the most part. And it isn’t access to medical care, or the kind of medical care people receive that accounts for the difference. Again, there are a lot of studies and science on the subject, and I’m asking you to suspend your disbelief and let me go on.

By its very nature, medical care can’t have much to do with health. To consider why, I make the analogy that medical care’s role is the same as that of the army medical corps in keeping us healthy. You’ve been reading about all these soldiers that are coming home from Iraq with legs blown off, or other serious injuries. Our media has been forbidden to show coffins of our troops coming home, but there have been many deaths, as you know. Now the army medical corps goes in after the blast and picks up the victims, splints the limbs, starts IV’s, transports them to where they can get blood, and then to a field hospital station where bullet holes are closed. There heroics are carried out and hopefully the stricken soldiers survive. We feel grateful in such cases. But most casualties, those who die, are killed outright by the blast, by the bullet or bomb. The army medical corps can’t do anything for them. The army medical corps did not decide that we were going to invade Iraq, they didn’t decide the battle strategies, that we were going to bomb targets including civilians, from the air, that later we would send in ground troops. They didn’t decide on the day-to-day combat decisions. They didn’t decide on the protective gear that troops would wear. All they do is go in and pick up the pieces, those fortunate ones who still have signs of life. That is the best that medical care can do, try to keep the survivors alive. So by its nature, medical care can’t have much of an impact on health, despite what you are led to believe. In my courses at the University of Washington, I go into great detail about this, and as a practicing doctor, I believe this is true. Colleagues of mine, who have considered the issue of what medical care does in making communities healthy, agree, as do the experts who write papers and books on this subject. That is not to say that I don’t believe in medical care. I work as a doctor providing medical care, and I teach young doctors as well. And if I get sick, I see a doctor. And if I collapse here on the podium, I want you to call 911. But we should not deceive ourselves that this is what makes us healthy as a population. I’m sure you think this sounds weird, counter-intuitive if you will.

I expect you to be skeptical on this, but I would like to proceed with the observation that it is people of lesser means that are sicker, and it is not their behaviors such as smoking or diet that makes them sicker, for the most part nor is it access to health care.

I hope by now you are asking why poorer people have poorer health. That is the right question to be thinking of. Thomas Pynchon wrote in Gravity’s Rainbow: “if they can get you asking the wrong question, the answers don’t matter.” I think we ask too many wrong questions in America today. What does matter most is the nature of our relationships with each other, the social nature of ourselves, the psychosocial element, if you will. Let’s explore that.

Think of health as the expression of our life experiences. We all know the physical effect that stress has on our minds and bodies, our immune systems and our ability to fight off diseases. The reason poorer people have poorer health has something to do with the basic nature of living with and in poverty, especially what you live amidst plenty and have that rubbed in your face. That is what being a family living with low income is all about.

If I were to ask you in this room, how many of you consider yourselves poor, I think fewer hands would go up, than if I asked you if you were middle class. What is that all about? If you admit you are poor, you are shaming yourself, and feeling shamed is the essential human emotion when it comes to understanding an important aspect of health. Now many people with lower incomes, many disadvantaged people, won’t admit feeling shame, but feel the shame deep inside, nevertheless. Doesnt it make sense that these feelings would have a strong impact on our physical, as well as mental health?

So what does being poor mean? What is poverty, or living with lower incomes all about in the USA? Or in Seattle? Let’s start by leaving out the homeless. There are more than a million homeless children in the USA, the richest and most powerful country in world history. I don’t know how many homeless there are in total in the US, but I’ve seen statistics quoting 1.5 million in California alone. The 2001 One Night Count accounted for 7,350 people who are homeless in King County. I would imagine the number for the whole country is probably somewhere between 10 and 20 million, and could be a lot higher. For those of you who are older like me, if you think back 25 years and reflect on whether or not you saw any homeless people, you would probably find that you didn’t. And the studies show that as well. Not that there weren’t any then, but you might see one in a week or a month instead of one every few minutes in some areas. . The reason for the homeless is that Ronald Reagan cut funding for low-cost housing in 1981, and right after that, there they were on the streets. But I said I wasn’t going to delve into poverty among the homeless and will stop at this point.

So what about the poor, people who are almost homeless, for that is what the situation is like. These people are often one paycheck away from being evicted. In Washington, a worker earning the minimum wage (7.01 per hour) must work 86 hours per week in order to afford a two-bedroom unit at the states median Fair Market Rent But even if you are not so poor, is it because you don’t have enough to eat? A roof over your head? Central heating? Is it because you don’t have a microwave, or a refrigerator? Is it because you don’t have a TV and VCR? Is it because you don’t have a cell phone? No, many low income people have all these items, they aren’t close to being evicted, and yet they feel disadvantaged. Fifty years ago, the rich didn’t have microwaves ovens, or VCR’s or cellular phones. But now many low-income families have them. So it is important to note that being less well off is not about not having stuff such as items like cellular phones and VCR’s that might have been considered science fiction devices fifty years ago. Being less well off is about feeling that you don’t have the choices that the more well off do. It is not about the stuff you have. I said that it is people with low incomes who are obese, so they have enough to eat. People in the subsidized housing areas have a lot of stuff. Still they feel disadvantaged, and as my years of experience in emergency departments demonstrated, they are the ones who get sick. And so in a very profound sense, these people are disadvantaged in the most important way, namely they don’t live as long or as healthy lives as do the rich.

