WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS, ARGENTINA STYLE!

WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS, ARGENTINA STYLE!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© January 2008

"A corporation is twenty to thirty divisions in search of a corporation . . . A company cannot give empowerment. How can a company give to workers what workers already own . . . Human Resources is management's union, making cosmetic changes to appease management while nothing actually changes . . . Entitlements have crushed the company. They now are approaching the national debts in the trillions of dollars. It is only a matter of time before we witness the demise of Fortune 500 companies . . . The worker is alone. He must go against the grain to find his security. There is no other option."

Taken from the pages of WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS (1990), SIX SILENT KILLERS (1998), and THE WORKER, ALONE (1995) by Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr.

This past week the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) in its American broadcast to the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) did a segment on an interesting development in Argentina.

The segment opened by describing a balloon factory in Buenos Aires in which one day the company bosses abandoned the plant, taking all the equipment, raw materials and furnishings, leaving workers to show up for work finding a stripped to the bone facility, and no jobs.

Workers were eking out only a modest living at best, but this plant and work did provide enough security that they could feed and house their families. It was all they knew. It was all they had.

Devastated, angry, and yes, depressed, they sunk into themselves, stood around smoking cigarettes and moaning their terrible plight. Then someone said, "What if we take over the plant, work as a unit, reopen our markets, and meet the demand for balloons?"

This was a novel idea. They didn't own the facility. Those that did, or who held the mortgage, had abandoned that responsibility, too. "What if we contact the government, explain our plight, and develop a plan where this plant becomes a productive facility, not a tax debit and an eyesore on the industrial district?"

The government saw the wisdom in this suggestion, worked with the workers to develop plans that would ease the financial burden, extended a line of credit, and the workers took over.

There were no bosses, no supervisors, no pecking order, no special private offices, no special parking, no private secretaries, no special dress code, no policies and procedures, no constant meetings, no human resources, no performance appraisals, and nobody was in charge so that everyone had to be in charge.

Before their livelihood caved in, and placed their lives in total jeopardy, workers had specific jobs. They returned to this work, but with a difference; they helped each other in every way possible. That said there were specific assignments.

One contacted equipment makers, came to terms with them, several others set up the equipment.

One purchased the raw materials, several others created the formulas for different color balloon making, and still several others manned the machines to make and cure the balloons.

One contacted conveyor belt makers, several set up the equipment.

One contacted box and packaging makers, several others manned the line to package the orders, and then several others delivered the orders in their own vehicles.

The pesos they made from this initial worker enterprise were pooled, taking equal shares, enough to live on, leaving the balance for company future business.

The operation has been in business several months now. Cash flow is still a problem. No one is getting rich, but they are employed, and their families are in tact.

Workers hold regular meetings to consider ways to improve operations, make them more efficient, economical and productive.

They come to work looking forward to the day thinking of how they can work more effectively than they did yesterday. They know it is up to them to make this work, and no one else. They don't have rah-rah meetings, or patronizing ceremonies. These are luxuries they can no longer afford.

They have discovered their power, leveraged their expertise, and allocated assignments that best suit their talents and interests, always to a common goal and in pursuit of a common objective, that is, to keep this plant alive and never again to be dependent on a group of bosses, bosses who cut and ran when profits disappeared.

NOT AN ISOLATED CASE

Word of this balloon factory's takeover by the workers has spread throughout Argentina. It has found diverse industries and companies finding workers taking over when the bosses take off, or threaten to close down the operations.

It has happened in small clothiers, bakeries, small restaurants, and even a hotel thus far.

In the case of the hotel, maids and bell hops, hotel greeters and billing clerks, sales representatives and convention staffers, all share as equal owners without anyone being paid superior to anyone else as there is no hierarchy. It is a workers coop in the best sense of the word.

Is it a trend, or a fluke?

That remains to be seen. What is evident, however, is that many companies are incredibly top heavy. Well-heeled executives, managers, supervisors and staff administrators see that eighty percent of the profits find their way to their coffers, while the workers, who make up eighty percent of the enterprise, on average, must share twenty percent of the profits among them.

This formula has been repeated across the developed world with little interruption, or even protest, strange as it may seem.

