Recent Developments in US Industrial Relations
| Date | 01 December 1994 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1994.tb01047.x |
| Author | Marc Weinstein,Thomas Kochan |
| Published date | 01 December 1994 |
British Journal
of
Industrial Relations
32:4
Dec
1994
0007-1080
$3.00
Recent Developments in
US
Industrial
Relations
Thomas Kochan and Marc Weinstein
Abstract
The persistence
of
economic pressures thatfirst challenged American industry
in the
1970s
continues to reshape
US
industrial relations. In an eflort to
maintain their competitiveness,
US
firms have developed a panoply
of
strategies ranging from confrontation and labour control to collaboration and
employee empowerment. This essay reviews evidence relating to the develop-
ment and diffusion
of
these alternative strategies and their implications for
long-term US competitiveness. In this context, the recent work
of
Commission
on
the Future
of
Worker-Management Relations
is
discussed
as
well
as
a
number
of
public policy options intended to facilitate the implementation
of
high value-added production systems. The essay concludes with a discussion
of
the implications
of
recent trends for industrial relations research.
1.
Introduction
In the two decades following the Second World War, the American
industrial relations system helped contribute to unprecedented levels of
prosperity in the
US
economy. Reinforced by New Deal laws and
institutions, this system established collective bargaining as its centrepiece
and created relative stability in
US
labour-management relations. The
government’s role was to establish rules for an orderly process in which
workers would duly elect individuals to represent them in collective
negotiations with employers over wages, hours and working conditions. The
aim
of
the
1935
National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and its accompany-
ing legislation was to provide legitimacy and parity to the negotiation
process
so
as to allow private parties and market forces to determine the
terms and conditions
of
employment without government intervention.
The New Deal system worked well, in part because it meshed well with the
American political and social ethos favouring limited government interven-
Thomas Kochan is George Maverick Bunker Professor of Management, Human Resource and
Industrial Relations Section,
Sloan
School
of
Management, Massachusetts Institute
of
Technology. Marc Weinstein
is
a doctoral candidate in the same department.
484
British Journal
of
Industrial Relations
tion in substantive decision-making, the protection
of
property rights and
the freedom to contract. Management retained the rights to make key
decisions affecting the long-run strategies
of
the enterprise, while labour
earned the right to negotiate over wages, hours and working conditions and
to write and enforce detailed labour contracts governing rules
of
the
workplace. Consistent with this, labour and employment law established a
clear demarcation between ‘employees’, who were covered by these labour
laws and ‘managers’, who were exempt from their protection.
Since the
1960s,
the New Deal industrial relations system has been under
increasing pressure. Early signs of stress were reflected in the passage of a
variety
of
laws strengthening individual workers’ substantive rights in
employment relations (e.g. equal employment opportunity, occupational
safety and health, family and medical leave, advance notices for plant
closings). The passage
of
these laws reflect, in part, the fact that increased
work-force diversity was not being adequately addressed within the
traditional industrial relations framework. Additional strain resulted from a
slowdown in the growth
of
US
labour productivity from 1973 through most
of the
1980s.
During this same period, there was a steady decline in
collective bargaining. From a peak of 35 per cent
of
the labour force in 1954,
union membership has dropped to below
16
per cent
of
the total labour force
and 12 per cent of the private-sector labour force in
1994.
The polarization
of
the business community and organized labour over the basic provisions
of
American labour law has accompanied and contributed to this decline.
Finally, the extensive degree
of
experimentation with employee participa-
tion, work organization and human resource practices in both union and
non-union settings has further tested traditional patterns. This last develop-
ment may yet provide the starting-point for a new approach to industrial
relations.
To
date, these conflicts and experiments have occurred primarily in the
private sector, with the government sitting on the sidelines as a seemingly
uninterested observer. Indeed, labour issues have been generally relegated
to
the status
of
‘special interest politics’, and policy-makers have only
infrequently acknowledged their relevance to macro-
or
microeconomic
policies. This has recently begun
to
change under the Clinton administra-
tion. Having campaigned on the basis
of
promoting a ‘high productivity/high
skill/high wage’ economic strategy, Bill Clinton has put labour market and
workplace policies back on the national agenda. Historically, the USA has
had enormous difficulty enacting major labour law changes. Thus, it is likely
that the debates over the future of industrial relations policy and alternative
strategies for reform have just begun.
In this essay we review the conditions that have led to the emerging public
policy debate, starting with a review of the changing environment for
industrial relations. We then turn to a discussion
of
the current state
of
private-sector experimentation in the area
of
industrial relations and human
resource management, summarizing the nature
of
the debates unfolding
over the future
of
labour and employment policy. In the final section, we
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