Take me at this point. I’m certainly not poor now. As I said, I grew up in a working class neighborhood, and my father repaired shoes. We lived above his shoe store. I mentioned how I didn’t feel poor until I left my neighborhood and was amongst people who had more than me and had greater choices than I did. Then I began to feel poor. In other words, I began to feel poor when I began to make comparisons of myself and my situation, with other people. By now, I have flooded you with the concept of class, I’m waging class warfare as some politicians might say. We have to be honest, this is what today is all about. It is class warfare. There is a war going on right now and it is the rich who are attacking everybody else. In fact this war has been going on for the last ten thousand years. Class Warfare is worse these last few years although our leaders would deny that it even exists. The weapons of class warfare are symbolic missiles, shot through our media– TV, movies, magazines, and the internet. And it starts at a very young age. What are really pornography internet sites that our children are exposed to are not the crass sex that dirty old men like me would like to look at, but the Nike websites, or the movie stars web sites. The Nike sites display their shoes and the stars their environments. These are signs that the rich are winning the class warfare battles. Another sign is that people with low incomes are naming their newborns Gucci and Armani and other icons found on designer labels. In ER’s I see people who have been attacked and robbed, and the key thing the robber got away with were their fancy new Nike tennies.

The essence of class warfare is that the rich make you compare yourself with others that you consider better off than you are. That is their weapon, their scud missile. IF you are rich, it doesn’t mean you have more stuff, necessarily. It means that you can have it if you want it. You can do what you want. My friend Raymond, who made a lot of money, said he took care of his problems with the check principle. If he had a problem, he would find someone to take care of it and write them a check. Most of us can’t do that.

Our societies today are like baboon troops in Africa, for example. There is the alpha male, or the top dog, and there are those in the pecking order below the alpha male. The alpha male gets the best food, and the pick of the females to mate with. The beta and gamma males have very different lives. Those lower down are always on alert that the alpha male will take the choice bit of food they have found, or chase them away from the female they were going to mate with. Their lives are under constant stress. We know that the alpha male is healthier than the beta and gamma males, the alphas have different physiology, a different stress response, than the baboons lower down. The gamma males, the lower ranking baboons are less healthy than the high ranking ones. Human studies show the same thing, that is people with low incomes have the stress responses of low ranking baboons.

So with baboons or humans, being lower down in the status ladder means you suffer more from chronic stress. This results in higher blood pressures, less ability to control glucose in the blood and so more adult onset diabetes, which we are seeing in younger and younger children as they are under more stress. This results in fat deposition around the waist and hips. This results in more plaque in coronary arteries that supply the heart and so we have more heart attacks in poorer people. Those lower down the status ladder have less ability to fight infection because their immune systems aren’t as efficient. They are less able to search and destroy cancer cells.

So having low income in America is knowing that you aren’t in the same league with those having higher status in our society. You generally don’t do as well in school. You are more likely to be raised in a home where your mother has to work at several jobs to make ends meet. You may not know who your father is. You won’t have the fancy car, or designer-label clothes, and won’t go to France for the weekend. Or more likely, you will have the status Nike shoes, and will spend for those icons of status, and not be able to afford health care. You will tend to eat at fast food places, and shop in convenience stores. If you have a car, you will pay more money for gasoline, unless you travel to the cheaper gas stations, which are often not in poorer parts of town. If you don’t have a car, you will be riding the shame train, or the bus. And you won’t feel so secure walking down the street.

It begins way back when you were just a gleam in your parent’s eyes. That is the effects of class and ranking and social status began to effect your parent’s physiology and thus your biology to have an affect on your health. The most important time is from conception to age 2.

Perhaps you have a job, doing work that needs to be done. You do it well. Jobs that some might consider menial, such as working as custodian in a building after hours when the executives go home. Or you may work as a nurses aid in a nursing home. Or you may work at that convenience store, or be flipping burgers. You may find yourself suppressing your rage when the boss goes by. But if you are nice enough, you might get a Christmas present at the end of the year. Even if you are nice enough, you might get laid off in the next economic downturn. Most likely, you will have two or three jobs, all of them part-time, with no security or benefits. Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, talked about the booming economy in the 1990s being partly because of a flexible labor force. Namely, workers worked for very low wages and could be laid off at will. I’m sure you will agree that it is good for the economy to be flexible like that but it sure isn’t good for you or for your health to feel that insecure.

One thing that has happened in the last 30 years is that more people are not doing well in America. Not only are the homeless out in droves, but poverty, no matter how you measure it, has increased dramatically over this period of incredible prosperity in America. This isn’t just true in America, but worldwide as I’m sure you are aware. There are many more poor people, the biblical promise is true “the poor ye shall always have with ye” only it might say the poor shall be ever more with you. This in a time of phenomenal wealth.

