Industrial Democracy in America: The Ambiguous Promise

Industrial Democracy in America begins its close examination of what came to be known among collars of any color as the labor problem with the railroad strikes of the 1870s. The contributors cover the theory and practice of the American labor movement, the promise and demise of industrial jurisprudence, the law of collective bargaining, workplace contractualism, and shop-floor reality in the United States auto industry, and compare these with employment systems in Japan. Industrial Democracy in America contemplates America’s industrial decline and will provoke questions, even within management circles, of the long-run viability of a work regime that does not respect or motivate its workers–that does not persuade them to identify themselves with the enterprises of which they are members.