What's Happening

The Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee has marked up S. 295, the Teamwork for Employees and Managers (TEAM) Act of 1997, and the bill could reach the Senate floor any day now. The legislation would permit employers in non-union settings to form teams of supervisors and employees to address key workplace issues, through "employee involvement" (EI) programs.EI-sponsored teams are now frequently barred by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) from discussing key issues such as work schedules and compensation as part of the NLRA's prohibition against company-run unions.

Similar legislation has been introduced in the House. The President vetoed an identical bill in the 104th Congress and has pledged to veto S. 295 if it is sent to him in the same form. Senator Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., is now floating a compromise designed to attract Democratic support by ensuring that companies are not using teams to thwart legitimate union organizing efforts.

New Democrat Principles

• Innovation is a key component of economic growth, and public policy should recognize that innovation occurs not just in products but also in the form and style of business enterprises.



• Labor law should seek not only to protect workers, but also to empower them to participate in decisions that affect their livelihood and workplaces. This frontline decision making is essential in today's Information Age economy.



• Industrial Age labor laws should be modernized to reflect today's social and economic realities, maintaining traditional protections for the right of workers to organize in collective bargaining units, but also facilitating alternative channels for worker empowerment.

The Politics

The TEAM Act is controversial. The business community, and particularly its high-tech component, has made passage of S. 295 one of its top priorities for the 105th Congress. Organized labor has made the bill's defeat one of its top priorities. The Clinton Administration, already at odds with much of the labor movement over its budget and trade initiatives, may be reluctant to seek compromise on an issue that is central to labor, but not a high priority for the Administration.

While any compromise will be difficult, some centrist Democrats in both Houses believe that protections against company-dominated unions were never intended to prevent work-place "teams," especially in industries where representation of workers by unions is nearly nonexistent. Sen. Bingaman is bravely testing the waters with a compromise amendment that adds additional safeguards to prevent employers from launching teams specifically to thwart interest in union representation.

The New Democrat Take

The key for New Democrats is to focus not on perpetually maintaining decades-old labor laws, but on their overriding object: worker empowerment. Unions are a time-honored vehicle for protecting workers and representing their interests, and where employees seek to organize through unions, their employers should not be free to frustrate those efforts through company-sponsored alternatives.

But in workplaces where there is no verifiable employee interest in organizing through unions, labor laws should not prevent worker empowerment through EI's or teams. This option is especially important in the emerging New Economy industries, where employee interest in unions is often nil, and where companies are often structured around flattened hierarchies and flexible project teams in which the Industrial Age bright line between management and labor is all but invisible.

If safeguards against the use of teams to thwart organizing efforts are in place, continuing to prohibit teams subordinates the actual interests of workers and the national interest in innovative enterprises to the interests of labor unions in maintaining a monopoly on employee representation, even in workplaces where there is virtually no chance that unions will ever be organized.

Sen. Bingaman is on the right track by seeking a compromise that strengthens the TEAM Act's safeguards against anti-union manipulation of EI programs and TEAMs. If properly structured, a TEAM compromise could strongly protect union prerogatives where workers show interest in organizing, while strongly protecting worker interests through facilitating teams elsewhere. That's a win-win proposition for workers, and for the economy.

Talking Points

• Employers and employees should be able to work together. For American business to compete and win in today's complex, global marketplace, managers and employees need to work together more closely to succeed. We should change the law to give them greater flexibility to form teams and other employee involvement programs, while protecting workers against companies who want to form sham unions.



• Teams empower workers. For the majority of American workers, who are not unionized and are not attempting to unionize, employee involvement programs are a way to participate in workplace decisions that affect their daily lives. As President Clinton said in his State of the Union address in 1996, "When companies and workers work as a team, they do better. And so does America."



• Protection against abuse of teams should be maintained. While EI programs are good for workers, history shows that they can be abused by an employer particularly to impede employees' independent efforts to form a union. This practice was wrong in the 1930s and it is still wrong today. Any bipartisan compromise on the TEAM Act must protect workers against this type of abuse of EI programs. The Bingaman compromise proposal aims at this important goal.