So my main point is that the culture of poverty, the culture of inequality that surrounds us is what has the most significant effect on our health. Let me clarify this idea a little bit. Those at every rung of society’s ladder from the top to the bottom will have their health determined by where they stand in the ladder of social status in society. The poorer you are the worse your health in comparison to others.

Stated very simply, societies with a bigger gap between those on top and those on the bottom will be less healthy than societies where there is a smaller gap. To illustrate this, let us look at the health of the United States of America, measured by life expectancy, say, the average number of years lived in this country. Fifty-five years ago, we were one of the healthiest countries in the world by this measure. Today, there are some 25 countries that are healthier than we are. Think of it, all the other rich countries are healthier than we are, and a number of poor ones as well. It isn’t just this one measure of health–life expectancy– in which we do poorly, but in every other measure, when we rank ourselves with other countries. We are living longer but not so long as people in 25 other countries, all of them poorer than we are. For example, we have the highest infant mortality rate, the highest child poverty rate, the highest teen pregnancy rate, the highest child abuse death rate, and so on. There are no indicators in which we excel, except in spending money on health care, for we spend half of the world’s total health care bill. Think of it – for every dollar in the world spent on healthcare, 50 cents is spent here. Yet our citizens are less healthy than those in all the other rich countries. And by less healthy, I don’t just mean in how long we live, but in so many other indicators of health, such as teenage pregnancy rates, such as in homicides, or incarceration rates. Indeed we house one quarter of the world’s prisoners in America, which says something quite significant about how we deal with petty crime in this country.

What has happened to cause this huge disaster? Stated simply, it is because we have changed the rules in this country as to who gets what share of the pie. Back fifty years ago, it was the poorest families that saw the biggest gains in income. Now, as you all know, it is only the rich and super-rich that are seeing gains in income, while the rest of us all have to tighten our belts. This may not seem right in explaining the reason for our poor health, yours and mine. However, it is true, it is because we have changed the rules in society and created many more poor people and that is why your health and my health is not as good as it could be.

Racism is another way that the gap operates to create worse health. Racism is all about difference and power. Minorities have always been put down, and feel the shame, even if they don’t think about it. The rich want to continue to put people down, but use ever more subtle means. If you can put people down, if you can make them afraid, if you can make them want things, then you have power over them. An African American male in Harlem lives less long than a man in Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest countries. Or that a black man in Washington, DC lives less long than a man in Ghana, a country in West Africa.

Women tend to be healthier and live longer than men. As well, studies show that where women play a bigger role in political life of communities, they are even healthier. What is more astounding is how men’s health improves in those situations even more than the gain for women. In other words, we all do better where women do better, and I’m sure most of you here know that.

It is important to recognize how much our health relative to other countries has deteriorated in the last 55 years. Consider that if we won the war on heart disease, the plague that will kill almost half of us in this room, if we had no more deaths from heart attacks, we still wouldn’t be the healthiest country in the world. And yet 55 years ago, we were one of the healthiest. The difference now is that we live under more stressful conditions, a stress caused by the big gap between the rich and the rest of us. And when we go shopping at The GAP, that symbolic store, we don’t even realize that this is the key problem in America.

How is it that a bigger gap society has worse health than a more egalitarian society. Consider two extremes: an egalitarian society where everyone is more or less equal, and a very hierarchical one where there are a few fabulously wealthy rich and the rest of us, sort of like the USA. What is life like in an egalitarian society? What are the prevailing relationships and feelings. Wouldn’t they be those of friendship, support, trust, caring, helping, sharing, and community? Don’t those words sound healthy? What about the other extreme, a very hierarchical society? What is it like inside such a population? Well, those on top with the wealth have power and can dominate, compel and coerce those beneath them to get things done. The rest of us resign ourselves to our job and role, but feel humiliated and shamed. Shame is the important emotion at work. None of these feelings such as shame or relationships of power and domination sound healthy, do they? But in countries such as the USA, these are the prevailing mechanisms at work, even though we think we are all middle class there is an ever increasing gap between the rich and poor here. In a society with a bigger gap, those above put down those below, and this is related to the amount of violence in society and helps explain why we have so much homicide. Costa Rica is an example of a nearby country that is pretty egalitarian, and even though it is much poorer than the US, it is healthier than we are. Canada is another example, our neighbor to the north, which is much much healthier than the USA. The final example is Cuba, a country that we have been strangling for 44 years with trade sanctions and embargoes. Cuba is as healthy as we are, despite, or maybe because of our policies.

