Labor Law, Industrial Relations and Employee Choice: The State of the Workplace in the 1990s.

Abstract

Introduction and OverviewThe past two decades of industrial relations experience have had the cumulative effect of a widespread realization that discussion and debate over the nation©s labor laws and their administration are needed.Concerns have been growing about the costs to society of labor con flict, and questions have been raised as to whether there is a role for labor legislation in encouraging labor-management cooperation in order to enhance the global competitiveness of U.S. firms.In response to this accumulation of concerns, the Secretaries of Commerce and Labor in 1993 created the Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations, often referred to as the Dunlop Com mission, as it was chaired by former U.S. Secretary of Labor John Dunlop.The task of the Commission was to investigate the current state of worker-management relations and labor law and make recom mendations concerning changes that may be needed to improve pro ductivity through increased worker-management cooperation and employee participation in the workplace.A widely diverse set of experiences was presented as public testi mony before the Commission in 1994.Representatives of labor, man agement, government, academia, and the general public presented a picture of considerable variation in current labor relations practice.The whole of this testimony, however, pointed to the need for a continued public discourse about labor law, and quite possibly, the need for fun damental change.Labor law, as it has been developed since the Wagner Act in 1935, has always been based on the concept of the parties individual workers, unions, and management making choices.The Dunlop Commission hearings pointed up a new range of choices being explored by workers and managers and the frustration of some of the traditional choices originally designed into the law.

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