On Industrial Relations Ethics
Introduction
The emergence of modern industrial society entailed processes that upturned the relations of humankind with nature, and quite importantly; the relations of human production in particular and social intercourse in general. The industrial revolution of the late 18th and 19th century transformed human life beyond the wildest dream anybody could have had for millennia. On one hand, "(f)or the first time in history, the living standards of the masses of ordinary people...begun to undergo sustained growth ... Nothing remotely like this economic behaviour has happened before" (Lucas, 2002 pp 109-10). On the other hand, the social progress it wrought was on the bent backs of overworked employees deprived of the rights to combine in defence of their wellbeing and dignity.
With the industrial revolution arose industrial relations, as practice. Modern industrial society rested on the establishment of modern/wage-based employment relations on a large, i.e. industrial scale, with a workforce that was free in a double sense; unbound for any employer that would employ her/his services, and “free” of any ownership of property that could make him/her self-sufficient and able to avoid having to sell his/her ability to expend labour. Labour thus became for the first time in human history a commodity and a labour market emerged, as with markets of other commodities for production and for consumption.
The concentration of workers into factories which was a critical element of industrialisation had its downside both at the workplace and in the larger society. Long and monotonous work hours, child labour, unsafe work and such precarious conditions for labour were largely the norm, at earlier stages of industrialisation. In the broader society, along with factories, modern cities were built which had working class quarters where blue collar workers lived in squalor. This state of affairs within and outside the walls of the workplace led to moral indignation and subsequent improvements of working and living conditions for the labour force.
A number of those who raised alarm and sought to ensure the betterment of the lives of modern toilers were themselves industrialists such as Robert Owen in England. The major plank of agitation however emerged in the form of trade unions which were formed, secretly or at least extra-legally in the first instance . Some ethical and material standards where established on bipartite and tripartite bases for working conditions and industrial relations in the course of decades of conflicts and dialogue between the trade unions, employers and the state, both at national and supra-national levels. At the national level, these have come to be enshrined in Collective Agreements and labour laws. Internationally, these are codified as International Labour Standards, which primarily take the forms of ILO Conventions and recommendations. Other forms they also take include International Framework Agreements and Global Pacts.
This essay explores moral theory in relation to industrial relations, with significant bearing on our understanding of what is “good” or “right” in the interactions between employers, the state and the working class the workplace and society.
Ethics; theory and practice
It is important to put what “ethics” is in perspective, first, to adequately situate it within the discourse and practice of industrial relations. Ethics comprises a broad scope of human issues related to what is “right” or “good”, for human beings to do (Frankena 1963). Essentially, it raises and addresses questions of morality. As theory, it is synonymous with “moral philosophy”. As practice, its philosophical underpinning is fundamental to establishing the legitimacy or otherwise of social actors, their actions and the processes through which they engage.
Questions of what is right or good impinge on a wide array of human activities, including aesthetics, prudence or judgment (Provis 1999). Determining what is “right” is basically normative, while determining what is “good” implies the ascription of values. The “rightness” or “goodness” of an action or set of actions could be directly linked. Indeed to a great extent, unravelling the relationship between what is right and what is good has been the major focus of ethics as moral philosophy, in modern times (Ross 1930).
Ethical theory; a broad overview
The philosophical discipline of ethics has evolved into four major theoretical branches. These are: normative ethics; meta-ethics; applied ethics and; descriptive ethics.
Normative ethics which could be considered as the basic substratum of ethical theory can be traced to the beginnings of human civilization. It is otherwise known as prescriptive ethics, in that its formulation seeks to specify how humans as moral agents ought to act.
Meta-ethics emerged in the course of the 20th century and is concerned with establishing the truth value of normatively ethical claims. It involves querying the very meaning of “right” and “good”.
Applied ethics tries to address the challenges of practical application of moral philosophy to specific dimensions and (institutionalised) activities of social life. It assumes a knowledge of morality and rather concerns itself with questions related to putting this into practice
Descriptive ethics which is also termed comparative ethics involves empirical study, not of morality itself, but rather of beliefs and attitudes of persons and societies to the concepts of “right” and “good”. It does not ascribe any moral value to action, in itself; rather, it investigates ideals and values of morality as expressed through the contextual interface of moral choices made. It is considered by its proponents as the making of ethical theory into a (positivist) science.
Moral psychology could arguably be considered as a fifth branch of ethical theory. It might however be more apt to see it as a broad area of study straddling the borderline of ethics and the discipline of psychology. It entails study that covers the sphere of moral development, interrogating questions of moral responsibility, altruism, moral character, moral luck and psychological egoism (Wallace 2007). The approaches of evolutionary ethics, within moral psychology further attempt to comprehend and explain the moral choices and ethical preferences of social actors, through such interrogation, thus serving as scientific methods for such disciplines as socio-biology and evolutionary psychology (Schroeder 2002).
These four (or five) sub-disciplines of ethical theory are not necessarily compartmentalised. Moral facts, as meta-ethical theorists of the moral realism school argue, are both prescriptive (normative) and descriptive. Equally, applied ethics, which initially was a sub-discipline of normative ethics, is near inseparable from the broader sub-discipline of normative ethics. The question of how to practically apply moral knowledge to real-life situations assumes a prescriptive inscription of what is considered as moral knowledge.
The greatest dissensions within ethical theory are found not across its sub-disciplines but rather within these, particularly in normative ethics, which attempts to prescriptively determine what is “good” and what is “bad” or “evil” for humans as moral agents to do.
Moral theory; conflicting approaches
Normative ethics could be generally categorized along the lines of three broad approaches. These are: virtue ethics; deontological ethics and; consequentalist ethics. Traditional moral philosophy, was rooted in normative ethics, understood as the study of inherent reasons for the rightness or wrongness of human action, from the perspective of determining virtues of instrumental and essential values for achieving the “good”. The essential element of moral good was considered by some of the earlier Western philosophers as intrinsic to the actor and the act concerned, in relation to defined ethical ideals. This perspective was at the heart of virtue ethics, and still is.
In modern times, two other approaches to ethical theory have evolved, which have shifted the analysis of what is “good” away from the being good of human beings as moral agents. These are the deontological, consequentialist , pragmatic and post-modern approaches. The deontological approach investigates the relations of intention(s) that lead to (moral) action, and the action itself, to rules, duties or obligations expressive of the ethical ideal. The consequential approach stresses the consequential goodness (or the converse) resultant from actions taken, with much less emphasis on (and in some cases, irrespective of) the intentions leading to such actions. The pragmatic approach presents the characterisation of what is the ethical as being determined by paradigmatic shifts across generations, spurred by the bold actions of gadflies, while post-modern ethics considers the ethical as but being social constructs which can thus be understood only as relational reality within changing social contexts.
Virtue ethics
“Virtue ethics” dwelling on the considered immanent nature of character and integrity of human beings as moral agents was (and largely still remains) central to mainstream projects of normative ethics. (Moral) norms, it would seem were considered as the inter-subjective manifestations of something deeper within the individual (wo)man as a moral agent, this being the material of character, or virtue, embodied in the person.