Consider the healthiest country in the world, Japan. Fifty-five years ago when we were one of the healthiest countries in the world, right after World War II, Japan was less healthy compared to other countries than we are today. Yet the USA gave it the medicine it needed to become the healthiest country in the world by 1978. The medicine was prescribed by the greatest population health doctor who ever lived, General Douglas MacArthur. The medicine administered during our occupation of that country from 1945 to 1950 had 3 ingredients and I will review them here. The first was demilitarization. Japan was forbidden to have an army. The second ingredient was democratization, as MacArthur wrote the country’s constitution, providing for a representative democracy, free universal education, the right of labor unions to organize and engage in collective bargaining, and the right of everyone to a decent life. The third D was decentralization, as MacArthur broke up the 11 family zaibatsu that ran the huge corporations that controlled the country. He legislated a maximum wage for the country of the equivalent of $4333 in US dollars. He also carried out the most successful land reform program in history. What this did is bring down the economic hierarchy, and level the playing field. The resulting rise in health is the most rapid ever seen on the planet.

Japan presents some interesting issues about population health. Japanese men smoke the most of all rich countries. Yet they are the healthiest population on the planet. It seems you can smoke in Japan and get away with it. It’s not that smoking is good for you, but that compared to other things, it isn’t that bad. Smoking is much worse for you in the US than it is for the Japanese in Japan, where the gap between the rich and poor is much less. So I tell people that if they want to smoke they should be born in Japan. Similarly, it isn’t Japan’s health care system that is responsible for its remarkable health. Anyone who has looked at their system will tell you it isn’t much to write home about. I talked before about designer labels, and if you probe, you will find that everyone in Japan shops at designer stores and buys the Gucci icons. That is the key element, everyone wears them. In the USA, everyone wants them, and that is the difference. Japan is a caring and sharing society that looks after everyone and that matters most for your health.

Let me give my opinion now on why Hispanics have better health in the USA than non-Hispanic whites. It has to do with the support they give one another and their strong family lives that counter the adverse effects of the gap and their poverty. Much has been written about this so-called Hispanic Paradox. I came to understand the reasons by reflecting on Hispanic patients I see in the ER. I never see a single Hispanic patient. There is always a group of people huddled together. I have to go and figure out who the patient is, for everyone comes to offer support. By contrast, I’m much more likely to see a white person lying there writhing in pain alone. So we can conclude that it is the nature of psychosocial relationships, the support people have and give in a society, that is more responsible for their health as communities, than any other factor.

So what has happened in America to bring about our health decline? We have changed the rules in America that decide who gets what share of the pie. How we decide where to spend tax dollars, how we decide who to tax and how much, how we decide to fund basic research and development. How we decide to give subsidies to various elements of our society. Instead of trying to make the rules level the playing field, we have decided to let the rich have as much as they can grab, and we’ll be happy to share the crumbs. I say we’ll be happy, because if you ask many if not most Americans whether they feel the rich should get as much as they do, you’ll get an answer something like: “of course the rich deserve it because they work hard, and are better than we are” or something like “yes I’m in favor of having a big gap between the rich and the poor, because someday I’m going to strike it rich and I want to have it all then.”

We have been seduced into believing in the American Dream, the rags to riches myth, the Horatio Algier stories, where if we just work hard enough we can attain anything we want. The American Dream, ladies and gentlemen, is a nightmare. Among all countries studied, we have the lowest percentage of people making it, in the sense of going from rags to riches, whether in one generation or two. That is what the economists who have studied this show.

And the price we pay for believing in the American Dream is, I say, the ultimate price. Namely, you and I die younger than we need to, so much younger that it is equivalent to winning the war on heart disease. Our president, speaks of the estate tax as the death tax, and it really should be called the Death Averting Tax, since it helps narrow the gap a little and avert deaths. As he signs more tax cuts on the rich into law, he should be honest and tell you that this is a small price to pay for living in this richest and most powerful country in world history, namely you live less healthy and die much younger than you need to. But the rich are appreciative, all the way to the bank. What even they don’t know is that even they die younger than they need to by living in this country.

So if we are going to ask the right question at this point, it may be something along the lines of “what happened, how did we let things get to this point?” Our story begins at the end of the Second World War. It was a difficult period for the world, and for Americans. We lost many lives in that conflict, and many people suffered without dying by serving in the war effort. So it was felt that such people needed to be taken care of. The oldest amongst you may remember GI-loans, housing loans, education bills that allowed vets to go to school. Our tax structure was very different then. Compared to today, the rich paid over 90 % on their top chunk of income instead of around 35% today. The tax rate on the bottom income category has remained about 25% through all this time period. So the rich have taken proportionately more home, than the rest of us have. And the gap grows.

After the Second World War, our businesses and industry did very well, with technological advances, and work in rebuilding Europe. They enjoyed high profit margins on revenue. They were happy. But towards the end of the 1960s and in the 1970s, their profits declined because of competition from Japan and other East Asian economies that began in earnest then. In 1940, corporations paid 40% of the federal tax bill. But with declining profits, they managed to demand lower tax rates, just as the rich did, so by 1960 they paid 26% of the federal tax bill. But with further declining profits, they wanted even more government handouts, and so by 1990 they were paying 13% of the federal tax bill. They also enjoyed huge government subsidies, in other words the taxes we paid went into their coffers in many ways that are probably familiar to you here. Of course the rich and powerful have only wanted one thing through history, and that is everything. So by 2002, last year, corporations paid only 7% of the federal tax bill. As Greg Palast says, we have the best democracy money can buy, and so these rich corporations buy themselves tax breaks and huge government subsidies by funding so-called democracy.

