Big Picture

1. Who do you think should make workplace decisions?
   • Does productivity depend on a clear chain of command?
2. How important is work to the human experience?
   • How much does it shape our sense of ourselves?
   • Is it a large part of who we are? Or is it just something we do for eight hours a day?
   • Is the satisfaction we derive from work connected to the amount of control we have over it?
   • Are we more content in our work when we have some input in the workplace?
3. Why did workers feel compelled to form unions during the nineteenth century?
   • Why not earlier?
   • Was this the only way they could match the increased power of large businesses?
4. How “American” are unions?
   • What American values do they challenge? Do they violate the American belief in individuality?
   • What American values do they represent? 
   • Are unions just trying to bring Americans' democratic philosophies into the workplace? Or are they based on a collectivist idea that is foreign to American ways of thinking?