In this regard, virtue ethics was the fulcrum of normative ethics and indeed philosophy as a whole in classical Greece. Virtues could be considered as habits of persons based on the pursuit of some basic ethical ideal. What such a basic ethical ideal is was however something on which consensus was never established. For Socrates and Aristotle this was happiness. Socrates believed this could be appreciated only through self-knowledge, while Aristotle saw the virtue of moderation as being of the utmost instrumental value to this ethical ideal of self-realization. The Stoics perceived a serene and peaceful mind as the ethical ideal for moral agents. Contentment and self-control over sentiments, desires and attitudinal dispositions are virtues with which such ethical ideal could be realised. These different schools of “virtue ethics”, of the ancient Greeks considered the “good” as being something absolute and in a sense unchanging, but achievable by individuals through conscious cultivation.
Deontological ethics
The emergence of deontological ethics is traced to Kantian objectively idealist philosophy. The word deon, which is Greek for duty or obligation, is central to determining what is ethically right, in Kantian philosophy. According to Kant (1780), one must act in line with the dictates of duty to act in the morally upright way. The consequences of such action could be good, and indeed, it is assumed that acting in the morally upright way predisposes one’s actions to being good. But the consequence of an action might as well not be good (Olson, 1967, p. 343). To the extent that the intention behind such action is borne out of duty or ethical rules-bound obligations though, the human-as-moral-agent has acted in the right manner.
Deontological ethics shares with virtue ethics the belief in intrinsic good. Kant argues that the morally right way to act, which is rooted in duty stems from the good, which is good, in itself, and thus good without qualification. This he considers as thus being goodwill (Kant 1948/1785). He presents this as absolute and the categorical imperative for assessing the motives behind actions and thus for determining what is ethically right to do. This, he contrasts with the hypothetical imperative of means to achieve the good, which is circumstantial. The “right” thing to do is in this view considered ethically superior to the possible good that could or might not emerge as the consequence of such right action.
Consequentialist ethics
“Consequentialism” as a term to describe the broad body of ethical theory which views the consequences of actions as the moral determinant of their being morally right was formulated by G.E.M. Anscombe, in her influential essay titled “Modern Moral Philosophy” (1958). In the essay, she sought to point out what she viewed as ethical contradictions in utilitarianism, which at the time was a dominant thread in ethical theory.
Consequentialist ethics have different views of what constitutes the ethical ideal or what is “good”. They are however bound by the common denominator of defining what is “right” to do on the basis of the consequential good that it brings about (Mackie 1990)
This spectrum of ethical approaches, also has roots in traditional moral theory (classical Greek and ancient China). As an approach to morality, it considers the ultimate good from the perspective of the value of the consequences of actions of moral agents . Its roots in classical Greek philosophy are represented by the different strands of the ethical philosophy of Hedonism, which considers the principal goodness as the maximization of pleasure and the minimization of pain, and could thus be considered as the classical fore-runner of the latter-day utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham & modern utilitarians in general.
There are however two broad schools within this Hedonist approach; the Cyrenaic and the Epicurean. Cyrenaic hedonism promotes the maximization of the individual pleasure, no matter how momentary, or the ill effects this could have on others, thus encouraging self-indulgence. Epicurean hedonism on the contrary, places premium on the collective and lasting pleasure, encouraging prudence as the pivotal value in the individual moral agent, for the attainment of the ethical ideal of maximum good for the maximum number of people. In this sense, within the generic Hedonist approach, Epicureanism in particular could be seen as an earlier formulation of (modern) ethical utilitarianism.
The Chinese roots of consequentialist ethics date back to the 5th century BC and is described by the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy as the "world's earliest form of consequentialism”. It is a particular strand of teleological ethical theory developed by Mozi, a Chinese philosopher, which views the ultimate good as state stability, “order, material wealth, and increase in population”, and not the necessarily the happiness of individuals members of society (Loewe & Shaughnessy 1999, 761). What Mohist consequentialism –also described as state consequentialism- considers as the ultimate good was in a sense, a response to the period Mozi lived in, in China. This was an era of great strife and famine. Wars, conflicts and natural disasters had taken a great toll on the Chinese society and the stability of its state.
Modern consequentialim, unlike that of Mozi have individuals as the subject of goodness. It however still includes a broad array of what is considered as the ethically good consequence which justifies the right action of an individual.
The span of such consequential considerations include: ethical egoism, which places the ultimate goodness as that which benefits the individual who acts (see Sidgwick 1907); ethical altruism, considers the good consequence as that which benefits all others except the subject, propounded largely by August Comte, the father of Sociology and Positivism (see Seglow 2004); rules consequentialism, which considers rules of ethical behaviour based on the consequences (utilitarian or egoistic) that these could have; motive consequentialism, relates consequences to the motives situating these to alternative motives that could guide action leading to similar consequences (Adams 1976, pp. 467-81); negative consequentialism, proposes the view of “the lesser evil” &; utilitarianism, which is probably the most dominant form of consequentialism in modern ethical theory.
Utilitarianism basically amounts to an ethical perspective of ensuring the greatest goodness for the greatest number of persons. There however exists a diverse array of utilitarianism defined on the basis of what is considered as the greatest goodness or happiness which is to be the lodestone for action that is right, for the greatest number of persons possible. Arguably the most salient of utilitarianism within consequentialist ethics is that propounded by Jeremy Bentham which considers that as pleasure.
Bentham averred that:
Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think.
Post-modern ethics
Deontology and utilitarianism represent modern ethical theory which flowered in the course of the development of modern industrial society, representing different dimensions of foundationalist ontology in philosophy, generally. While deontology, flowing from Kant rested on the base of idealist realism, the various consequentialist approaches had roots in positivist realism. By the later half of the last century, post-modern philosophy which declared the absence of a core essence of reality flowered, largely, it could be argued, as an intellectual response and reflection of the decaying character of modern society.
In moral theory, post-modern philosophy challenged the presence of essence in ethics, be this in the form of rules and obligations as deontologists aver, or within consequences as utilitarians and other consequentialist (moral) philosophers claim. The ethical was presented as contextual, within a world in flux that is relational thus essentially lacking any essential core as a determinant of the “right” or the “good”.
Post-modern (moral) theory teases out relations between the ethical and language or linguistic signs, arguing as Jacques Derrida (1995) does that “there is nothing outside the text”. This perspective places premium more on narratives or genaology of reality than any essential reality, ethically or otherwise, as language with which in thought and words humankind grapples reality is itself nothing but a mask of the existence of any reality thus, in their view, underpinning the falsity of any real reality, in itself . Meaning and significance (of social relations), including that which is ethical are seen as being both mediated by and understandable only through language, which itself evolves, thus meaning and significance have no core essence of their own.
Post-modernist proponents of moral theory tend to stress the linkages of the ethical to the political in the broadest sense, establishing relations between morality and power. A key concept in this regard is that of “ethical resistance”, formulated by Hoy as being characterised by the non-legality of what is “good” being considered just and thus apt for the powerless to benefit of. As he argues:
“That actions are at once obligatory and at the same time unenforceable is what put them in the category of the ethical. Obligations that were enforced would, by the virtue of the force behind them, not be freely undertaken and would not be in the realm of the ethical” (2005, 184).
Ethical conduct is thus reduced to the practice of the powerless and their advocates.
Pragmatic ethics
The pragmatic approach to ethical theory could be traced to John Dewey, the America neo-Hegelian philosopher and psychologist, at the turn of the 20th century. A response to both deontology and consequentialism in moral philosophy, it foresaw the arguments of the post-modernist approach. Implicit in it is the perspective of “moral leadership” (citation). It considers no moral code as eternal, rather presenting paradigmatic shifts in what is considered ethical, much like the paradigmatic shifts in scientific sense, generally, across generations. This shift is spurred by non-conformist ethically upright protagonists. It however, indeed consequently, perceives the framework and subject of morality as being social and not individual (Liszka n.d.)