Another way to look at this is how much we pay our CEO’s – the heads of our corporations. In 1980, we paid them 40 times what an entry level worker made. By 1999, they were being paid 478 times what an entry level worker made, and in 2001, for the Fortune 100 companies, the CEO’s made a thousand times what an entry level worker made. If we ask what is the maximum wage in the US, it is around $150,000 an hour, and this person got a $10,000 an hour pay raise over the year before, while his company performed poorly and the stock price dropped 67%. As we say in America, nice work if you can get it, and you can get it if you try. Now in Canada, our much healthier neighbor to the north, the CEO/worker pay gap is twenty to one, while in Japan, the world’s healthiest country, it is eleven to one. In the recent economic downturn in Japan, what did CEOs and managers do? Lay off workers and take pay raises? No, they took pay cuts rather than laying off workers. This isn’t what our CEOs do. They lay off 40,000 workers and give themselves a bonus for increasing efficiency. This is not good for our health!

If corporations used to pay 40% of the tax bill and now only pay 7%, where is the rest coming from? Look in the mirror. Since the 1950s, the working class have paid proportionately more taxes than the rich. And today’s tax relief for the rich, boy the rich are really hurting and need tax relief, is just the latest example. As an example, I’m sure that all of you in this room paid more income tax than our biggest employer in Washington State did in 1995. You all paid more tax than Boeing did in 1995. That is, unless you received or than a $33 million tax credit that year. In other words, we paid Boeing, you and I paid Boeing, $33 million as their tax bill that year.

It is one thing to talk about income, the take home pay-check, which you are all familiar with. But what really matters is assets, wealth. Remember, you are sitting on your assets. The gap in wealth is even more obscene than the gap in income. The richest ten percent have almost 80% of the assets in this country. The richest one percent have almost half. So there isn’t much left for you and I. In fact, from 1983 to 1995, the bottom 40% of families in America actually lost assets. The cushion under you became harder to sit on during that time period.

At the same time, we have done everything we can to make life worse for the working class. As I mentioned, we cut funding for low cost housing, throwing millions on the street. We have cut funding for public schools with the result that our students score worse on international achievement test comparisons. We have done everything to decimate the family, at the same time as we preach family values. We have the highest percentage of single-person households among all rich countries and the great number of children being raised in single-parent families. It would be nice if the parent was there to raise the child, but instead we force the parent to work at several low-paid, insecure jobs, and leave the child rearing to the wolves. Studies have shown in Sweden that being raised in a single-parent family is bad for the child’s health. Not only do such children become sicker, spend more days in hospitals, and have more behavioral problems, they also have higher mortality. In other words, in a country like Sweden, which has social supports unimagined in the United States, kids being raised in single-parent homes die more. Why? Well, as I said, in Sweden, it isn’t that these homes lack enough stuff. But the mother isn’t there to provide the time with the child, and in the end that is the critical factor. For early childhood to lead to health as an adult, secure attachment to a parent is a strong, health promoting, factor. It is important preventive medicine. Perhaps the most important aspect of preventive health care we could ever do. But Clinton decided to end welfare as we know it, and our children are paying the price with their poorer health and the greater likelihood of ending up in a coffin. If you are a single mom please don’t think I’m trying to make you feel guilty for doing so by suggesting your child won’t do as well as if you were married. My son, now 21, was not raised in a two-parent family and I wish it were otherwise, as I think he would be healthier. But the reasons families split up are most basically political and economic, and could be changed. But most of us would think that personal reasons are involved. While this is true at an individual level, it is the structure of society that makes it happen and helps us understand why family breakup has become more common.

In other words, in the last 55 years we have drastically changed the rules of who gets what share of the pie in the United States of America. For our health, yours and mine, and that of the rich, we have to change them again, so we all get pretty equal pieces of the pie.

To summarize at this point. Poverty is bad for your health. Relative poverty, living in a large gap society, is the worst part of poverty. Poverty is not a certain amount of goods, but a form of invidious comparison between those who have more and those who have less. If the gap between the rich and poor is smaller, then the comparisons we make are milder. When the playing field is more level, it is easier to play. This is what justice is all about, avoiding having one part of society bearing all the burden but reaping none of the benefits.

So what can we do about this? As I said, I learn a great deal from comparing ourselves with people in other countries. I was surprised to learn that we have the lowest voter turnout of all democracies. In other words, fewer people vote in this country than in any other democracy. In the last King County election only 29% of the voters cast their ballots. Who doesn’t vote you might ask? The answer: the young and those with less income. Think of it. Poorer people don’t vote. If they don’t vote, then there is no need to have any policies that favor those with less income, and the president can limit his actions to those that benefit the voters, namely the rich. Hence we have the tax relief for the rich, the end of the death tax which only benefits the very rich, and handouts for Enron, Bechtel and Haliburton among others. We need to have our voices heard!

