FREEDOM INSIDE THE ORGANIZATION: Bringing Civil Liberties to the Workplace

An employee is not divided, like Gaul, into three parts: breadwinner, private citizen, and soul."" On this basis, Ewing (The Human Side of Planning, 1969) espouses ""employee constitutionalism."" He would go so far as to create a Bill of Rights for the workplace, one which would extend freedom of speech, privacy, and due process to employees of General Motors, Lockheed, AT&T, and other corporations. An explosive proposal which strikes at the very heart of free enterprise? Not the way Ewing lays it out. Employee rights (but not worker democracy--that's going too far down the socialist garden path) will shore up the capitalist system because individualism won't be stifled and the ""vaguely repressing and depressing"" work climate will improve. Invoking Milton, Dickens, Pope John, Solzhenitsyn, Keats, and Shakespeare (but never descending from these lofty heights to talk to even middle-level employees), Ewing is full of assurances that efficiency and productivity won't suffer by ""Americanizing"" our firms. He wants protection for the whistle-blowers and boat-rockers who speak out against false advertising, pollution, and unsafe merchandise. He also wants the just prerogatives of management retained, and, in a pinch, he would permit management to rifle through an employee's desk. Ewing has located a real enough problem, but his solutions are both utopian and equivocal.