Equality by lot

American employees usually lack a voice. Three-quarters of them aren’t represented by a union. As for the rest, unions here typically disclaim a willingness to help management improve its likability and operations.

It is essential in the trade union view that they should not be compromised by having a share in management. —H.R.G. Greaves, Democratic Participation and Public Enterprise, 1964.

Employees often suffer from the slings and arrows of outrageous managers—Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss is a notorious example.

So employees would benefit from having a proxy entity that is able complain to a higher-level manager; and, that failing, as it often might, to the board of directors and/or shareholders; and that failing, to the media and/or the internet.

Management would benefit too, by being able to float trial balloons within IVEs, thereby fine-tuning new policies and averting blunders.

The interests of the owners (stockholders) are not necessarily aligned with those of management. A “managerial revolution” long ago wrested effective control from the owners …

… things in a private economic enterprise are quite similar: the real “sovereign,” the assembled shareholders, is just as little influential in the business management as is a “people” ruled by expert officials. —Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation, 1919.

… and management has often put its own petty interests first. The long-term viability of firms has suffered as a result.

Hence, having an opponent in common, up to a point, owners might be willing to lend an ear to employees’ complaints about the mis-managers in between them. Owners might in time actually mandate the formation of these “inner voices.”

Promoters of ESG (G = corporate Governance) initiatives should also push for this employee-feedback mechanism.

However, early adoption will almost certainly be the result of pioneering activism by daring leftists. They will send emails to employees (perhaps in only one department, initially) informing them of the impending formation of an Inner Voice Entity (IVE), awarding each email recipient ten (say) ballots, and requesting that they cast them (by email) for fellow employees whom they’d like to see as their Proxies.

Even if the response is meager, activists should nevertheless announce (by email) the IVE’s formation and its first Message To Management (MTM). This, if expressing the feelings of non-balloters, will encourage their participation in the next round of balloting, thereby increasing the IVE’s legitimacy.

In time, IVEs for employees will, hopefully, become ubiquitous, and seemingly so natural and indispensable that we will wonder why they weren’t adopted earlier—much earlier. The explanation for that delay is that most of America’s white-collar workers don’t want to join a union.

So the activists’ email to employees should pledge that their incipient IVE will not be a union—i.e., it will not collect dues or call a strike. It should also foreswear taking extra-mural “political” or cultural positions.

(Because doing so and giving it a partisan tinge will cause disaffected employees to disavow the IVE, weakening its image and authority. An arms-length sister organization should be set up to strike such postures, if they must be struck.)

I hope that after the first year or two of struggle, IVEs will quickly catch on in the other non-electing groups mentioned under Chapter 7. I think the world is ready for them to have a voice and will accept, after experience, the bal-lottery technique that enables it.

Filed under: Elections, Sortition |