THE FAIRNESS ISSUE -- LIFE IS WHAT WE MAKE OF IT, NOT WHAT OTHERS MAKE FOR US!

 

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

© March 14, 2014

 

REFERENCE:

Those that are regular visitors to this blog know that it covers a multitude of subjects which are expressed in common language, language easily translated into the reader’s first language by referring to the indicator on the left of the subject.  Many have discovered this blog over recent months as activity has increased from a few hundred to nearly 10,000 a month now.  Thank you.  We hope you find the information useful.

Currently, I am proofreading a work of mine going into second edition, Work Without Managers: A View from the Trenches.  First published nearly a quarter century ago, it remains relevant because this transitional and transformational period in our global society has not only been a challenging one, but has found inordinate resistance to accept the fact that this is happening. 

While technology is swimmingly engulfing us with little apparent resistance, our cultures and institutions, indeed, our places of employment hold desperately on to tradition and power.  So it has been since the beginning of time.

The little excerpt that follows is taken from the pages of Work Without Managers as it first appeared.

 

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Fairness is an interesting issue, largely because there is no such thing. Whether we are winners or victors, losers or victims is, to a considerable degree, a function of how we see ourselves. Not how others see us, but how we see ourselves. Workers who are obsessed with finding fairness, consistently find instead, the lack of it. What they fail to see is that they allow unfairness to happen… not always, of course, but most of the time. It’s the true ‘bad break,’ however that they cling to— labeling it unfairness.

When destiny is tied to someone else’s rainbow, life is forever a disappointment.

Peter Drucker is emphatic: “To predict the future, one must create it.”

William Jennings Bryan adds, “Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”

In that same connection, Percy Shelley adds, “As to us — we are uncertain people, who are chased by the spirits of our destiny from purpose to purpose, like clouds by the wind.”

And, finally, Robert Louis Stevenson submits, “Wherever we are, it is but a stage on the way to somewhere else, and whatever we do, however we do it, it is only a preparation to do something else that shall be different.” 

Incidentally, the Fairness Issue is generally viewed in terms of deprivation, rather than excess. Yet how often we read of the children of celebrities who fail to cope with the excess of privilege… from Dianne Barrymore (Too Much Too Soon, 1961) to Lindsay Crosby (Parade Magazine, February 25, 1990). Death comes to them at an early age because of alcohol, depression, debauchery, and failure as men and women. Once the support system of family is removed, they see themselves as worthless because they cannot face the future without money… and so they either slowly commit suicide by drugs and drink, or more quickly with the gun.

Read the biographies of Drucker, Bryan, Shelley, and Stevenson, and you will learn that adversity was their constant companion. And like a mad bull, they rode it to achievement.

Life and work were not always fair, but their focus was on making the most of their respective situations; of taking charge of their respective destinies; of looking for opportunity, rather than justifying complaint; of making things happen, rather than waiting for them to occur. We do not find steel in our spine by filling it with Teflon.

Yet, having said this, Human Resources has been successful in making the Fairness Issue a predominant factor of work for the majority and the minority; for professionals and skilled tradespersons; for men and women alike. As such a dominant issue, fairness confirms the thesis of worker counter dependence on the organization. Thus, the organization’s debility is a function of the dependence of the workers. Rather than taking control of their destiny, many workers suffer from a sense of being controlled —and therefore subjected to the will and caprice of management.

Rather than sensing their own empowerment, they find solace in comforting each other by whining about how unfairly they are being treated. They take consolation in playing the ‘victim of the system,’ which insulates and isolates them from the Culture of Contribution.

Lost in this preoccupation with fairness is recognition of worker power. In the Information Age — where knowledge holds most of the trump cards in this game of Bridge that links the past with the future — workers hold a finesse hand, while continuing to play the dummy. It would be comedic if it weren’t so tragic.

It is an endless battle of control, with those exercising control (management) not having it; and those having control (workers) not exercising it; with productive work falling between them. In praise of fairness, it is reduced to a praise of folly. Who orchestrates this scenario? Human Resources.

To be fair, an oblique explanation of this development can be traced to the rise of college educated blue-collar workers.  Many of these college graduates went into the “helping professions,” which included Human Resources.  These first and second generation professionals came from families used to taking orders, not giving them; to maintaining the agenda of management, not contributing to its design; being influenced by management, not influencing it; following, not leading. 

As a consequence, Human Resources unwittingly became management’s union instead of workers’ advocate, selectively creating cosmetic changes that were no threat to either management’s power or its control.