On 2013-11-22, at 9:14 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> Shag wrote: managers are workers too. As Michael Lopp famously says, "The
> first thing an engineer does when she's promoted to manager is forget." He
> doesn't mean forget how to code, which the engineer does, in fact, do. She
> forgets the organizational imperatives that had shaped engineering and must
> learn the organizational imperatives that create the "management world"
> (here, I steal from the sociological phrase, "art world".)
>
> ----------
>
> This is of tremendous importance. The long downfall of the AFL-CIO began
> with the failure of the UAW to support the attempt of GM foremen to
> organize.
>
> The firefighters of Normal Illinois back around 1978 went on strike (and
> went to jail) in support of the principle that Captains belonged to the
> Union!
In today's vast hierarchical public and private organizations, many if not most workers supervise others and are themselves supervised in turn. Even the bourgeoisie recognizes - to some degree or other, depending on the jurisdiction - that persons with management responsibilities may still be, in essence, workers, and, as such, entitled to the right to belong to unions and to have their pay and benefits determined through a collective bargaining process (however imperfect). The litmus test is generally whether the exercise of their management responsibilities is ancillary to their use of their professional or technical skills on the job. Also, their proximity to the central decision-making authority in the organization is taken into account. More often than not, as Carrol notes above, these intermediate layers of the workforce have identified themselves with the trade union movement and adopted its forms of action when they've had the opportunity to do so.