ntinue to characterize such strategies. The contention in the 1990s is, however, that a new approach to labor management negotiations is required for both labor and management negotiators.
A differentiation may be made between the workers' control movement and the labor movement in the United States. The differentiation is important, because of the attempts in the United States to control the content and process of work. In the conflict between management rights and union rights, the concept of workers' control is often completely ignored. The value of the concept of workers' control lies in its ability (1) to provide a working knowledge of what workers' control has meant in the United States in the past, (2) which may be used as a basis for (a) understanding what occurs in this area during the period of economic transition, and (b) the development of guidelines for use in the allocation of responsibilities for the implementation of change in the nature and process of work in the American economy. Workers' control, in effect, became moribund subsequent to the end of the Second World War. Prior to the economic depression of the 1930s, the concept of workers' control was continuously attacked by management. Workers managed, nevertheless, to exert significant levels of control over work standards and processes in many areas of endeavor, in spite of managerial attempts to deny workers a voice.
By the end of the decade of the 1970s, workers' control and union power in the smokestack industries were all but dead. Workers' control in the developing high tech industries, however, was gaining strength, although, as more traditional managements replaced the creative entrepreneurial managements in these industries, the concept of workers' control came under increasing attack by management.
In the conduct of labor management negotiations, the impact on wage levels is no longer the major objection of most managers to labor unions. T...