In pragmatic traditions, this approach to ethics does not consider ethical ideals as being necessarily intrinsic and eternal. On the contrary it presents these and consequently what could be considered as the morally upright act, as evolving and conditioned by social-historical realities of a community or society at large. This is because, as its proponents argue “all conduct is social” (Lafollete 2000). What might be considered morally appropriate, at least in the dominant quarters within society at stage of development might subsequently be adjudged as being morally inappropriate in the course of social progress. A good example of this in Industrial Relations is lengthy working hours (sometimes of up to 16hours) before the movement for an 8-hour working day gained enough moral traction and political momentum to be considered apt and later enacted as law in most countries.
A consequence of this position which is equally a pillar of the ethical pragmatist school is that moral criteria in general can be and do get revised in the course of social progress. This has led to accusations of its being relativist, very much like post-modern approaches to moral theory. Ethical pragmatists however argue that on the contrary, just like science, a pragmatic approach to ethics converges towards the morally objective (Liszka Op cit).
Ethical pragmatism played a key role in the early part of the 20th century’s democratic movement in the United States of America, with democracy and patriotism being considered as ethical ideals by its proponents. Its direct influence in the field of industrial relations has not been very profound, but its spirit can be felt in the formulations of the pluralist school of industrial relations.
Industrial relations and ethical theory
The relevance of ethics, to industrial relations practice has been questioned by several authors, from different theoretical points of departure, over the years (Provis op cit, p. 195). The three major theoretical strands of this seeming disputation of the ethical in relation to industrial relations are; logical positivism, post-modernism and Marxism, according to Provis (ibid 193).
These different theoretical approaches have had significant impact on industrial relations theorizing in general, whence we consider the study of industrial relations as a social science. It would be necessary at this point to put them in perspective, in relation to the issue of ethics in the field of industrial relations.
Logical positivism, ethics and industrial relations
Logical positivism, which is also described as logical empiricism or neo-positivism is the modern approach to positivism, with its origin being traceable to the late 1920s works of Ayer and the Vienna Circle. Its project was the deepening of the foundationalist empiricism of positivism. Whilst the earlier positivism of David Hume, for example had stressed personal experience as the basis of its empiricism, logical positivism prioritises public experimental verification. Similarly, while Comtean and other approaches of positivism declare all what is not empirically verifiable as false, neo-positivism rather considers such as being meaningless. Thus, where a statement or proposition is not empirically verifiable, it is considered as merely a subjective definition and not real.
The import of this on metaphysics and particularly normative ethics cannot be overemphasized. It is near impossible to objectively and empirically verify the good, in itself, a priori in most instances. A subjective or emotional notion of value cannot but be imputed into judgment arriving at what is considered the good.
Logical positivism led to greater emphasis on meta-ethics, which seeks more to understand why and how what is good or right is thus considered as good as against bad and as right as against wrong. Logical positivists’ preference of meta-ethics is from a cognitive perspective which gives preference to facts over “values”. This is not to imply that for logical positivism value in general is considered as non-existent or inconsequential, but rather that it has no intrinsic meaning, being rather a subjectively derived category as against that which is factual and thus empirically verifiable in this regard, through description. Consequently, for industrial relations, the ethical in its practice, even while expressing values in determining what is considered as good/evil, right/wrong cannot be based on virtue and is not necessarily normative. It is rather understood in a consequentialist sense derived through a descriptive analysis of existing practice.
“There is more of a history of discussing values in industrial relations writing than of discussing either norms or virtues” (Provis op cit, p. 196). This reality which partly reflects the influence of logical positivism in the field over the better part of the last century is rooted in the greater concern with interests (cf. Hirschman 1977). The dominant pluralist approach in the discipline considers the contentious nature of these between the actors in the industrial relations system, but presents such as being reconcilable. Such reconciliation presupposes compromise between these parties to “industrial democracy”, even if the “democracy” is one where the workers are in perpetual opposition without hope of usurping the will of managerial prerogative in the final analysis. Thus, not surprisingly, fairness as a utilitarian value becomes “centrally relevant” in industrial relations theory (cf. Hyman and Brough 1975, p. ix).
Post-modern ethics and industrial relations
The influence of post-modernism in industrial relations generally and on the ethical plane of the discipline in particular, has been rather mild, with the dominant approaches to theory in the field remaining largely realist. The post-modernist worldview being not just relativist but as well one that denies any essential reality undermines the possibilities of providing much of an ethical basis for industrial relations either procedurally or substantially.
The perspective of Hoy which presents ethics in relation to power as discussed earlier is however such that has a place in understanding the dynamis between industrial relations and ethics. In practice this is reflected in the Decent Work Agenda and the various Decent Work Country Programmes. It is however difficult, if we stick to this post-modern form of analysis to understand any continued ethical content in such a programme, when (as would soon be the case in Liberia where the National Assembly has passed legislation towards enacting a Decent Work Act), the agenda while still proposing to be an expression of legitimacy for the powerless or more aptly less power-bearing working class (in terms of institutional power, particularly of the state), becomes imbued with the force of law.
Marxism, ethics and industrial relations
Marxism has had profound impact on the study of industrial relations being essentially the tool of analysis of the discipline’s radical approach. Its ethical standpoint, in Provis’ view; “can be a third pressure against the development of ethical analysis in industrial relations” (op cit, p. 194). This is partly based on Skillen’s argument that Marx presents “a theoretical and practical opposition to the very form of morality, as he understood it”. This morality as an essential reality is further clarified by Skillen as being “the form of universal, absolute laws binding on individuals as beings with a capacity to rise above and conquer their selfish capricious ‘inclination’” (Skillen 1981, p. 156) .
Provis also notes, though, that “the Marxist approach can take a different form which is not susceptible to that argument”. This different form is one which “suspect(s) ethical analysis in capitalist society on the grounds that such analysis necessarily intermingles ethics and ideology” (Provis op cit p. 3 in adobe). The effect of this second form that Provis discovers in the Marxist account of ethics, he posits, has basically the same effect as the logical positivist approach to the domain of ethics in industrial relations theory. This is to the effect that it presents the claims and attitudes of morality within industrial relations as aspects to be studied from the outside and not on the basis of their own integral coherence.
Blackledge (2008) refutes the view that the Marxist position on ethics is either dismissive or incoherent as having “superficial plausibility”. Rather, as he notes, Marx presents “alternative ethics”, the “starting point” of which is “the collective struggle of workers against their exploitation”. This position stems from the realisation that different forms or approaches to ethics rest on some biases or the other, reflecting a relativistic stand on moral philosophy in general and ethics in particular on one hand. On the other hand, according to Wood (2005, pp. 132-34), the seeming dismissal of “morality” by Marx represents a rejection of the Kantian (deontological) ethics which presents what is morally right as entailing the suppression of otherwise natural desires and which is at the heart of modern liberalism and consequently, its assumed pluralism.
