Carlos: The Workers' Voice and the Priority of Identity to Rational Principle

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Having Anderson illustrate how bad ideology surrounding working environments has allowed for workers to accept gross injustices in the workplace has truly been enlightening. I agree with Anderson's rejection of Cowen's arguments of the need for efficiency, thus legitimizing the need for authority. Although I would love to further explore this debate, I am sure some of my other classmates can do a better job doing so. Instead, I will focus on one of the obstacles Anderson's response that "workers need some kind of institutionalized voice at work" (Anderson 144) faces. That is, the need to adjudicate between "the costs and benefits of alternative workplace constitutions" (Anderson 134). 

Although I agree with Anderson that many of Cowen's arguments on efficiency in the workplace do not legitimize the unjust conditions and expectations placed on workers, I still think Cowen is right to question the efficiency of "labor unions, co-ops owned and run by their workers, and worker-managed firms" (Anderson 115). Cowen points to these alternatives to current workplace arrangements as less efficient and interfering with workers' ability to get a better deal (115). That is, workers within a firm are assumed to have different goals and valuations of the costs and benefits of alternative workplace constitutions. This variation complicates the process of unionizing and creating a collective voice, leading to a loss of efficiency in creating employment arrangements. After all, some workers may "prefer to take cash rather than extra freedoms or perks" (115), thus muddling the collective voice of workers with smaller voices in the background. Although Anderson believes that this is a solvable issue as "workers will be free to suggest alternative packages, negotiate, and vote on trade-offs" (143), I still think this is an issue has yet to be fully addressed. Negotiations and debates do not always lead to the best response or may fail to account for more marginalized voices. In creating a collective voice, some workers may choose to not participate (and even oppose the collective). As such, I still think the solution of granting workers a voice needs further considerations to examine its success.

To that point, I believe there is a possibility to combine the necessity of a 'workers' voice' with Anderson's ideas on collective agency and the priority of identity to rational principle. That is, the workers' voice be understood as an attempt to adopt a collective identity and develop a join strategy. If Cowen points to issues of efficiency when workers choose cash over other 'perks' (both negative freedoms from their employer and republican freedoms within the workplace), then collective membership in the identity as workers of the same firm may help alleviate some of these problems of efficiency. If the problem is that unions are inefficient in balancing the varied demands of the employees or that worker-managed firms are unable to efficiently mobilize resources within the firm, I think Anderson's Priority of Identity can help alleviate some of these issues. Once workers can identify themselves as under a collective identity and push forward a joint strategy, many of the issues of efficiency in the workers' voice are addressed. Even those who may not agree with the collective's plans would understand that cooperation (as a committed action) is necessary as a member of the collective identity.

Still, I wonder how easily the adjudicating process between individual identities and collective identities can be accomplished. For an individual who is in severe need of a job and an income, it may be more difficult for them to adopt a collective identity instead of their individual identity. Although this severe need would not legitimize the excessive control employers can exercise on them, I still think the individual's severe need may trump the goals voiced by the collective of workers. All in all, I think Anderson has room to further develop her idea of the workers' voice and possibly merge it with the idea of collective identity under the priority of identity.

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