Has any major leader every drawn attention to the fact that the working class doesn’t vote, and tried to encourage them to vote, or designed programs to get poorer people more involved in the process of democracy? No way, why would they want to shoot themselves in the foot. So no, your leaders are not going to look out for your interests, unless you force them to do so. They aren’t going to make voting day a holiday, as is the case in most other rich countries. They aren’t going to make it easier to register to vote. And they will continue to have laws excluding people such as felons from voting. The rich are not dumb. Low income people are not dumb either, but they have been demoralized and think their vote doesn’t count.

Some of you may recall the 1960s when riots occurred in inner cities in America, there was the anti-Vietnam war movement, and the civil rights movement was in full swing. The leaders of the free world considered that this was a crisis of democracy. The Trilateral Commission published a book entitled the Crisis of Democracy in which they pointed out that if people continued to take matters into their own hands, it would be a continuation of this crisis. They wrote about the problems when you have an excess of democracy. So the Trilateral Commission laid down the steps we had to take to avoid this excess of democracy, and these have been followed so we have the present problem of low voter turnout, but no crisis.

Things are only going to change when we work together for our interests, not the interests of the rich. We must say NO to more handouts for the rich. They have enough, and they really don’t need more, although whenever I am around rich doctors, all they ever do is talk about how they need more money. The rich are always like that, after more.

If the poor organized, if the working class got together, it would be a piece of cake to change things. After all the poor and the working class are the majority in this country. If you remember that, if you recognize that all you have to do is talk amongst yourselves about these ideas, to speak up and begin to voice your needs, and push for policies that restore the status that working class people had in America before we gave it all away to the rich, then our health will begin to improve compared to other countries.

We need to shape the world that creates our life experiences and, hence, shape our health. This is not the land of equal opportunity. Unless you believe that a few people are naturally born to ride while most of us are born to be saddled, it’s a sign that opportunity is less than equal. The only way out that I know of for those of us who are saddled today, is to throw off those saddles, and chase after the riders and put them in their place. We vastly outnumber those riders. Working together and organizing is our hope for improving our health as a nation. We need to bring back the crisis of democracy.

In other words, people like those of you gathered today and those you speak for, those who aren’t rich, those who work, are this country’s population health doctors. You are the people who need to prescribe the medicine that will get more assets into the hands of your children, that will increase the taxes on the rich, that will break down the power of the corporations, that will restore power to labor, that will give subsidies to those who need them rather than those who already have too much. The way to fight organized money is with organized people.

It was Mahatma Gandhi who said First they ignore you; then they laugh at you; then they fight you; then you win. And Martin Luther King Jr. said “True compassion is more than flinging a coin at a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

I talked about Doctor MacArthur, the greatest population health doctor ever. You out there can administer the MacArthur Medicine, remember the three ingredients: the three D’s of demilitarization, democratization and decentralization–bring down the Walmarts. We can take the same medicine we gave Japan, that is we can take our own medicine, or we can ask Japan to administer it to us.

I will end by reading a poem

THE LOW ROAD

By Marge Piercy

What can they do to you? Whatever they want. They can set you up, they can bust you, they can break your fingers, they can burn your brain with electricity, blur you with drugs till you can’t walk, can’t remember, they can take your child, wall up your lover. They can do anything you can’t stop them from doing. how can you stop them? Alone, you can fight, you can refuse, you can take what revenge you can but they roll over you.

But two people fighting back to back can cut through a mob, a snake-dancing file can break a cordon, an army can meet an army.

Two people can keep each other sane, can give support, conviction, love, massage, hope, sex. Three people are a delegation, a committee, a wedge. With four you can play bridge and start an organization. With six you can rent a whole house, eat pie for dinner with no seconds, and hold a fund raising party. A dozen make a demonstration. A hundred fill a hall. A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter: ten thousand, power and your own paper: a hundred thousand, your own media; ten million, your own country.

It goes on one at a time, it starts when you care to act, it starts when you do it again after they said no, it starts when you say WE and know who you mean, and each day you mean one more.

Thank you.

Stephen Bezruchka MD, MPH Senior Lecturer: International Health Program Department of Health Services School of Public Health and Community Medicine University of Washington Box 357660 Seattle, Washington 98195-3576, (206)932-4928, Fax (206)685-4184 sabez@u.washington.edu

“The mobbing syndrome is a malicious attempt to force a person out of the workplace through unjustified accusations, humiliation, general harassment, emotional abuse, and/or terror. “It is a ‘ganging up’ by the leader(s) – organization, superior, co-worker, or subordinate – who rallies others into systematic and frequent ‘mob-like’ behavior.
“Because the organization ignores, condones, or even instigates the behavior, it can be said that the victim, seemingly helpless against the powerful and many, is indeed ‘mobbed.’ The result is always injury – physical or mental distress or illness and social misery and, most often, expulsion from the workplace.” -Mobbing: Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace, by Davenport, Schwartz, and Elliott, 1999.

