A history of American business and the labor movement in the 1930s and 1940s. It focuses on industrial relations within companies, such as those between managers and workers.

This book, first published in 2000, examines how a group of manufacturers of metal products - 'everything from buttonhooks to battleships' - in America's third biggest city helped each other to meet the challenges of organized labour (and sometimes an interventionist state) in the half-century between the 'second industrial revolution' and the Second World War. After thirty years of success, the employers were finally overwhelmed by a resurgent labour movement backed by New Deal politicians and administrators. Their story offers the broadest and most detailed account available of the industrial relations problems and policies of small and mid-sized firms in this period. This book analyses labour issues by means of a careful local case study, but its conclusions about the interplay of labour, organized capital, law and the state in determining the fate of workers' rights and employers' interests have broad relevance to the history and politics of twentieth-century industrial relations.

This book, first published in 2000, examines how a group of manufacturers of metal products - 'everything from buttonhooks to battleships' - in America's third biggest city helped each other to meet the challenges of organized labour (and sometimes an interventionist state) in the half-century between the 'second industrial revolution' and the Second World War. After thirty years of success, the employers were finally overwhelmed by a resurgent labour movement backed by New Deal politicians and administrators. Their story offers the broadest and most detailed account available of the industrial relations problems and policies of small and mid-sized firms in this period. This book analyses labour issues by means of a careful local case study, but its conclusions about the interplay of labour, organized capital, law and the state in determining the fate of workers' rights and employers' interests have broad relevance to the history and politics of twentieth-century industrial relations.

Industrial Democracy in America begins its close examination of what came to be known among collars of any colour as 'the labour problem' with the railroad strikes of the 1870s. The contributors cover the theory and practice of the American labour movement, the promise and demise of industrial jurisprudence, the law of collective bargaining, workplace contractualism, and shop-floor reality in the United States auto industry, and compare these with employment systems in Japan. This book contemplates America's industrial decline and will provoke questions, even within management circles, of the long-run viability of a work regime that does not respect or motivate its workers.

Industrial Democracy in America begins its close examination of what came to be known among collars of any colour as 'the labour problem' with the railroad strikes of the 1870s. The contributors cover the theory and practice of the American labour movement, the promise and demise of industrial jurisprudence, the law of collective bargaining, workplace contractualism, and shop-floor reality in the United States auto industry, and compare these with employment systems in Japan. This book contemplates America's industrial decline and will provoke questions, even within management circles, of the long-run viability of a work regime that does not respect or motivate its workers.

A history of American business and the labor movement in the 1930s and 1940s. It focuses on industrial relations within companies, such as those between managers and workers.