Achieving Success as an HR Professional in an Organized Environment

By Unoda C. Moyo, Ph.D.

The following represents opinions of the author and do not reflect those of his current or previous employers.

The practice of Human Resource Management in an organized environment is a slowly waning art form as the number unionized workplaces continue to decline.  According to the January 2011 report  by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2010, the union membership in the US continued to drop to a new low. In 1983, the report points out; the union membership rate in the U.S. was 20.1 percent, with about 17.7 million union workers compared to the 2010 total of 14.7 million, or 11.9% of the American workforce. This is a decline of 16.9% over a 27 year period. The majority of unionized workers are public employees, and these employees constitute 36.2% of the public workforce, compared to 6.9% in the private sector. Another important note from the report; union membership rate was highest among workers 55 to 64 years old (15.7 percent), and the lowest rate occurred among those ages 16 to 24 (4.3 percent).

As fewer and fewer workplaces continue to be organized, fewer HR professionals are gaining experience working in organized environments.  Additionally, some, inevitably, come into their new roles with negative perceptions of unions and try to prove that they are good caring HR professionals with good practices for their employees and don’t need union operatives to broker the relationships between managers and employees in their organizations.  They mean well.  It’s also true that some HR professionals believe that good working environments with excellent management practices render unions obsolete, and look at organized environments as relics of a time long passed.  So, if you are an HR professional who wakes up one day to find yourself having to maneuver in an organized environment, here are seven things you need to learn and remember which may be helpful for you. 

1. Accept the organized environment.
2. Learn the main collective bargaining agreement(s) provisions and educate your managers of the same
3. Get to know the shop steward and the organizers
4. Understand the three main roles union officials play
5. Know when to give the stewards political cover with their members
6. Give the stewards heads up on what is going to be happening that is likely to result in member questions
7. It’s not about you, and it’s not personal

Accepting the organized environment

It does not pay to dwell on the past and how you did not have to deal with unions in your previous HR professional stops, or how easy it would have been for you to implement your greatest ideas if there was no union because you will just be wasting yours and a lot of other people’s time. These are the cards you are dealt, and this is your new normal.  Accept the new reality and make the best of it. 

Learning the main contract provisions and educating your managers

You will have at least one collective bargaining agreement to learn, so you will need to get up to speed. You really can’t know the entire contract very well just by studying it.  You will often learn as you go, and as individual articles are brought to question. It’s all about wages, hours and working conditions, and very little else.  When a contractual question is raised, do your research before you answer. The answer is almost never intuitive.  You never want to answer on the fly.  Lost credibility is tough to restore if you answer incorrectly. 

Before questions are asked, however, find records of past arbitrations or unfair labor practice (ULP) cases that were previously “litigated” and decided.  This will give you a window into what the past issues have been and how they were decided.  Issues will often orbit the same contract articles year after year.  Focus on those contract articles and provisions and understand them. Make those the important features of the contract that you want to make sure your managers also understand. Other articles may be well understood and not at issue. Also, find previous management responses to grievances that were settled or that were dropped before they reached arbitration or during arbitration.  Once again this is your window to the past issues.  Set up brown bag lunches to remind your managers of some contractual issues that need reminding.  When you teach, that is when you truly learn.

Understanding the roles union officials play

Union officials, including stewards, are like elected officials in any political environment. They have three distinct roles that you will need to understand.  They have roles as representatives (they are there to support, speak and advocate for their members), “legislators” (they negotiate contracts, and that is not far removed from law making), and overseers (they oversee the contract(s) on behalf of their members to make sure the contract provisions are adhered to).  It’s important to understand at any given moment what role they are playing. When they are in their “representative role” it is not the time to expect “reasonableness” from them. It is political theater where they are demonstrating toughness designed to impress the employee they are representing. Don’t feed it.  Stick to your facts and don’t debate.  When they are “legislating” you can expect some degree of “reasonableness” but it is also a chase game, so be careful of the moves you are asked to make because once you make them it is impossible to redo.  When they are “Overseeing” they are also in the rule writing mode.  In other words they will try to get at this stage what they did not get at the bargaining table. Make sure the interpretation of language is what was understood at negotiations because invariably experienced union officials will always interpret the contract to limit management scope.