When a budget crisis hits a large institution, certain workers often seem to be treated as though they are“expendable,” and are often the first forced out. But this is not the only manner in which workers are driven out of the workplace. Mobbing has been recognized for many years in Europe, and it is also beginning to be identified as a serious workplace problem in the United States. The authors above go on to say, “Mobbing is an emotional assault. Through innuendo, rumors, and public discrediting, a hostile environment is created in which one individual gathers others to willingly, or unwillingly participate in continuous malevolent actions to force a person out of the workplace.” “These actions escalate into abusive and terrorizing behavior. The victim feels increasingly helpless when the organization does not put a stop to the behavior or may even plan or condone it… Frequently productivity is affected. Resignation, termination, or early retirement, the negotiated voluntary or involuntary expulsion from the workplace, follows. For the victim, death – through illness or suicide – may be the final chapter in the mobbing story.” -ibid

Much of the original research on mobbing was done by Swedish researcher Heinz Leymann in the 1980’s. His findings have been slow in making it to the United States. However a number of local statutes have been enacted, and publications, conferences, and resources have surfaced recently in the U.S. For example, Peralta Community College District in Oakland recently established a regulation outlawing such behavior. Often mobbing activities are directed at whistleblowers.

Brian Martin, in Whistleblowing and Nonviolencen (Peace and Change, Vol. 24, No. 3, January 1999) describes attacks on whistleblowers this way: Whistleblowing, in casual usage, means speaking out from within an organization to expose a social problem or, more generally, dissenting from dominant views or practices… The most common experience of whistleblowers is that they are attacked. Instead of their messages being evaluated, the full power of the organization is turned against the whistleblower. This is commonly called the shoot-the-messanger syndrome,… The means of suppression are impressive, nonetheless. They include ostracism by colleagues, petty harassment (including snide remarks, assignment to trivial tasks and invoking of regulations not normally enforced), spreading of rumors, formal reprimands, transfer to positions with no work (or too much work), demotion, referral to psychiatrists, dismissal, and blacklisting.

Whistleblowers often discover that formal channels for complaint or remedy are ineffective or easily blocked. As Martin explains, “Appeal bodies are part of the wider system of power and usually seek or reach accommodation with other powerful groups. Hence such bodies are highly unlikely to support a single individual against elites from a major organization, who usually have links with elites elsewhere.”

Whistleblowers have other resources, according to Martin: “One strategy is based on ‘mobilization,’ namely winning supporters by circulating relevant documents, holding meetings and obtaining media coverage.” Howeve, such attempts at mobilization are often met by more severe mobbing and harassment.

Kenneth Westhues, has identified academic institutions as a primary location for mobbing attacks: “Ordinarily, colleagues in positions of local power explain the situation in terms of failings of the targeted professor: bad teaching, too few publications or the wrong kind, ethical misconduct, shirking of duties, failure to live up to legitimate expectations of the job… Sometimes, however, the target’s failings have little to do with why he or she is in trouble. The evidence may point to a sharply contrasting explanation: that colleagues and/or administrators have ganged up on the targeted professor for no good reason, to the point that collectively shunning, shaming, and tormenting the target bolsters the group’s solidarity, its esprit de corps.” – Workplace Mobbing in Academe (2004)

Westhues also tracks the trajectory of mobbing, and its consequences for victims and perpetrators. Here are more of his comments: “Mobbing … is an impassioned, collective campaign by co-workers to exclude, punish, and humiliate a targeted worker. Initiated most often by a person in a position of power or influence, mobbing is a desperate urge to crush and eliminate the target. The urge travels through the workplace like a virus, infecting one person after another. The target comes to be viewed as absolutely abhorrent, with no redeeming qualities, outside the circle of acceptance and respectability, deserving only of contempt. As the campaign proceeds, a steadily larger range of hostile ploys and communications comes to be seen as legitimate.” “Not infrequently, mobbing spelled the end of the target’s career, marriage, health, and livelihood.

From a study of circumstances surrounding suicides in Sweden, Leymann estimated that about twelve percent of people who take their own lives have recently been mobbed at work…. By Leymann’s and others’ estimates, between two and five percent of adults are mobbed sometime during their working lives. The other 95 percent, involved in the process only as observers, bystanders, or perpetrators (though occasionally also as rescuers or guardians of the target), mostly deny, gloss over, and forget the mobbing cases in which they took part. That is one reason it has taken so long for the phenomenon to be identified and researched.

“Workplace mobbing is normally carried out politely, without any violence, and with ample written documentation. Yet even without the blood, the bloodlust is essentially the same: contagion and mimicking of unfriendly, hostile acts toward the target; relentless undermining of the target’s self-confidence; group solidarity against one whom all agree does not belong; and the euphoria of collective attack. “The worker most vulnerable to being mobbed is an average or high achiever who is personally invested in a formally secure job, but who nonetheless somehow threatens or puts to shame co-workers and/or managers.

