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cla 1117 W. Sth Street Austin, Texas 78703 “Largest dispensatory of Botanicals in Texas” HALF PRICE RECORDS MAG AZ IN ES t ‘Az ,. . “s d .Nvo. ..,mwk.sw DALLAS Big Main Store 45213 McKinney Uowntown: Austin Alley. across from FORT WORTH in ft idglea Shopping Center WACO TEMPLE Towne & CountrY Mall 4401 S. General Bruce Dr. RICHARDSON 50B Lockwood FARMERS BRANCH F armers Branch Shopping Center Valley View & Josey Lane k, t3 ag e n it ‘AZ> MEW ATTORNEYS’ Overcome the high cost of down-time on your legal secretary. Let us type your motions, appeals, contracts, and other legal documents. We can type from your rough drafts or tapes. Our work is flawless, professional, fast, and economical. $4 k f..` 9 ri. , ANDERSON & COMPANY COFFEE TEA SPICES AUSTIN, TEXAS 7W131 512 453-153:3 Send me your list. Name Street City Zip Foreign language typing available. 477-6671 504 W. 24th St. Austin, Texas how to use management techniques to discourage union sentiment and how to run their departments so as to make union representation appear unnecessary. The memo, obtained by the Observer prior to general release to the Austin news media, is actually a bland listing of What Management Can Do vs. What Labor Can Do but its circulation at the meeting stirred the ire of AFSCME officials such as business manager Pete Fears, who called the document “selfincriminating.” The memo, believed to have been prepared by the personnel department, discusses poor management practices which create a union climate among workers. Specifically, managers were warned to improve on communications, coordination, unclear policies and “failure to address key problems.” The memo urges supervisors to reform in order to pre-empt union organizers. This technique is effectively utilized in the private sector throughout the Sunbelt \(Texas Instruments, Motorola, IBM, on single union-related issues,” the memo suggests. “Improve management practices. Consistently and reasonably apply personnel policies. Solicit greater employee input. Improve employee relations. Become knowledgeable on policy, laws, guidelines. Override bad management decisions made by subordinates.” The memo also assesses the “advantages” of the union with what may prove to be embarrassing candor. The union is moving “to a position of strength . . . by organizing new and different work units . . . by operating on a low-key nonemotional basis, by lulling us to sleep, by being nice, by operating intelligently,” the document says. One of the chief “advantages” of the union, the memo states, derives from the workers themselves, who are described as a “gullible and impressionable following.” By joining a union, the memo reasons, employees can ” ‘belong’ to something . . . become `somebody’.” AFSCME says there’s no overt union-busting message in the memo, but the tacit one is woven throughout, particularly in a special admonition to the $20-an-hour bureaucrats: “Show a united front . . . don’t be buffaloed by union reps . . . deal firmly . . . RemeMber . . . We Make the Rules.” Ironically, the memo may become more of a union organizing banner than a management white paper. As Fears said, “I’d say that, as the city has catalogued THE TEXAS OBSERVER 11