Blackledge actually shows rupture in the development of moral philosophy from classical times (i.e. Aristotelian or more broadly, pre-modern virtue ethics) during the enlightenment era which laid the basis for modern thought (with the rise of first, Kantian or deontological and subsequently but related to it, consequentialist, particularly utilitarian ethics). Aristotelian ethics as against deontological ethics, he argues, “did not suppose that to be good entailed acting in opposition to our desires”, but rather, in a naturalistic manner “related the idea of good to fulfilling human needs and desires”. Further, unlike the thrust of most of the mainstream approaches to normative ethics where morality and moral choice has the individual as its subject, Aristotelian moral philosophy with its primary virtue of self-realisation as the ultimate good, places premium on the social circumstances which could ensure such self-flourishing. This is why Aristotle’s book Ethics was devoted to the study of politics and he therein asserted that “the science that studies the supreme Good for man is politics” .
Marxism views the attempt to separate the ethical from the political in modern philosophy as being reflective of the contradiction in capitalist society between the social nature of production and culture and the individual nature of appropriation of the fruits of production and (high) culture.
Reason, drawing from such external or objectively ascribed ideals as the Categorical Imperative, is summoned to overcome or at least seek to overcome what is presented as natural egoistic/individualistic competition in society, in deontological ethics. In this case, both morality and our community as social beings appear as obligations on us from outside us, which are then considered as intrinsic determinants of what is right or good for us to do, as individuals or at best as assemblages of individuals and not as the combinational collectives that the industrial relations system for example, is comprised of.
Utilitarian ethics on its own part conflates the expansion of wealth in society as a whole with greater happiness for the greater number of persons in society, thus losing sight of the proportional increase in unhappiness for most members of society that create the wealth, with the expansion of such wealth, which a few appropriate (Ferguson 2008). This is of particular importance for industrial relations which addresses the site of relations in the process of production.
Further, the consequentialist nature of utilitarianism, as Blackledge points out, leaning on MacIntryre, is such that it has time and again been used to justify actions that deepen the pains and burden of working people in the projected expectation of some projected good. A good example in industrial relations is the so-called “right sizing” of staff strength under the public sector reforms. The overall common good, the state avers, would be best fulfilled in the long run by a leaner public service which concentrates on “core services”. But the impact of the downsizing on both workers and consumers of public services have been quite dire. In the health sector for example, contracting out of such non-core services as catering has resulted in avoidable adverse effects on patients in public health facilities.
Marxist approach to ethics is distinct from the dominant deontological and consequentialist approaches to moral philosophy in two major ways. First, it views ethical behaviour from social group (and specifically class) dimensions as against the pre-eminence of individual decisions and secondly, it does not consider morality as absolute and unchanging through time. On the contrary, it considers it as a super-structural construct defined essentially by the character and changes in the basic economic relations of a society.
Marxist ethics, like ethical pragmatism considers morality as something which evolves over time and something which can be understood in terms of society acquiring it, over individuals. There are however clear differences between both approaches which in industrial relations separates their protagonists along the lines of the radical and pluralist approaches to industrial relations, respectively. This has to do with the class question. Pragmatic ethics presents a trans-class evolutionary nature of morality, which, while recognizing conflict as something not dysfunctional, considers the antagonism between the working class and the employers as something not irreconcilable.
In lieu of a conclusion
Concluding remarks
The discipline of industrial relations as an inter-disciplinary science arose partly as an ethical response to the earlier inhumane practice of industrial relations. Industrial relations practice sites go way back to the early factories, mines and offices in the wake of the industrial revolution. Industrial relations and its system have evolved over the past few centuries and with it the ethical considerations of actors in the system. Child labour, forced labour and such likes that would have been considered as being tolerable are now, at least formally considered condemnable.
As a discipline, industrial relations is concerned primarily with the study of employment relations within modern industrial society (i.e. within and beyond industry in the strictest use of the word) (Ackers 2002). It is concerned with problem-solving, scientific generalization based on empirical investigation and establishing ethical bases for practical employment relations (Kaufman 2004). In the course of its evolution, three approaches have emerged, being; the unitary, pluralist and radical schools. Understanding industrial relations ethics require situating this within an approach or the other.
The unitary approach upholds a paternalistic form of industrial relations where the interests of management/employers and those of the workers are considered as being more or less identical. Workers combination (as trade unions) are not encouraged and conflict is considered an anomaly, even where it is recognised as something that happens. Deontological ethics, individual worker integrity and the virtues of honesty, hard work and loyalty are more likely to be propagated by protagonists of this approach.
The pluralist approach recognises some level of antagonism between the industrial relations actors, particularly between employers/management and their associations on one hand and the working class with its trade unions on the other hand. Such antagonism are however considered as reconcilable through trade offs and compromise. Proponents of this approach are more likely to uphold utilitarian or pragmatic ethics. It was the dominant approach in the field of industrial relations practice for the better part of the last century, leading to the institutionalisation of collective bargaining processes and the entrenchment of quite a number of germane labour laws. Indeed statutes nationally and internationally have been enacted to curb some of the more unjust practices in employment relations in the 19th century that are now universally considered unethical. But the more things have changed, they have in a sense, also remained the same.
The radical approach, which this paper identifies with, appreciates the extent to which the lot of the working class might have been bettered, and industrial relations ethics evolve on the basis of pluralist perspectives. It however does not lose sight of the fact that trans-class ethics might never be real, considering the imbalance of power (in favour of the employer), within labour relations.
The fact that production in general and the labour process in particular subordinate the need motive to the profit motive, does, I would argue, undermine the possibility of a lasting basis for uni-linear ethics in industrial relations, which a pluralist approach might seek. The worker might not be owned by her/his “master” as slaves were in the classical Athens, but he still remains basically a wage-slave. In his “Aristotle on the Ethics of Workplace Relations” Andrew Murray (2009), aptly cited John Locke, often considered as the father of liberal-pluralist thought: “A freeman makes himself a servant to another, by selling him, for a certain time, the service he undertakes to do, in exchange for the wages he is to receive” . And as he further notes “we no longer allow the possession of persons as slaves, but it is still possible to approximate this relationship, following Locke, during the hours of employment” (Murray, Ibid…).
This does not equate to a position of denying any ethical possibility within the realms of industrial relations. Such a wide cynical claim would fall flat in the face of reality and right so. Presenting a pluralist argument from a post-modern perspective, Marti (n.d.) notes that in the workplace “relationships can be built upon competition, cooperation and conflict”. He however sees these as alternative contextual modes of industrial relations. On the contrary, these occur simultaneously, even though at specific moments, one mode might take the fore over the other two.
In summing up the questions of what is “good” and what is “right”, which are central to ethical theory, might need to be qualified within industrial relations as for whose good & right for whom? Of course there would be points of intersection in which responses to these questions could cut across employer and worker in a “win win” sense to use a popular phrase. But this can hardly ever be on a sustained basis.
Summary
This essay has tried to further understanding on the ethical dimensions of industrial relations. In this light, it put in perspective ethical theory and practices in general with a broad overview of the sub-disciplines of moral theory and the contending approaches to normative ethics, which is the cornerstone of the ethical. Ethics in relation to industrial relations was then analysed. It was noted that the relevance of ethics for industrial relations is one that has been questioned on different epistemological grounds such as logical positivism, post-modernism and the critical theory of Marxism.
Nonetheless, industrial relations as a discipline involves an ethical dimension along with its problem-solving and science-building dimensions. It is however impossible to situate the ethical in industrial relations as a supra-approach field. This is to see that the theoretical view and practical engagement with the ethical is implicitly a part and parcel of the broader approach to industrial relations which are; unitary, pluralist or radical.
The argument of this paper can be situated within the radical approach, while objectively presenting the salient positions of relations between moral theory and industrial relations.