Ironically, it is in workplaces where workers’ rights are formally protected that the complex and devious incursions on human dignity that constitute mobbing most commonly occur. Union shops are one example… University faculties are another, on account of the special protections of tenure and academic freedom professors have…Mobbing appears to be more common in the professional service sector, where work is complex, goals ambiguous, best practices debatable, and market discipline far away. Scapegoating is an effective if temporary means of achieving group solidarity, when it cannot be achieved in a more constructive way. It is a turning inward, a diversion of energy away from serving nebulous external purposes toward the deliciously clear, specific goal of ruining a disliked coworker’s life. Less time, skill, and energy are required to write off a persistent critic as a “difficult professor” than to rebut the critic’s arguments. Chalking up dissent to the dissenter’s real or imagined flaws of character relieves overworked administrators of uncertainty and ambiguity. It lets them feel good about themselves.

Westhues (and others) point out that the best way to deal with mobbing is to nip it in the bud. Organizations not able to do this are at least as much at fault as the perpetrators of the attacks. To stop it requires an open atmosphere at the very beginning: “The basic priority for constructive resolution of workplace conflict, namely to keep the conversation going, to let competing positions be expressed and the evidence for them reviewed, to listen to what opponents say, to respond honestly and respectfully, to try not to silence anyone.”

Westhues lists three points for a strong academic institution which has vaccinated itself against mobbing: (1) Protect freedom of speech. (2) Keep academic organization loose. A tight ship cannot be a university. It has to be full of contradiction and brimming with
debate in order to fulfill its public purposes. (3) Focus attention on these purposes, like educating youth, producing useful knowledge, and above all seeking truth.

These quotes on mobbing were collected and prepared by Karl Schaffer ( s c h a f f e r k a r l @ f h d a . e d u , x8214), as a public service to the De Anza College community. In addition to the sources cited above, google “mobbing” or “workplace abuse” for more info.

The Labor Movement can be a great force for democracy, social progress, and social justice. To fulfill that potential, it must be thoroughly democratic in its internal life. There is no effective substitute for strong, democratic unions to help workers achieve dignity and respect, to defend and increase their standard of living, and to fight for better, safer, conditions in the workplace. There is no substitute for internal union democracy to combat discrimination, fight racketeering, get rid of corruption, and oust self-serving officials. In many unions democratic rights are real and unquestioned, but in large sections of the US labor movement these rights are trampled upon and must be restored.

Union Democracy Benchmarks:

* Fair elections that promote participation. Union goes beyond the minimum DOL requirements for elections (see links below): provides more time for nominations and campaigning, union representatives encourage members to run for office. All members in good standing eligible to run; no continuous good standing or meeting attendance requirements. No ban on non-member contributions (except employers and unions) to candidates for union office. Officers back members’ right to time off for campaigning. If necessary, elections run by legitimate outside agency.

* Frequent, contested elections. More than minimum required by law; members regularly challenge incumbents; there is turnover in officers and representatives.

* Access to membership list. In elections, candidates have access to membership list (name, work location, phone, e-mail) for campaign purposes, including right to copy the list.

* Open publications. Local newsletter/website publishes members’ views, including those critical of officials, representatives, or union policy; union encourages debate and discussion of issues and candidates. In elections, all candidates have equal use of union publications and means of communication (website, newsletter, e-mail list) to put out their campaign material.

* Member ratification of contracts. All contracts and side agreements between the union and management subject to ratification by secret ballot by members covered by the contract.

* Strike votes. Members vote on striking, on return to work, and on other decision during strike; strike votes not used to force members to ratify contracts (“either you vote “yes” or you vote to strike”).

* Informed vote. Complete text of proposed contract changes, amendments, referenda, etc. distributed to members prior to ratification with sufficient time for meaningful membership review and discussion. Union circulates different opinions about the contract offer.

* Elected representatives. Shop stewards and business agents elected, secret ballot, by members they represent, subject to recall by members they represent; stewards and active members trained in legal rights and organizing; stewards council that meets to plan and coordinate action.

* Grievants’ bill of rights. Workers participate fully in the grievance process at every step, with full information about their case and its progress.

* Access to information. Union representatives give members current and complete copies of the contract and the union constitution/bylaws. Contract and Constitution are published on union website. Members have easy access to information on officers’ salaries, budget, and expenses. Union representatives regularly inform members of their rights under federal and state law, and how to enforce them, including rights and responsibilities under the LMRDA.

* Regular local meetings. At least quarterly; announced ahead of time; time and place convenient to members; agenda circulated in advance; real business conducted, not just a pep rally; members encouraged to speak, make proposals, vote, and ask questions. Reasonable quorum (not so high as to prevent member meetings). Minutes available to members.

* Independent organizing and communication. Members organize in independent committees and caucuses, publish rank-and-file newsletters and websites, run candidates for union office. Union officers encourage this.

* Inclusion and equality. All members are treated fairly; union fights discrimination by management and among members; officers and representatives reflect membership in terms of gender, race, language, craft, seniority, etc. Contracts, Constitution, meetings, publications translated into languages spoken by members.

* Education for members. Union trains members in legal rights and organizing, including how to participate effectively in the union and how to organize on the job

http://www.uniondemocracy.org