How do labor and management view collective bargaining?

Monthly Labor Review

Volumn 121, Issue 10, 1998, Pages 23-31

  Cutcher Gershenfeld, Joel ^a,b   Kochan, Thomas A ^b   Wells, John Calhoun ^c  

^a BABSON COLLEGE   (United States)

^b MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY   (United States)

^c Sloan School ^*

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0005211953     PISSN: 00981818     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (11)

1. Bureau of National Affairs, Labour Data Book (Washington, DC, 1997).
2. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation provided support for this research.
3. This report contains the findings for the major part of the survey pertaining to labor and management views in the collective bargaining process. The survey also explored the priorities held by labor and management regarding the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the designated Federal agency responsible for assisting the parties in the private sector (excluding the railroad and airline industries) and improving the processes of collective bargaining and labor-management relations. A complete report of the findings is available from the authors through Thomas Kochan, Sloan School of Management, MIT, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02139.
4. To observers unfamiliar with labor-management relations, it might seem odd that there could be disagreement on whether agreement was reached on a given agenda item. In fact, hundreds of labor arbitrators are kept busy on a daily basis with just such disagreements.
5. On the issue of employment security, it is important to note that an earlier study of a sample of 491 Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service cases from the central Michigan region from 1988 to 1990 featured only 3 percent with any language on job security. While the data are not fully comparable, it is at least suggestive of an increased frequency of contact language on employment security.
6. Richard E. Walton, Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, and Robert B. McKersie, Strategic Negotiations (Boston, Harvard Business School Press, 1994).
7. John F. Schnell and Cynthia L. Gramm, "The Empirical Relations between Employers' Striker Replacement Strategies and Strike Duration, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, vol. 47, 1994, p. 189.
8. Note that the higher percentage of first contracts among management respondents is an important factor to consider when comparing other union and management responses.
9. Peter C. Cramton and Joseph S. Tracy, "The Determinants of U.S. Labor Disputes," Journal of Labor Economics, no. 12, 1994, pp. 181-209.
10. Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Patrick McHugh, and Donald Power, "Collective Bargaining in Small Firms: Preliminary Evidence of Fundamental Change," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, vol. 49, 1996, p. 195.
11. In both cases, the differences are significant at the 0.001 level (two-sided Pearson ChiSquare test).