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The emergence of modern industrial society entailed processes that upturned the relations of humankind with nature, and quite importantly; the relations of human production in particular and social intercourse in general. The industrial revolution of the late 18th and 19th century transformed human life beyond the wildest dream anybody could have had for millennia. On one hand, "(f)or the first time in history, the living standards of the masses of ordinary people...begun to undergo sustained growth ... Nothing remotely like this economic behaviour has happened before" (Lucas, 2002 pp 109-10). On the other hand, the social progress it wrought was on the bent backs of overworked employees deprived of the rights to combine in defence of their wellbeing and dignity.
With the industrial revolution arose industrial relations, as practice. Modern industrial society rested on the establishment of modern/wage-based employment relations on a large, i.e. industrial scale, with a workforce that was free in a double sense; unbound for any employer that would employ her/his services, and “free” of any ownership of property that could make him/her self-sufficient and able to avoid having to sell his/her ability to expend labour. Labour thus became for the first time in human history a commodity and a labour market emerged, as with markets of other commodities for production and for consumption.
The concentration of workers into factories which was a critical element of industrialisation had its downside both at the workplace and in the larger society. Long and monotonous work hours, child labour, unsafe work and such precarious conditions for labour were largely the norm, at earlier stages of industrialisation. In the broader society, along with factories, modern cities were built which had working class quarters where blue collar workers lived in squalor. This state of affairs within and outside the walls of the workplace led to moral indignation and subsequent improvements of working and living conditions for the labour force.
A number of those who raised alarm and sought to ensure the betterment of the lives of modern toilers were themselves industrialists such as Robert Owen in England. The major plank of agitation however emerged in the form of trade unions which were formed, secretly or at least extra-legally in the first instance . Some ethical and material standards where established on bipartite and tripartite bases for working conditions and industrial relations in the course of decades of conflicts and dialogue between the trade unions, employers and the state, both at national and supra-national levels. At the national level, these have come to be enshrined in Collective Agreements and labour laws. Internationally, these are codified as International Labour Standards, which primarily take the forms of ILO Conventions and recommendations. Other forms they also take include International Framework Agreements and Global Pacts.
This essay explores moral theory in relation to industrial relations, with significant bearing on our understanding of what is “good” or “right” in the interactions between employers, the state and the working class the workplace and society.
Ethics; theory and practice
It is important to put what “ethics” is in perspective, first, to adequately situate it within the discourse and practice of industrial relations. Ethics comprises a broad scope of human issues related to what is “right” or “good”, for human beings to do (Frankena 1963). Essentially, it raises and addresses questions of morality. As theory, it is synonymous with “moral philosophy”. As practice, its philosophical underpinning is fundamental to establishing the legitimacy or otherwise of social actors, their actions and the processes through which they engage.
Questions of what is right or good impinge on a wide array of human activities, including aesthetics, prudence or judgment (Provis 1999). Determining what is “right” is basically normative, while determining what is “good” implies the ascription of values. The “rightness” or “goodness” of an action or set of actions could be directly linked. Indeed to a great extent, unravelling the relationship between what is right and what is good has been the major focus of ethics as moral philosophy, in modern times (Ross 1930).
Ethical theory; a broad overview
The philosophical discipline of ethics has evolved into four major theoretical branches. These are: normative ethics; meta-ethics; applied ethics and; descriptive ethics.
Normative ethics which could be considered as the basic substratum of ethical theory can be traced to the beginnings of human civilization. It is otherwise known as prescriptive ethics, in that its formulation seeks to specify how humans as moral agents ought to act.
Meta-ethics emerged in the course of the 20th century and is concerned with establishing the truth value of normatively ethical claims. It involves querying the very meaning of “right” and “good”.
Applied ethics tries to address the challenges of practical application of moral philosophy to specific dimensions and (institutionalised) activities of social life. It assumes a knowledge of morality and rather concerns itself with questions related to putting this into practice
Descriptive ethics which is also termed comparative ethics involves empirical study, not of morality itself, but rather of beliefs and attitudes of persons and societies to the concepts of “right” and “good”. It does not ascribe any moral value to action, in itself; rather, it investigates ideals and values of morality as expressed through the contextual interface of moral choices made. It is considered by its proponents as the making of ethical theory into a (positivist) science.
Moral psychology could arguably be considered as a fifth branch of ethical theory. It might however be more apt to see it as a broad area of study straddling the borderline of ethics and the discipline of psychology. It entails study that covers the sphere of moral development, interrogating questions of moral responsibility, altruism, moral character, moral luck and psychological egoism (Wallace 2007). The approaches of evolutionary ethics, within moral psychology further attempt to comprehend and explain the moral choices and ethical preferences of social actors, through such interrogation, thus serving as scientific methods for such disciplines as socio-biology and evolutionary psychology (Schroeder 2002).
These four (or five) sub-disciplines of ethical theory are not necessarily compartmentalised. Moral facts, as meta-ethical theorists of the moral realism school argue, are both prescriptive (normative) and descriptive. Equally, applied ethics, which initially was a sub-discipline of normative ethics, is near inseparable from the broader sub-discipline of normative ethics. The question of how to practically apply moral knowledge to real-life situations assumes a prescriptive inscription of what is considered as moral knowledge.
The greatest dissensions within ethical theory are found not across its sub-disciplines but rather within these, particularly in normative ethics, which attempts to prescriptively determine what is “good” and what is “bad” or “evil” for humans as moral agents to do.
Moral theory; conflicting approaches
Normative ethics could be generally categorized along the lines of three broad approaches. These are: virtue ethics; deontological ethics and; consequentalist ethics. Traditional moral philosophy, was rooted in normative ethics, understood as the study of inherent reasons for the rightness or wrongness of human action, from the perspective of determining virtues of instrumental and essential values for achieving the “good”. The essential element of moral good was considered by some of the earlier Western philosophers as intrinsic to the actor and the act concerned, in relation to defined ethical ideals. This perspective was at the heart of virtue ethics, and still is.
In modern times, two other approaches to ethical theory have evolved, which have shifted the analysis of what is “good” away from the being good of human beings as moral agents. These are the deontological, consequentialist , pragmatic and post-modern approaches. The deontological approach investigates the relations of intention(s) that lead to (moral) action, and the action itself, to rules, duties or obligations expressive of the ethical ideal. The consequential approach stresses the consequential goodness (or the converse) resultant from actions taken, with much less emphasis on (and in some cases, irrespective of) the intentions leading to such actions. The pragmatic approach presents the characterisation of what is the ethical as being determined by paradigmatic shifts across generations, spurred by the bold actions of gadflies, while post-modern ethics considers the ethical as but being social constructs which can thus be understood only as relational reality within changing social contexts.
Virtue ethics
“Virtue ethics” dwelling on the considered immanent nature of character and integrity of human beings as moral agents was (and largely still remains) central to mainstream projects of normative ethics. (Moral) norms, it would seem were considered as the inter-subjective manifestations of something deeper within the individual (wo)man as a moral agent, this being the material of character, or virtue, embodied in the person.