Getting to know the shop steward and the organizers

The shop steward is your outlet valve.  Set up a regular (at least monthly) meeting with the steward; a touch base meeting of some kind if you will.  Let them know that the meeting is for them to air their concerns or observations with you.  You never promise to fix anything, but you commit to look into their concerns and come back with a response. You are not negotiating; you are just listening and collecting organizational intelligence so that you can have an idea of what is going on so you can address problems in their infancy.

Knowing when to give the stewards political cover

Stewards often have to struggle representing some of their worst employees.  They have a duty to represent all their members.  The fear most union officials have is to be accused of failing to represent.  So, complement them on their great representation in front of the employee they are representing as you disagree vehemently with their advanced arguments.

Give the stewards heads up on what’s going to be happening that is likely to result in member questions

When your organization is about to do some things that are within your right to do, but which may result in employees questioning your practice, let the steward know.  Sometimes even agreed upon contractual events may surprise employees at implementation time (e.g. pay freezes, furloughs, etc.).  When contracts are agreed to, effective dates are usually down the road and union operatives may forget until one of their members say: “I just noticed on my pay check….”.  Let the union steward know the kind of questions they may be getting from their members. You don’t want the steward to be surprised.

 It’s not about you, and it’s not personal

Finally, and most important for your mental health: Please understand, an organized environment is not about you or your values.  For example, in many grievances following disciplinary actions, the main union target (remember they are playing their representative role) will be the investigation that led to the action.  As an HR professional, you will probably be the one that did the investigation, and the union will question all elements of the investigation and even your competency to conduct the investigations.   Just remember, there is no such thing as a perfect investigation.  There will always be something to question. You should never consider this questioning as a personal attack on you or your competency.

Remember, this is an art, so what is recommended here will not help everybody or every situation. Use it carefully.

TAX CUTS MOVEMENT A FORM OF RELIGION?

Many have said this before, but now I believe we are clearly in a period when politicians that overlook our Federal programs can no longer effectively deal with their responsibility.  They gravitate to the lowest common politically-safe denominator of cutting taxes without corresponding program spending cuts.  They point to the Laffer Curve as discussed in my previous posting and they always assume we are in the ‘green zone’ when evidence suggests otherwise.  I even heard former vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, refer to it last Sunday during her appearance on FOX News.  

While I was still thinking about what Palin had said earlier in the day, David Stockman, President’s Reagan’s first budget director, appeared on 60 Minutes later that evening.  Stockman previously lamented about the politics of tax cuts and lack of corresponding spending cuts (I assume he figured we were in the ‘green zone’ after the initial Reagan cuts) in his book, The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed. But on Sunday, he was even more candid and bolder.  Not only did he accuse the tax cut proponents as adhering to some kind of a tax cut religion, but he even called for a one time 15% surtax on the richest 5% in order to reduce the national debt by half.  But what he said next was mind-boggling to me.  In 1985, he said, the net worth of the top 5% wealthiest households in America was eight trillion dollars, and since 1985, the same group is now worth forty trillion dollars.  He added that that accumulation of wealth between 1985 and 2010 was more than the wealth all human kind had accumulated up to 1980.  Mind-boggling.  

As scholars and practitioners of public administration, we spend a lot of time thinking about policies in the form of programs our discipline administers.  That is because Woodrow Wilson taught us well about the need and the wisdom of separating politics from administration.  But as the debate about taxes and spending plays out in the political arena it is difficult to ignore the politics.   Maybe I am coming to this realization much later than others, but I am now totally convinced we are in a period of collective governance insanity from which we are less likely to recover in my lifetime. I think I have at least a couple decades left in me.

The People Managing Part of Managing

Many conversations among many public HR professionals (I’m sure this holds true for private sector HR professionals as well) rarely fail to mention in frustration some of their program managers who don’t like, don’t want to, or just can’t do the people management piece of their jobs.  They were great nurses, engineers, biologists, investigators, programmers, case workers and so on. But when they were promoted to become managers they struggled with the people managing piece of their jobs. They generally don’t like to set clear expectations for their subordinates, nor do they like following-up on what they need to follow-up on, hold their subordinates accountable, evaluate performance, and any and all of the legwork a manager really has to do in order to be a successful people manager.  They appear to expect their employees to learn or develop by osmosis, so they don’t actively train or coach.  They, however, typically like their technical program duties which they will do to the detriment, and sometimes as an escape or refuge from, their people management responsibilities. 

