or 
ORGANIZATION AND PROCEDURE: ASSURING 
ADEQUATE REPRESENTATION OF 
EMPLOYEES 
It is a matter of vital concern to the management to know that the 
parsons with whom it discusses the interests of employees are duly 
acknowledged by them as their spokesmen. Occasionally in the 
history of modern personnel relations, ostensible representatives of 
the workers have turned out to be self-appointed “leaders” with only 
a handful of followers. Terms of employment to which such persons 
have agreed or which they have “demanded” have been materially 
different from what later events appeared to show that the actual 
workers wanted. Only an insubstantial basis for peaceful industrial 
relations is afforded by any arrangement which leads to manage- 
ment decisions affecting employees predicated upon inaccurate in- 
formation regarding employees’ wishes. From the standpoint of 
the employer, a clear portrayal of the attitude and the specific de- 
sires of his employees is needed; and any scheme for “representing” 
employees is inadequate which fails to meet that test. 
Trade unionists have sometimes argued for the so-called “closed” 
or union shop on the ground that complete unionization of an estab- 
lishment makes it possible for union officials to exercise over recal- 
citrant individuals such disciplinary measures as will force com- 
pliance with the provisions of the working agreement. The ad- 
ministration of discipline has been largely centralized so that it is 
beyond the jurisdiction of local officers or members; so also has the 
authority to order strikes. In so far as centralized control over strike 
funds has limited the number and duration of strikes, employers 
would seem to have benefited from the lack of local self-government 
in unions. It is conceivable, of course, that in some cases this benefit 
may have been at the expense of “insurgents” among the employees 
whose dissatisfaction with the outcome made them less efficient. 
In those unions which have had a shop steward in each unionized 
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