In this regard, virtue ethics was the fulcrum of normative ethics and indeed philosophy as a whole in classical Greece. Virtues could be considered as habits of persons based on the pursuit of some basic ethical ideal. What such a basic ethical ideal is was however something on which consensus was never established. For Socrates and Aristotle this was happiness. Socrates believed this could be appreciated only through self-knowledge, while Aristotle saw the virtue of moderation as being of the utmost instrumental value to this ethical ideal of self-realization. The Stoics perceived a serene and peaceful mind as the ethical ideal for moral agents. Contentment and self-control over sentiments, desires and attitudinal dispositions are virtues with which such ethical ideal could be realised. These different schools of “virtue ethics”, of the ancient Greeks considered the “good” as being something absolute and in a sense unchanging, but achievable by individuals through conscious cultivation.
Deontological ethics
The emergence of deontological ethics is traced to Kantian objectively idealist philosophy. The word deon, which is Greek for duty or obligation, is central to determining what is ethically right, in Kantian philosophy. According to Kant (1780), one must act in line with the dictates of duty to act in the morally upright way. The consequences of such action could be good, and indeed, it is assumed that acting in the morally upright way predisposes one’s actions to being good. But the consequence of an action might as well not be good (Olson, 1967, p. 343). To the extent that the intention behind such action is borne out of duty or ethical rules-bound obligations though, the human-as-moral-agent has acted in the right manner.
Deontological ethics shares with virtue ethics the belief in intrinsic good. Kant argues that the morally right way to act, which is rooted in duty stems from the good, which is good, in itself, and thus good without qualification. This he considers as thus being goodwill (Kant 1948/1785). He presents this as absolute and the categorical imperative for assessing the motives behind actions and thus for determining what is ethically right to do. This, he contrasts with the hypothetical imperative of means to achieve the good, which is circumstantial. The “right” thing to do is in this view considered ethically superior to the possible good that could or might not emerge as the consequence of such right action.
Consequentialist ethics
“Consequentialism” as a term to describe the broad body of ethical theory which views the consequences of actions as the moral determinant of their being morally right was formulated by G.E.M. Anscombe, in her influential essay titled “Modern Moral Philosophy” (1958). In the essay, she sought to point out what she viewed as ethical contradictions in utilitarianism, which at the time was a dominant thread in ethical theory.
Consequentialist ethics have different views of what constitutes the ethical ideal or what is “good”. They are however bound by the common denominator of defining what is “right” to do on the basis of the consequential good that it brings about (Mackie 1990)
This spectrum of ethical approaches, also has roots in traditional moral theory (classical Greek and ancient China). As an approach to morality, it considers the ultimate good from the perspective of the value of the consequences of actions of moral agents . Its roots in classical Greek philosophy are represented by the different strands of the ethical philosophy of Hedonism, which considers the principal goodness as the maximization of pleasure and the minimization of pain, and could thus be considered as the classical fore-runner of the latter-day utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham & modern utilitarians in general.
There are however two broad schools within this Hedonist approach; the Cyrenaic and the Epicurean. Cyrenaic hedonism promotes the maximization of the individual pleasure, no matter how momentary, or the ill effects this could have on others, thus encouraging self-indulgence. Epicurean hedonism on the contrary, places premium on the collective and lasting pleasure, encouraging prudence as the pivotal value in the individual moral agent, for the attainment of the ethical ideal of maximum good for the maximum number of people. In this sense, within the generic Hedonist approach, Epicureanism in particular could be seen as an earlier formulation of (modern) ethical utilitarianism.
The Chinese roots of consequentialist ethics date back to the 5th century BC and is described by the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy as the "world's earliest form of consequentialism”. It is a particular strand of teleological ethical theory developed by Mozi, a Chinese philosopher, which views the ultimate good as state stability, “order, material wealth, and increase in population”, and not the necessarily the happiness of individuals members of society (Loewe & Shaughnessy 1999, 761). What Mohist consequentialism –also described as state consequentialism- considers as the ultimate good was in a sense, a response to the period Mozi lived in, in China. This was an era of great strife and famine. Wars, conflicts and natural disasters had taken a great toll on the Chinese society and the stability of its state.
Modern consequentialim, unlike that of Mozi have individuals as the subject of goodness. It however still includes a broad array of what is considered as the ethically good consequence which justifies the right action of an individual.
The span of such consequential considerations include: ethical egoism, which places the ultimate goodness as that which benefits the individual who acts (see Sidgwick 1907); ethical altruism, considers the good consequence as that which benefits all others except the subject, propounded largely by August Comte, the father of Sociology and Positivism (see Seglow 2004); rules consequentialism, which considers rules of ethical behaviour based on the consequences (utilitarian or egoistic) that these could have; motive consequentialism, relates consequences to the motives situating these to alternative motives that could guide action leading to similar consequences (Adams 1976, pp. 467-81); negative consequentialism, proposes the view of “the lesser evil” &; utilitarianism, which is probably the most dominant form of consequentialism in modern ethical theory.
Utilitarianism basically amounts to an ethical perspective of ensuring the greatest goodness for the greatest number of persons. There however exists a diverse array of utilitarianism defined on the basis of what is considered as the greatest goodness or happiness which is to be the lodestone for action that is right, for the greatest number of persons possible. Arguably the most salient of utilitarianism within consequentialist ethics is that propounded by Jeremy Bentham which considers that as pleasure.
Bentham averred that:
Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think.
Post-modern ethics
Deontology and utilitarianism represent modern ethical theory which flowered in the course of the development of modern industrial society, representing different dimensions of foundationalist ontology in philosophy, generally. While deontology, flowing from Kant rested on the base of idealist realism, the various consequentialist approaches had roots in positivist realism. By the later half of the last century, post-modern philosophy which declared the absence of a core essence of reality flowered, largely, it could be argued, as an intellectual response and reflection of the decaying character of modern society.
In moral theory, post-modern philosophy challenged the presence of essence in ethics, be this in the form of rules and obligations as deontologists aver, or within consequences as utilitarians and other consequentialist (moral) philosophers claim. The ethical was presented as contextual, within a world in flux that is relational thus essentially lacking any essential core as a determinant of the “right” or the “good”.
Post-modern (moral) theory teases out relations between the ethical and language or linguistic signs, arguing as Jacques Derrida (1995) does that “there is nothing outside the text”. This perspective places premium more on narratives or genaology of reality than any essential reality, ethically or otherwise, as language with which in thought and words humankind grapples reality is itself nothing but a mask of the existence of any reality thus, in their view, underpinning the falsity of any real reality, in itself . Meaning and significance (of social relations), including that which is ethical are seen as being both mediated by and understandable only through language, which itself evolves, thus meaning and significance have no core essence of their own.
Post-modernist proponents of moral theory tend to stress the linkages of the ethical to the political in the broadest sense, establishing relations between morality and power. A key concept in this regard is that of “ethical resistance”, formulated by Hoy as being characterised by the non-legality of what is “good” being considered just and thus apt for the powerless to benefit of. As he argues:
“That actions are at once obligatory and at the same time unenforceable is what put them in the category of the ethical. Obligations that were enforced would, by the virtue of the force behind them, not be freely undertaken and would not be in the realm of the ethical” (2005, 184).
Ethical conduct is thus reduced to the practice of the powerless and their advocates.
Pragmatic ethics
The pragmatic approach to ethical theory could be traced to John Dewey, the America neo-Hegelian philosopher and psychologist, at the turn of the 20th century. A response to both deontology and consequentialism in moral philosophy, it foresaw the arguments of the post-modernist approach. Implicit in it is the perspective of “moral leadership” (citation). It considers no moral code as eternal, rather presenting paradigmatic shifts in what is considered ethical, much like the paradigmatic shifts in scientific sense, generally, across generations. This shift is spurred by non-conformist ethically upright protagonists. It however, indeed consequently, perceives the framework and subject of morality as being social and not individual (Liszka n.d.)
