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Economic Restructuring and Emerging Patterns of Industrial Relations Upjohn Press Upjohn Research home page 1-1-1993 Economic Restructuring and Emerging Patterns of Industrial Relations Stephen R. Sleigh City University of New York Follow this and additional works at: https://research.upjohn.org/up_press Part of the Labor and Employment Law Commons, Labor Economics Commons, and the Labor Relations Commons Citation Sleigh, Stephen R., ed. 1993. Economic Restructuring and Emerging Patterns of Industrial Relations. Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. https://doi.org/10.17848/ 9780880995566 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License. This title is brought to you by the Upjohn Institute. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Economic AND Relations COM^Stephen m • R. Sleigh^^m ' • • Economic Restructuring AND Emerging Patterns OF Industrial Relations Stephen R. Sleigh Editor 1993 W.E. UPJOHN INSTITUTE for Employment Research Kalamazoo, Michigan 49007 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Economic restructuring and emerging patterns of industrial relations / Stephen R. Sleigh, editor, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-88099-131-3 (pbk.) — ISBN 0-88099-132-1 (cloth) 1. Industrial relations—United States—Case studies. 2. Industrial relations—Europe—Case studies. I. Sleigh, Stephen R. HD8072.5.E37 1992 331—dc20 92-36997 CIP Copyright © 1993 W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research 300 S. Westnedge Avenue Kalamazoo, Michigan 49007 THE INSTITUTE, a nonprofit research organization, was established on July 1, 1945. It is an activity of the W.E. Upjohn Unemployment Trustee Corporation, which was formed in 1932 to administer a fund set aside by the late Dr. W.E. Upjohn for the pur pose of carrying on "research into the causes and effects of unemployment and mea sures for the alleviation of unemployment." The facts presented in this study and the observations and viewpoints expressed are the sole responsibility of the authors. They do not necessarily represent positions of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. Cover design by J.R. Underbill. Index prepared by Shirley Kessel. Printed in the United States of America. PREFACE The Center for Labor-Management Policy Studies at the City Uni versity of New York hosted a year-long series of seminars during the academic year 1989-90 that brought together academics, union leaders, government officials, business executives, and graduate fellows at the Center to discuss and analyze the relationship between economic restructuring and industrial relations. In the fall of 1990 the Center hosted a conference at Princeton University, which included all of the seminar participants and an array of scholars and practitioners who have worked on understanding and shaping the highly competitive economic environment in which most organizations find themselves. Complete lists of seminar presenters and conference participants are included in Appendix I and Appendix II, respectively. This volume grew out of the seminars and conference sponsored by the Center. Bruce Herman and I, both graduate fellows at the Center during this period, organized the seminar series and conference under the guid ance of Professor Seamus O'Cleireacain, then Assistant Director of the Center now at the Ford Foundation. We received financial, intellectual, and editing assistance from Susan Houseman, Allan Hunt, and Judy Gentry of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. We were also supported in our efforts by the Centers director, Victor Got- baum, and deputy director, Richard Styskal. Richard died tragically in the summer of 1990. All of us at the Center miss Richard's guidance and good humor. In early 1991 Bruce Herman became President of the Garment Industry Development Corporation (GIDC) of New York, where he has put into practice many of the ideas that he writes about in the chapter on the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. I assumed Richard Styskal's position as deputy director of the Center. In any edited collection of works there inevitably are differences in writing styles and practice. To the greatest extent possible, we have sought to smooth them out so that the reader can extract the greatest amount of information from each of the cases. In the introduction I have briefly summarized the case studies and analyses, and have pro vided an executive summary of the key conclusions that follow from the papers. A bibliography is provided for readers interested in follow ing up on the many subjects that are raised in this collection. THEAUTHOR Stephen R. Sleigh is the Deputy Director of the Center for Labor- Management Policy Studies at the City University of New York. He received his PhD in Sociology from the Graduate School and Univer sity Center of City University of New York in January 1991, and a Masters of Public Administration at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in 1987. He was formerly employed with the Economic Policy Council of the United Nations Association, where he was the director of research activities. Prior to his policy and research work, Dr. Sleigh was a printing press erector and machinist from 1974 to 1985, work which took him to over fifty newspapers in seven coun tries. Dr. Sleigh's current research topics include labor-management rela tions in the American newspaper industry, labor's role in technological development, and the social dimensions of global economic activity. IV CONTENTS 1 Introduction ................................................ 1 Stephen R. Sleigh City University of New York 2 Economic Development and Industrial Relations in a Small-Firm Economy : The Experience of Metalworkers in Emilia-Romagna, Italy.................................. 19 Bruce Herman Garment Industry Development Corporation Appendix to Chapter 2....................................... 39 3 Managing Local Development: Lessons from Spain .............. 41 Michael Barzelay Harvard University 4 Worker Democracy in Socialist France ........................ 67 Bernard E. Brown City University of New York 5 International Competition and the Organization of Production: The Study Action Team Process at Trico Products......................................... 79 Peter Lazes Cornell University 6 Collaborative Restructuring Efforts: Textile and Apparel Labor-Management Innovation Network, Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania ............................... 91 Robert Coy Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Saul Rubinstein Participative Systems, Inc. Michael Shay Participative Systems, Inc. 7 Labor and Industrial Relations Strategies in the State of Michigan .................................. 109 Michael Schippani 8 Applying Skills-Based Automation Through Participatory Management: The Center for Applied Technology............ 121 Frank Emspak University of Wisconsin-Madison 9 Social Democratic Trade Unions and Politics: Can the End of the Social Democratic Trade Unions be the Beginning of a New Kind of Social Democratic Politics? ................ 137 Charles F. Sabel Massachusetts Institute of Technology 10 Training and the New Industrial Relations: A Strategic Role for Unions ......................................... 167 Wolfgang Streeck University of Wisconsin-Madison Chapter 10 References...................................... 188 Appendix I Seminar Advisory Board 1989-90 Seminar Presentations 1989-90...................... 191 Appendix II Conference Participants October 5-6,1990................................ 192 Bibliography................................................ 193 Index...................................................... 215 VI Introduction Stephen R. Sleigh City University of New York Over the last 20 years, global competition, product obsolescence, and excess capacity in traditional industries have brought about pro nounced changes in the structure of the world economy. In response to these changes, unions, corporations, and governments have struggled to develop economic policies that will ensure adequate returns on investment, create or save jobs, and anchor industries within national borders. The purpose of this book is to review innovative responses to economic restructuring that have involved the joint efforts of unions, corporations, and government. The record of these initiatives forms a mosaic of varied responses and results. Through a year-long series of seminars conducted by the Center for Labor Management Policy Studies of the City University of New York, culminating in a conference in the fall of 1990, analyses of efforts were presented where workers and their unions, businesses and government at the local, regional, or state level, have worked together to develop economic restructuring processes. These efforts include case studies from Western Europe, as well as detailed examination of U.S. examples, particularly state-level efforts from Michigan, Massa chusetts, and Pennsylvania. The analyses emphasize the role of indus trial relations in these processes. Detailing the seminars and the conference, this book serves as a resource for unions, businesses, and government on current economic restructuring activities and as a sur vey of current thinking about the process of economic restructuring, particularly the often neglected role workers and their unions play in this process.1 The wide-ranging economic shocks of technological change and global competition have produced fundamental changes in the past two decades. In the steel industry alone, 460,000 American jobs were lost during the 1980s, cutting the membership of the
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