Reckoning with Company Unions: The Case of Thompson Products, 1934-1964

Abstract

This study of company unionism at Thompson Products (today TRW) calls into question the usual characterization of company unions as uniformly ineffectual and short-lived. The company unions examined in this study were fostered and overseen by Thompson's managers with the undoubted purpose of keeping national unions out of the company's work force. But the author also finds that they evolved into organizations that successfully met their members' needs, partly because of external pressures, such as government scrutiny and competition from national unions, and partly because of some internal factors, such as the workers' unusual degree of loyalty to the firm. The author suggests that some variant of the company union might be a viable complement to the progressive nonunion model that is common today.

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