But why do they become managers?  Well, that is the sure way to get more money and prestige.  They may also think, initially, that they can handle the “soft art” of people management because they expect their subordinates to share their professional attitude and zeal.  They may even deal with some issues for a while, and even contact their HR departments for help.  But when HR emphasizes to them time and time again the importance of documenting important conversations and events, setting expectations, following up, reviewing performance, reprimanding, and so on they generally scale back their HR engagement. They may at first even question HR’s understanding of the day to day activities associated with managing a program.  But later, they typically stop contacting HR altogether because they know what they are going to be asked to do, and they subsequently retreat to the comfort of their program activities ignoring their people management issues.  This can go on for a while, or even for years, as the manager continues to avoid dealing with the people management issues.  Problem employees often sense the uneasiness the manager displays and they escalate their behavior. Other employees feel the manager is not taking care of problems and they resent having to do not only their work, but that of others who seem to be getting away with murder. 

A breaking point eventually arrives.  That point can take any one of several forms: Other employees go to the union or the manager’s manager or HR, good employees start leaving the agency or the department or section, work product deteriorates to the point noticed by stakeholders, some employees charge harassment or discrimination (because they are given more work than others), the list can go on. At that breaking point, the working relationships are in shreds and may be irretrievably damaged and pressure may be on the manager to exit.  Or, it may be just the wake up call the manager needed to start people managing.  That latter scenario is rare:  Managers who don’t like the people management piece of their job are seldom reformed.  Most HR professionals spend most of the time in these situations trying to contain the damage.  Good HR departments with strong training components can provide some tools and support for struggling managers who want to do better, but this is seldom effective if it is not done proactively.

The most important proactive way to avoid such situations is to make sure organizations hire good people managers by instituting or maintaining robust selection regimes that are designed to make appropriate hiring or promotional decisions. But in this age of severe budget cuts, the most negatively affected areas are the very areas that would mitigate this problem: Recruitment and Training. The realistic outlook is there will always be program managers who don’t like, don’t want to, or just can’t do the people management piece of their jobs.

The Reset Movement May Present A New Opportunity to Reintroduce PPBS to States’ Budgetary Processes.

Since the beginning of the current economic downturn, a new reality has settled in.  The revenue picture has changed dramatically for almost every jurisdiction.  Recognizing that fact, a new movement calling for a fundamental change in the way government works and is funded has emerged: The ‘reset movement’. A movement that gained momentum following a paper last February by John Thomasian of the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices.  Some of the recommendations from that paper, no doubt, were adapted by many of the states’ governors as they created their reset commissions, cabinets, or workgroups.  Governors, because their state constitutions require them to balance their budgets, have been the leaders of the reset movement, and the media has been paying attention.  For example, in its June 27, 2010 editorial, The News Tribune, out of Tacoma, Washington, complemented its governor, Chris Gregoire, for what they termed “talking the talk with state government reset”. 

“Determining budget priorities by checking what’s in the wallet puts state spending on a roller coaster. The highs and lows are jarring – but even worse, they fuel the expectation that, even as state spending is plummeting, it soon will be climbing again.

Gregoire is proposing something better, albeit more wrenching: Recognize that state government cannot return to business as usual. Banish the expectation that every time the state gets a new dollar, it goes to replace the dollar lawmakers took to balance the last budget. Don’t just make cuts, make lasting changes in the way state government looks and operates.”

What Gregoire is proposing is not significantly different from what other governors have been saying. For example, Daniels (Indiana) articulated his vision last September in a Wall Street Journal opinion page and Kulongoski (Oregon) proposed his reset initiative in a June speech to the City Club of Portland following recommendation from his reset cabinet. 

What these governors are also facing is the reality of traditional budgeting processes that make it difficult to operate rationally.  Rational budgetary efforts based on real data generated from actual research generally fail because political coalitions that yield political victories also stay intact during the budgetary process, and subsequent considerations typically assume political characteristics that exhibit themselves when governments start looking at programs in questioning ways that threaten their existence.  In the end, budgets are the ultimate expressions of political values whose contents signify victories for some just as they surely remind others of their defeats. 

Because of this, funding mechanisms are never based on rational considerations beyond the political coalitions that yield the eventual formula of who gets what, when, and how.  Every program has its constituency and each constituency its own advocates.  Program advocates often include legislators who sit on those programs’ committees because they have a strong interest in what that committee does and what that does for their constituency.  For example rural legislatures typically like to sit on agricultural committees while urban legislators like to sit on transportation committees.  One could argue that the system for funding government activity at every level is by default designed to increase spending in a climate where revenues generally continue to grow as the economy expands.  That environment is now gone, and a new reality has emerged.