In pragmatic traditions, this approach to ethics does not consider ethical ideals as being necessarily intrinsic and eternal. On the contrary it presents these and consequently what could be considered as the morally upright act, as evolving and conditioned by social-historical realities of a community or society at large. This is because, as its proponents argue “all conduct is social” (Lafollete 2000). What might be considered morally appropriate, at least in the dominant quarters within society at stage of development might subsequently be adjudged as being morally inappropriate in the course of social progress. A good example of this in Industrial Relations is lengthy working hours (sometimes of up to 16hours) before the movement for an 8-hour working day gained enough moral traction and political momentum to be considered apt and later enacted as law in most countries.
A consequence of this position which is equally a pillar of the ethical pragmatist school is that moral criteria in general can be and do get revised in the course of social progress. This has led to accusations of its being relativist, very much like post-modern approaches to moral theory. Ethical pragmatists however argue that on the contrary, just like science, a pragmatic approach to ethics converges towards the morally objective (Liszka Op cit).
Ethical pragmatism played a key role in the early part of the 20th century’s democratic movement in the United States of America, with democracy and patriotism being considered as ethical ideals by its proponents. Its direct influence in the field of industrial relations has not been very profound, but its spirit can be felt in the formulations of the pluralist school of industrial relations.
Industrial relations and ethical theory
The relevance of ethics, to industrial relations practice has been questioned by several authors, from different theoretical points of departure, over the years (Provis op cit, p. 195). The three major theoretical strands of this seeming disputation of the ethical in relation to industrial relations are; logical positivism, post-modernism and Marxism, according to Provis (ibid 193).
These different theoretical approaches have had significant impact on industrial relations theorizing in general, whence we consider the study of industrial relations as a social science. It would be necessary at this point to put them in perspective, in relation to the issue of ethics in the field of industrial relations.
Logical positivism, ethics and industrial relations
Logical positivism, which is also described as logical empiricism or neo-positivism is the modern approach to positivism, with its origin being traceable to the late 1920s works of Ayer and the Vienna Circle. Its project was the deepening of the foundationalist empiricism of positivism. Whilst the earlier positivism of David Hume, for example had stressed personal experience as the basis of its empiricism, logical positivism prioritises public experimental verification. Similarly, while Comtean and other approaches of positivism declare all what is not empirically verifiable as false, neo-positivism rather considers such as being meaningless. Thus, where a statement or proposition is not empirically verifiable, it is considered as merely a subjective definition and not real.
The import of this on metaphysics and particularly normative ethics cannot be overemphasized. It is near impossible to objectively and empirically verify the good, in itself, a priori in most instances. A subjective or emotional notion of value cannot but be imputed into judgment arriving at what is considered the good.
Logical positivism led to greater emphasis on meta-ethics, which seeks more to understand why and how what is good or right is thus considered as good as against bad and as right as against wrong. Logical positivists’ preference of meta-ethics is from a cognitive perspective which gives preference to facts over “values”. This is not to imply that for logical positivism value in general is considered as non-existent or inconsequential, but rather that it has no intrinsic meaning, being rather a subjectively derived category as against that which is factual and thus empirically verifiable in this regard, through description. Consequently, for industrial relations, the ethical in its practice, even while expressing values in determining what is considered as good/evil, right/wrong cannot be based on virtue and is not necessarily normative. It is rather understood in a consequentialist sense derived through a descriptive analysis of existing practice.
“There is more of a history of discussing values in industrial relations writing than of discussing either norms or virtues” (Provis op cit, p. 196). This reality which partly reflects the influence of logical positivism in the field over the better part of the last century is rooted in the greater concern with interests (cf. Hirschman 1977). The dominant pluralist approach in the discipline considers the contentious nature of these between the actors in the industrial relations system, but presents such as being reconcilable. Such reconciliation presupposes compromise between these parties to “industrial democracy”, even if the “democracy” is one where the workers are in perpetual opposition without hope of usurping the will of managerial prerogative in the final analysis. Thus, not surprisingly, fairness as a utilitarian value becomes “centrally relevant” in industrial relations theory (cf. Hyman and Brough 1975, p. ix).
Post-modern ethics and industrial relations
The influence of post-modernism in industrial relations generally and on the ethical plane of the discipline in particular, has been rather mild, with the dominant approaches to theory in the field remaining largely realist. The post-modernist worldview being not just relativist but as well one that denies any essential reality undermines the possibilities of providing much of an ethical basis for industrial relations either procedurally or substantially.
The perspective of Hoy which presents ethics in relation to power as discussed earlier is however such that has a place in understanding the dynamis between industrial relations and ethics. In practice this is reflected in the Decent Work Agenda and the various Decent Work Country Programmes. It is however difficult, if we stick to this post-modern form of analysis to understand any continued ethical content in such a programme, when (as would soon be the case in Liberia where the National Assembly has passed legislation towards enacting a Decent Work Act), the agenda while still proposing to be an expression of legitimacy for the powerless or more aptly less power-bearing working class (in terms of institutional power, particularly of the state), becomes imbued with the force of law.
Marxism, ethics and industrial relations
Marxism has had profound impact on the study of industrial relations being essentially the tool of analysis of the discipline’s radical approach. Its ethical standpoint, in Provis’ view; “can be a third pressure against the development of ethical analysis in industrial relations” (op cit, p. 194). This is partly based on Skillen’s argument that Marx presents “a theoretical and practical opposition to the very form of morality, as he understood it”. This morality as an essential reality is further clarified by Skillen as being “the form of universal, absolute laws binding on individuals as beings with a capacity to rise above and conquer their selfish capricious ‘inclination’” (Skillen 1981, p. 156) .
Provis also notes, though, that “the Marxist approach can take a different form which is not susceptible to that argument”. This different form is one which “suspect(s) ethical analysis in capitalist society on the grounds that such analysis necessarily intermingles ethics and ideology” (Provis op cit p. 3 in adobe). The effect of this second form that Provis discovers in the Marxist account of ethics, he posits, has basically the same effect as the logical positivist approach to the domain of ethics in industrial relations theory. This is to the effect that it presents the claims and attitudes of morality within industrial relations as aspects to be studied from the outside and not on the basis of their own integral coherence.
Blackledge (2008) refutes the view that the Marxist position on ethics is either dismissive or incoherent as having “superficial plausibility”. Rather, as he notes, Marx presents “alternative ethics”, the “starting point” of which is “the collective struggle of workers against their exploitation”. This position stems from the realisation that different forms or approaches to ethics rest on some biases or the other, reflecting a relativistic stand on moral philosophy in general and ethics in particular on one hand. On the other hand, according to Wood (2005, pp. 132-34), the seeming dismissal of “morality” by Marx represents a rejection of the Kantian (deontological) ethics which presents what is morally right as entailing the suppression of otherwise natural desires and which is at the heart of modern liberalism and consequently, its assumed pluralism.
