The Legal and Economic Implications of Union-Management Cooperation: The Case of GM and the UAW

The following article is reprinted from the proceedings of the New York University Forty-First Annual National Conference on Labor © 1988 by New York University. Published by Matthew Bender & Co., Inc., New York. Reprinted with permission. \u27Cooperation\u27 sounds too much like \u27cooption.\u27 \u27Collaboration\u27 recalls the Nazis in occupied Europe. Words are important in labor relations. A word we like is \u27jointness.\u27 Another is \u27involvement. \u27 With comments like those, a top United Automobile Workers official recently pinpointed one of the most significant and controversial developments in contemporary industrial life - the substitution of a new unionmanagement attitude of condiation and togetherness for the parties\u27 traditional adversarial stance. In this paper I shall briefly trace the rise of participative management, as the process is often called, using the experience of General Motors and the UAW as my prime example. The phenomenon will then be placed in historical perspective, and contrasting assessments of its desirability and future potential will be discussed. Finally, I shall try to evaluate some of the more important legal and economic implications of jointness and employee involvement in management decisionmaking