Chapter 12 Foote Whyte Farle

“As unions and management work together on cooperative programs, this cooperation not only reduces the emotional heat in their collective bargaining; it encourages them to » experiment with new ways of resolving problems. William Foote Whyte, author of the sociological classic Street Corner Society, is a Professor Emeritus in the ILR School at Cornell. His most recent book is Creative Solutions to Field Problems: Reflections on a Career. Jennie Farley chairs the Department of Extension and Public Service at Cornells ILR School. Author or editor of five books, she is a specialist in the study of women workers and also teaches an intensive writing course. William Foote Whyte and Jennie Farley UNION-MANAGEMENT COOPERATION he Un ited States so far has pro d uced no It is clearly evident that there are relative degrees of industrial peace. national system of union-management cooperation. These range from a precarious equilibrium of mutually hostile forces for To some supporters of cooperation, this may seem a stated period of time—the life of an agreement—to an enduring, har a serious deficiency. On the other hand, the emergence monious, and cooperative relationship of a really creative character. here and there over the years of a variety of company Under presently existing conditions, neither of the extremes represents or local systems makes it possible for practitioners the typical. There is some evidence, though, that we are moving from the and researchers to determine what system or systems work best in first in the direction of the second, which may be thought of as the ideal, our country or in certain local areas. Here we shall focus on the his (italics in original) tory of these developments, concentrating particularly on the period Let us see to what extent the trend predicted in the 1950s has from the 1940s to the 1990s. materialized in the 1980s and 1990s. The authors never define what Let us begin with the National Planning Association (NPA) stud they mean when referring to a relationship of a really “creative char ies entitled Causes of Industrial Peace under Collective Bargaining. acter.” We shall provide our own definition in distinguishing be In the 1940s, the NPA, a private not-for-profit organization in which tween a conventional relationship in which the parties are generally some prominent union leaders and management officials and stu able to resolve their differences through collective bargaining and dents of industrial relations participated, carried out a series of 13 one in which the parties have found new and more effective ways case studies. In 1933, the NPA issued Fundamentals of Labor Peace: of organizing the work and jointly solving their human and techni A Final Report, written by some of the leaders in industrial relations cal problems. research of the 1940s and 1950s: Clinton S. Golden of the United By separating union-management cooperation from collective bar Steelworkers, chairman of the committee conducting the studies, gaining, we do not mean to imply that they have no relationship to each Clark Kerr, John T. Dunlop, Douglas McGregor, Frederick H. other. On the contrary, the nature of that relationship is one of our Harbison, and Charles A. Myers. principal concerns, which we shall explore further as we review the his In the final report, the authors arrive at this overall evaluation tory of cooperative efforts from 1940 to the 1990s. (p. 6): 1 8 2 W il l ia m Fo o te W h y t e a n d Je n n ie Fa r l e y Precursors was going bankrupt, worked out a rescue plan that has come to carry his name ever since. “ The Scanlon Plan consists of two basic parts: (1) During World War I, the government sought to foster cooperation, but a social process whereby suggestions for productivity improvements after the war, as conservative governments took over, cooperative can be made and carried out; (2) a formula for sharing the fruits of arrangements declined. Nevertheless, some American Federation of productivity improvements on a plant-wide basis” (Whyte, 1955:166). Labor Unions were active in working with employers to help the firm The plan caught on. The Union moved Scanlon to national headquar to survive in the face of challenges from non-union firms. For exam ters, where he helped to install the plan in a number of companies. ple, “Through loans and technical assistance to manufacturers hover Later he moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where ing on the brink of insolvency, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers he continued to spread the plan with interested union leaders and saved the jobs of thousands of workers who would otherwise have management officials. been thrown upon the streets” (McKelvey, 1952:124). It should be In some of the first Scanlon Plan cases, the formula was based on a noted, however, that job security for remaining workers was gained at ratio of labor costs to sale value of the products produced. Since that the expense of those being laid off by technical and organizational time, other formulas have been developed in other Scanlon Plan cases changes in the industry (see Perlman and Taft, 1935: 587-88). The and in similar plans developed by other authors. (For one of the early union leaders believed that more jobs would have been lost to non cases, see Shultz and Crisara, 1952.) union firms without this union-supported modernization program. The Scanlon Plan has innovative features that make it of interest to In the 1940s, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union students and practitioners of labor relations more than a half century (ILGWU) pursued a similar strategy, under the leadership of William after its inception. As Scanlon and others have pointed out, the finan Gomberg, director of the Management Engineering Department. cial formula is effective only when it is combined with an active pro With his influential book A Trade Union Analysis of Time Study (1948, gram of worker and union leader participation in decision making. 1955), Gomberg challenged the basic assumptions of scientific man The switch to a plant-wide incentive system eliminates the high ad agement: that management possessed the knowledge to measure ex ministrative costs involved in maintaining systems of individual in pected work performance and to set scientific standards. Gomberg’s centives, especially as working methods change and new rates must be challenge helped unions to legitimate collective bargaining on all as devised. It eliminates the perceived problem of inequities when pro pects of work performance. duction workers, who are on individual incentives, make more money Outside of manufacturing, Sumner Slichter (i960: 851-56) dis than more highly skilled maintenance workers who are not on incen cusses far-reaching cooperative programs in the Baltimore and Ohio tives. It tends to eliminate one of the most frequent sources of union Railroad and later in the Tennessee Valley Authority, after the dams grievances: arguments over the equity of new rates established after were built between 1933 and 1944. management claims a “major change” in work methods has been in In 1937, a striking innovation arose from the United Steelworkers troduced. A plant-wide incentive must be renegotiated from time to Union. Joseph Scanlon, an accountant with a small steel company that time, but this is a collective rather than an individual problem. Such systems fit into a pattern of mutual gains bargaining, also called win-win or interest bargaining, which is becoming increasingly popular with some unions and some managements in the 1990s. U n io n -M a n a g e m e n t C o o p e r a t io n 1 8 3 In the 1930s and 1940s, there was a drastic change in industrial rela Stage 1: From the 1940s into the 1960s, union-management coopera tions with the CIO drive to organize industrial unions. Franklin D. tion was of interest to only a few academic students until the NPA fo Roosevelt’s New Deal strengthened the ability of unions to organize cused attention through its case studies and conclusions. Supporters and win representation elections. In the 1940s and 1950s, many man of organized labor tended to look upon those studying cooperative agements had not yet accepted unions, so the battles were waged on cases as simply serving management interests by reducing labor mili union drives and on management’s efforts to resist and limit as much tancy. The authentic labor strategy, many felt, focused on confronta as possible the rising costs of labor contracts and to erect barriers to tion and struggle with management. protect management’s rights to determine how work should be done. Stage 2: began in the 1970s in response to the Quality of Work Life To be sure, government efforts during World War II to foster coopera (QWL) movement. tion did have some temporary effects, but they faded away after the war, much as had the World War I efforts. The parties then turned Stage 3: arose in the 1980s out of general recognition that QWL was their attention to working out new collective bargaining contracts. not solving industrial competitiveness and job maintenance prob In the 1940s and 1950s, industrial strife came to be considered the lems. This led to some new and creative ways of organizing and struc most serious social and economic problem the United States was fac turing work relations. ing. In response to this public concern, New York State created the Paradoxically, it was a public misperception of the causes of a School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. Many highly publicized strike that fueled some of the movement from stage other states followed suit, setting up centers or institutes for industrial 1 to stage 2.

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