But might this new reality be ripe for states in particular to reintroduce the Program Planning Budgeting System (PPBS) as a tool to facilitate their reset budgets and to reintroduce rationality to their spending choices?  PPBS as budgetary system first appeared in the Federal System via Robert McNamara’s Pentagon in the early sixties as a tool to manage the runaway defence budget Eisenhower had warned about during his farewell address to the nation.  US Department of Defense still uses PPBS, particularly in their planning and evaluation of their weapon systems.  Many states attempted to use the system, but by the mid-seventies just about all of them had abandoned it.  At that time many argued that PPBS was not suited for the imperfect world of politics, and that the cognitive capacity to make it work was lacking.  But given the circumstances faced by many governors, maybe its time for rationality to prevail and give politicians political cover to do what they have to do.

True, a vast majority of states are on annual budget cycles that don’t allow the elaborate planning stage necessary  for PPBS to work.  But given superior computing power that exists today, and an environment that appears politically ready to try new things, why not give it a try?

Where Are We Along The Laffer Curve?

Since the seventies, tax cuts proponents have argued that cutting taxes spurs economic growth that eventually leads to the collection of more tax revenues and that, in essence, makes tax cuts pay for themselves without having to adjust expenditures accordingly.  This has been a bastion position for supply-side economists, especially as it relates to corporate taxes, but it’s an argument that has been extended to individual income tax payers as well, as tax cut proponents have argued that high income earners are predominantly small business owners. 

Because the tax cuts, which were implemented at the beginning of the Bush II administration are about to expire, the debate about the benefits of tax cuts is once again at the forefront of our nation’s fiscal discussion. The often noted inspiration of this reasoning is the work by economist, Arthur Laffer, whose famous model illustration is depicted in a graph that bears his name, The Laffer-Curve. 

Compared to most graphs dismal science has given to the world, this one is simple.  It plots revenue collected against the marginal tax rate the tax payers pay.  At lower rates, which I will call the ‘green zone’ each rate increase results in higher revenue, and at higher rates, which I will call the ‘red zone’ each additional rate increase reduces the revenue collected as tax payers adjust their behavior to avoid the higher taxes. At the extremes, if the tax rate is at 0% no revenue is collected, likewise a tax rate of 100% yields similar results as tax payers stop producing to avoid having the fruits of their labor all go to the tax collector.  Most importantly, in the “red zone”, reducing the tax rate would actually result in higher revenue. 

But where are we on the curve?  Are the tax rates so high that continuing the tax cuts is better for the revenue picture than ending the tax cut? In other words, are we really in the red zone? Tax cut proponents’ arguments appear to assume a red zone environment. Many, including Ronald Reagan in 1981, cited the Kennedy tax cut enacted in 1964, a few months after his death, as an example of a tax cut that spurred economic growth that ultimately led to more revenue. That tax cut reduced marginal tax rates from 91% to 70%. 

Ronald Reagan managed to score a substantial tax cut in 1981 that reduced the individual marginal tax rates gradually from 70% to ultimately 28% by 1986. Revenues decreased substantially as a result of both the Kennedy and Reagan tax cuts according to figures from the 2006 US Treasury paper and from the Tax Policy Center.  By contrast, revenues increased after the Bush I tax increase of 1990 that created a new marginal tax rate of 31%, and during the 1993 Clinton tax hike that created new 36% and 39.6 % tax rates for top earners.  These rates stayed in place until 2001 when, for the first time, the federal budget showed a surplus.  Bush II tax cuts cut rates for all earners and reduced the top rate to 35%.  Deficits returned almost immediately. 

Does that not suggest the red zone may be above 39.6%, and certainly not below? Former Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press on August 1, 2010, said unequivocally that cutting taxes does not raise revenues by paying for themselves.  That would mean he also thinks we are in the green zone, would it not?

Granted, a lot of arguments can be extended about the role of government, and hence disagreements about what should be funded and how.  But it appears to be intellectually dishonest to insist that we are in the red zone when evidence dictates otherwise.  Even Laffer, when asked by a Time reporter in 2007 if the Bush II tax cuts paid for themselves, he said he didn’t know.