Full text: Employee representation

i: EMPLOYEE REPRESENTATION 
union; but the reason is not that his interests are felt to be more akin 
to those of the employees than the management, but rather that the 
unions hope thereby to exercise more effective control over the 
employer’s compliance with the working ‘agreement, since if he per- 
mits it to be violated, the union can “discipline” the foreman. 
A certain ambiguity is inevitable in a discussion of this subject 
because of the lack of standardization in the use of the term “fore- 
man.” Even if we substitute the expression, “first line of super- 
vision,” the difficulty is not entirely removed, since in some types of 
work there is a “straw boss” in immediate charge of workers whose 
sympathies for the most part are with them and whom the manage- 
ment would hardly regard as part of its own corps. In the case of 
these borderline positions it is undoubtedly wisest to leave the draw- 
ing of the line to those employees who are unquestionably of the 
rank and file. The result will vary in different establishments in the 
same industry. Thus in some of the telephone companies the 
“supervisors” in the traffic departments are eligible to vote and to 
serve as employee representatives, whereas in others they are not. 
In the Manhattan division of the New York Telephone Company 
sixty-eight per cent of the employee representatives in the traffic 
department elected for 1925 were supervisors and instructors. It 
should be pointed out that switchboard supervisors are not generally 
regarded by telephone men as supervising employees. Their func- 
tion is to observe the work of from six to eight operators and take 
care of the unusual calls which come to any of the operators in their 
group. They also frequently assist an operator who temporarily is 
overloaded; and while they frequently convey instructions from the 
chief operator in some detail to each member of their squad of 
operators, their responsibility is more akin to a corporal in a military 
organization than it is to a foreman or sub-foreman in a factory. 
REQUIREMENTS AS TO AGE, SERVICE, ETC. 
It has been regarded as necessary in the drafting of most plans of 
employee representation to specify certain requirements as to age, 
length of service, and sometimes citizenship and knowledge of the 
English language as requirements for voters and candidates for repre- 
sentatives. These specifications seem to have been incorporated in 
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