It is strange because the workers, now the most professional and able bodied group in the developed world, have skills far superior to traditional management. They are, and not the managers, key to future success of any company in any enterprise.

What is holding most companies back is not the workers but the management.

There is a problem that workers have never been able to break free from and that is the idea that a leader is a person and not a group; that a leader is a single entity that has the wisdom and knowledge and power and will to carry the majority, to take care of them, and keep them comfortable and secure. It is a myth that has been repeated to the present day, and a myth that has been accepted because it has been programmed into the culture of enterprise.

The balloon makers found that this was not true, and discovered within themselves that only if they were all leaders could anyone lead; only if they shared the wealth could any of them be secure; only if they all took responsibility to the level of their competence could they all find satisfaction; and only if they worked as one would they find their way to individual peace and prosperity.

Witch doctors of thousands of years ago, clever people who worked out that natural phenomenon terrified the majority, used this special knowledge to their own design and benefit. Ever since, power has been relegated to the few at the expense of the many.

Priests of the great religions came along as the next iteration, then the kings and princes, despots and emperors, to the modern establishment of CEO and presidents and managers without interruption. We cannot let loose of nostalgia.

We have the Queen of England, one of the richest women in the world, who sits atop a vanquished empire as a titular head, and the most brilliant minds of that country would have it no other way.

We have the Church of Rome with a pontiff who controls the moral lives of one billion souls in a tradition that is out-of-date with the times, but no one disturbs the ecclesiastical structure for fear of sacrilege and mortal sin.

We have countless souls in Fortune 500 companies that remain obsequious to a fault for fear of losing their jobs or destabilizing their careers, when in an instant the company can dissolve into another entity with tens of thousands of jobs disappearing, and lives and careers left in ruins.

The reporter covering the BBC story of the balloon maker said that these workers didn't do this out of inspiration, but out of necessity. They were facing the COURT OF LAST RESORT and felt they had no other choice but to take charge of work in order to take charge of their lives.

So, in answer to the question is this a trend or a fluke, necessity will be the final determiner.

We as a species deny the necessity of making choices until necessity leaves no further choice for denial.

The social engineers and the bleeding hearts will try to do for such people what they could better do for themselves as long as necessity can be put off.

But is it not obvious, as it was twenty years ago when I first started to write about this plight, that necessity looms on the horizon?

We are a species that waits for brilliant minds to relieve us of the need to think and do. We busy ourselves with electronic toys designed as tools, and play the waiting game of rescue that was first designed by the medicine men and witch doctors of our ancient past, that is, until necessity has come to loom its ugly head.

It has happened in Argentina in a modest way, and workers have responded.

Argentina is another country that finds the space between individuals growing smaller and smaller with necessity no longer an idea on the distant horizon, but a neighbor.

Today, we are members of a world of six and a half billion souls. Tomorrow, we will be members of a world of seven, then eight, then nine, and then twelve billion souls. 1900 is not that long ago when the world was not yet two billion souls. Do the math.

Karl Marx, diligent and as dedicated as he was, got it all wrong. Workers are not a social movement, but an economic one. He got it right when he said workers needed to take control of production but not as a political movement, but as an economic one.

Economics control behavior while politicians mistakenly think politics do.

The politics of work in the balloon factory are as old as the pre-industrial guilds, but updated to a more sophisticated and more pervasive marketplace. Capitalists no doubt will see this as a threat to their 80-20 rule, where the few must be given special consideration in order for that few to create jobs for the many. There is a flaw in this argument.

Eric Hoffer once said that he could go into a slum, and extract from that base of derelicts, drug addicts and the depressed enough talent and commitment to build a city.

He went on to say that many of them lost their way because they believed in the pipe dream that they had been fed, that they needed others, that they were not enough within and of themselves; that they needed leaders; that they could not lead but must only follow. This left them, when push came to shove, demoralized and defenseless.

Necessity never reached their consciousness. They were waiting to be rescued when the only rescuer in sight were themselves. But that rescuer had been programmed out of them by a narcissistic and hedonistic society that built its future on hope when the only future necessity knows is courage.

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Books of Dr. Fisher mentioned here are available at www.fisherofideas.com or your favorite electronic bookseller. Dr. Fisher's latest book is A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (AuthorHouse 2007).