Blackledge actually shows rupture in the development of moral philosophy from classical times (i.e. Aristotelian or more broadly, pre-modern virtue ethics) during the enlightenment era which laid the basis for modern thought (with the rise of first, Kantian or deontological and subsequently but related to it, consequentialist, particularly utilitarian ethics). Aristotelian ethics as against deontological ethics, he argues, “did not suppose that to be good entailed acting in opposition to our desires”, but rather, in a naturalistic manner “related the idea of good to fulfilling human needs and desires”. Further, unlike the thrust of most of the mainstream approaches to normative ethics where morality and moral choice has the individual as its subject, Aristotelian moral philosophy with its primary virtue of self-realisation as the ultimate good, places premium on the social circumstances which could ensure such self-flourishing. This is why Aristotle’s book Ethics was devoted to the study of politics and he therein asserted that “the science that studies the supreme Good for man is politics” .
Marxism views the attempt to separate the ethical from the political in modern philosophy as being reflective of the contradiction in capitalist society between the social nature of production and culture and the individual nature of appropriation of the fruits of production and (high) culture.
Reason, drawing from such external or objectively ascribed ideals as the Categorical Imperative, is summoned to overcome or at least seek to overcome what is presented as natural egoistic/individualistic competition in society, in deontological ethics. In this case, both morality and our community as social beings appear as obligations on us from outside us, which are then considered as intrinsic determinants of what is right or good for us to do, as individuals or at best as assemblages of individuals and not as the combinational collectives that the industrial relations system for example, is comprised of.
Utilitarian ethics on its own part conflates the expansion of wealth in society as a whole with greater happiness for the greater number of persons in society, thus losing sight of the proportional increase in unhappiness for most members of society that create the wealth, with the expansion of such wealth, which a few appropriate (Ferguson 2008). This is of particular importance for industrial relations which addresses the site of relations in the process of production.
Further, the consequentialist nature of utilitarianism, as Blackledge points out, leaning on MacIntryre, is such that it has time and again been used to justify actions that deepen the pains and burden of working people in the projected expectation of some projected good. A good example in industrial relations is the so-called “right sizing” of staff strength under the public sector reforms. The overall common good, the state avers, would be best fulfilled in the long run by a leaner public service which concentrates on “core services”. But the impact of the downsizing on both workers and consumers of public services have been quite dire. In the health sector for example, contracting out of such non-core services as catering has resulted in avoidable adverse effects on patients in public health facilities.
Marxist approach to ethics is distinct from the dominant deontological and consequentialist approaches to moral philosophy in two major ways. First, it views ethical behaviour from social group (and specifically class) dimensions as against the pre-eminence of individual decisions and secondly, it does not consider morality as absolute and unchanging through time. On the contrary, it considers it as a super-structural construct defined essentially by the character and changes in the basic economic relations of a society.
Marxist ethics, like ethical pragmatism considers morality as something which evolves over time and something which can be understood in terms of society acquiring it, over individuals. There are however clear differences between both approaches which in industrial relations separates their protagonists along the lines of the radical and pluralist approaches to industrial relations, respectively. This has to do with the class question. Pragmatic ethics presents a trans-class evolutionary nature of morality, which, while recognizing conflict as something not dysfunctional, considers the antagonism between the working class and the employers as something not irreconcilable.
In lieu of a conclusion
Concluding remarks
The discipline of industrial relations as an inter-disciplinary science arose partly as an ethical response to the earlier inhumane practice of industrial relations. Industrial relations practice sites go way back to the early factories, mines and offices in the wake of the industrial revolution. Industrial relations and its system have evolved over the past few centuries and with it the ethical considerations of actors in the system. Child labour, forced labour and such likes that would have been considered as being tolerable are now, at least formally considered condemnable.
As a discipline, industrial relations is concerned primarily with the study of employment relations within modern industrial society (i.e. within and beyond industry in the strictest use of the word) (Ackers 2002). It is concerned with problem-solving, scientific generalization based on empirical investigation and establishing ethical bases for practical employment relations (Kaufman 2004). In the course of its evolution, three approaches have emerged, being; the unitary, pluralist and radical schools. Understanding industrial relations ethics require situating this within an approach or the other.
The unitary approach upholds a paternalistic form of industrial relations where the interests of management/employers and those of the workers are considered as being more or less identical. Workers combination (as trade unions) are not encouraged and conflict is considered an anomaly, even where it is recognised as something that happens. Deontological ethics, individual worker integrity and the virtues of honesty, hard work and loyalty are more likely to be propagated by protagonists of this approach.
The pluralist approach recognises some level of antagonism between the industrial relations actors, particularly between employers/management and their associations on one hand and the working class with its trade unions on the other hand. Such antagonism are however considered as reconcilable through trade offs and compromise. Proponents of this approach are more likely to uphold utilitarian or pragmatic ethics. It was the dominant approach in the field of industrial relations practice for the better part of the last century, leading to the institutionalisation of collective bargaining processes and the entrenchment of quite a number of germane labour laws. Indeed statutes nationally and internationally have been enacted to curb some of the more unjust practices in employment relations in the 19th century that are now universally considered unethical. But the more things have changed, they have in a sense, also remained the same.
The radical approach, which this paper identifies with, appreciates the extent to which the lot of the working class might have been bettered, and industrial relations ethics evolve on the basis of pluralist perspectives. It however does not lose sight of the fact that trans-class ethics might never be real, considering the imbalance of power (in favour of the employer), within labour relations.
The fact that production in general and the labour process in particular subordinate the need motive to the profit motive, does, I would argue, undermine the possibility of a lasting basis for uni-linear ethics in industrial relations, which a pluralist approach might seek. The worker might not be owned by her/his “master” as slaves were in the classical Athens, but he still remains basically a wage-slave. In his “Aristotle on the Ethics of Workplace Relations” Andrew Murray (2009), aptly cited John Locke, often considered as the father of liberal-pluralist thought: “A freeman makes himself a servant to another, by selling him, for a certain time, the service he undertakes to do, in exchange for the wages he is to receive” . And as he further notes “we no longer allow the possession of persons as slaves, but it is still possible to approximate this relationship, following Locke, during the hours of employment” (Murray, Ibid…).
This does not equate to a position of denying any ethical possibility within the realms of industrial relations. Such a wide cynical claim would fall flat in the face of reality and right so. Presenting a pluralist argument from a post-modern perspective, Marti (n.d.) notes that in the workplace “relationships can be built upon competition, cooperation and conflict”. He however sees these as alternative contextual modes of industrial relations. On the contrary, these occur simultaneously, even though at specific moments, one mode might take the fore over the other two.
In summing up the questions of what is “good” and what is “right”, which are central to ethical theory, might need to be qualified within industrial relations as for whose good & right for whom? Of course there would be points of intersection in which responses to these questions could cut across employer and worker in a “win win” sense to use a popular phrase. But this can hardly ever be on a sustained basis.
Summary
This essay has tried to further understanding on the ethical dimensions of industrial relations. In this light, it put in perspective ethical theory and practices in general with a broad overview of the sub-disciplines of moral theory and the contending approaches to normative ethics, which is the cornerstone of the ethical. Ethics in relation to industrial relations was then analysed. It was noted that the relevance of ethics for industrial relations is one that has been questioned on different epistemological grounds such as logical positivism, post-modernism and the critical theory of Marxism.
Nonetheless, industrial relations as a discipline involves an ethical dimension along with its problem-solving and science-building dimensions. It is however impossible to situate the ethical in industrial relations as a supra-approach field. This is to see that the theoretical view and practical engagement with the ethical is implicitly a part and parcel of the broader approach to industrial relations which are; unitary, pluralist or radical.
The argument of this paper can be situated within the radical approach, while objectively presenting the salient positions of relations between moral theory and industrial relations.
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