Beyond the Adversarial Tradition

...Negotiating the Future builds on a theme that has been articulated both in the speeches of President Clinton and the writings of Secretary Reich: If the United States is to avoid falling behind its trading partners, it must develop labor and industrial policies that will tap the full potential of its human resources...

...And, most significantly, employers are wary of losing power...

...Would the same idea work at a "brown-field" site where old practices and attitudes are firmly established...

...2) set wage and compensation goals consistent with productivity growth in order to maintain global competitiveness...

...They point to widespread union-management cooperative arrangements in such domains as training, employee assistance, and occupational safety and health, which reportedly exist in 50 per cent of large companies...

...They foresee a period of "learning and experimentation" during which both union leaders and managers will need to acquire new skills and expertise...

...To improve this figure, the authors call for such government actions as a ban on the hiring of permanent striker replacements...

...Reviewed by Lois Gray Jean McKelvey-Alice Grant Professor of Labor-Management Relations, Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations This book comes with a host of impressive imprimaturs...

...The Bluestones, father and son, approach their case from contrasting backgrounds...

...The unions, they explain, help weed out bad ideas up front and improve morale...

...Employees worry that they might work themselves out of a job...

...the University of Hawaii, whose administration tried confrontation with the faculty union before moving to consultation...

...Yet they recognize that even if unions do grow to encompass a broader spectrum of labor, other barriers remain...

...By the 1970s, however, international competition was challenging the dominance of American manufacturers...

...and (7) involve the union in all strategic enterprise decisions, including product pricing, input purchasing, marketing, methods of production, introduction of new technology, investment in new capital and products, and subcontracting of production...

...But if the book's roster of high-level endorsers is any indication, it can certainly be expected to stimulate debate in policy-making precincts about the role of organized labor in achieving President Clinton's goal of revitalizing the American economy...

...Barry Bluestone, a student radical in the '60s, went on to become a leading academic economist...

...and Weirton Steel, a company that changed its balance sheet from red to black through employee involvement in management...

...3) subject price setting to joint action by union and management...

...The upshot, according to the Bluestones, was a more egalitarian society...

...Appearing at a crucial point in American industrial history, the Bluestones' book richly deserves the hearing that its weighty list of endorsements suggests it will get...

...Employers increasingly avoided unions by hiring "union busters"—the stick—or by offering employees a stake in running the firm as a substitute for collective bargaining—the carrot...

...Union representation on the boards of directors of Chrysler, Eastern Airlines, and Western Airlines was tried and dropped by the corporations...

...he co-authored (with Bennett Harrison) two books on the de-cline of the U.S...

...6) provide workers with extra financial rewards through profit sharing and gain sharing...

...Ironically, this resembles the scheme dictated to Germany at the end of World War II by its U.S...

...The Saturn experience is unique in that a new plant (a "greenfield") was designed to implement this novel system of union-management cooperation...

...It calls for replacing the American system of adversarial industrial relations with a cooperative alternative in which business managements would share decisions with unions...

...In what was hailed as the most important book of that decade on the subject, The Transformation of American Industrial Relations, Thomas A. Kochan, Harry C. Katz and Robert B. McKersie argued that if unions were to survive, they must accept the carrot and get involved in decisions at the corporate level...

...The Bluestones' blend of real-world experience and theoretical insight greatly enhances the credibility of their thesis...

...It is a curious quirk of history that, with these two countries now threatening America's position in international commerce, the practices we imposed on them to democratize their economies are being considered for application at home...

...Does this mean that Negotiating the Future can be taken as a blueprint for public policy on labor-management relations in the Clinton Administration...

...General Accounting Office reports that seven out of 10 large companies have introduced some form of employee-involvement program to enhance productivity...

...Not necessarily...

...To reinforce the point that unions are critical to this, they cite several studies demonstrating that employee-involvement plans are more likely to raise productivity in a unionized setting...

...Its thesis is nothing short of revolutionary...

...The Blue-stones point to several successful cases: Harvard Industries in New Jersey, a UAW-represented plant where a new ownership tried to break the union and, when that failed, switched to a coopera-tive stance...

...Generalizing from its lessons, they advocate the adoption of "enterprise compacts" for union-management cooperation that would: (1) set mutually established productivity growth targets...

...Most important, they keep companies from reverting to old ways...

...Employees have input in product design, in the selection of suppliers, subcontractors and dealerships, and in marketing, pricing (with UAW representatives insisting on aggressive strategies to challenge imports), advertising, and recall policy...

...It is the Saturn project, though, that the authors project as the basis for a dramatic restructuring of American industry...

...It provides permanent job security for 80 per cent of the workers, a simplified and flexible scheme of job classification and, in the place of typical hourly wages, a salaried compensation system with gain-sharing rewards...

...4) make product quality a "strikable" issue...

...Many unions are on record as opposing cooperation with employers because they fear co-optation and/or recall a history of betrayal...

...Lean and mean" became the watchword...

...Unlike most other employee-involvement plans, both union and non-union, worker participation at the Saturn plant does not stop at the shop floor...

...5) assure employment security for the company's workforce...

...The need for such policies has already been accepted by a broad spectrum of American firms...

...What is distinctive about the Bluestone version is its insistence on the centrality of labor unions in accomplishing this objective...

...Moreover, at present unions represent only 15 per cent of the work force...

...Historically, the American system of industrial relations has evolved along adversarial lines, with each gain in union collective bargaining being seen as an erosion of the rights traditionally reserved for management...

...Irving Bluestone, retired Vice President of the United Auto Workers (UAW) and onetime aide to Walter Reu-ther, began his career as a production worker at General Motors, where he subsequently became a shop floor leader...

...Its jacket bears endorsements from key figures like Illinois Senator Paul Simon, Lynn Williams, President of the United Steel-workers of America, and Jerry Jasi-nowski, President of the National Association of Manufacturers...

...In organized labor's "glory days" just after World War 11, union contracts covered one third of the American work force and had a significant influence on the employment practices of non-union firms...

...The Bluestones carry this advice a step further, suggesting that American business be restructured so that employees are represented at every level of decision making...

...in fact, the U.S...

...Despite the generally confrontational tenor of industrial relations today, the Bluestones are optimistic that the dramatic restructuring they recommend can be achieved through an evolutionary process...

...at present he is Professor of Labor Studies at Wayne State University...

...By contrast with Germany and Sweden, American examples of genuine union involvement in corporate ownership and decision making are rare...

...military government, as well as the one introduced into Japan's industry by American advisers after that nation's defeat...

...Negotiating the Future presents a bold plan for action...

...If labor and management are able to build on this joint problem-solving basis, they reason, the area of mutual decision making can be expanded to higher levels and more important matters...

...economy, and current-ly holds a chair in political economy at the University of Massachusetts...

...Advance blurbs were also supplied by Presidential candidate Bill Clinton and future Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich...

...The Bluestones acknowledge that what they envision is a long way from thestatusquo...

...As a model, Negotiating the Future holds up General Motors' Saturn plant, located in rural Tennessee, where the UAW has negotiated an entirely new type of contract with no management-rights clause and no termination date...

...it is only through union participation, claim the authors, that employees can have a real voice, one the employer can't take away when hard times come...

...It is both persuasive and highly readable...