Coming at a time of profound change in the global conditions under which American organized labor exists, The Future of the American Labor Movement describes and analyzes labor's strategic alternatives. It casts its net broadly, taking into account ideas that range from the current European Social Dialogue to the methods of the nineteenth Century American Knights of Labor. There are a number of intriguing strategies that have potential for reviving the U.S. labor movement, of which worker ownership and labor capital strategies are examples. There is a necessity for a number of diverse strategies to be pursued simultaneously. For this to work, there has to be a a broad movement of labor, consisting of diverse parts, held together by a clear idea of its purpose and a new structure. Hoyt N. Wheeler is Professor of Management and Chair, Management Department, Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina. Wheeler is a former president of the Industrial Relations Research Association, and editor of its magazine Perspectives on Work. He has won teaching awards at the University of Minnesota and at the University of South Carolina. His publications include Industrial Conflict: An Integrative Theory (South Carolina, 1985), which was a Choice magazine as a Outstanding Academic title, and Workplace Justice: Employment Justice in International Perspective (co-editor, Flower, 1994). Wheeler is an attorney specializing in labor law, and labor relations arbitrator and a member of the National Academy of Arbitrators.

Even in countries which regard themselves as model democracies such as The United States of America the situation at the workplace may be entirely different with regard to the basic freedoms and equal treatment. In the USA, which is a genuine democracy in a political sense, the importance which is attached to democratic values is not always apparent in the codes of conduct in American enterprises and organizations. The degree to which democratic notions are put into practice in the industrial world is the basic theme of this 28th Bulletin entitled Employee Rights and Industrial justice. In the introductory chapter by Jacques Rojot the significance of the central theme, ethics in human resource management in the 1990s, its philosophical and practical meaning, as viewed from different perspectives, is discussed. This introduction is followed by general observations and points of view on the issue of employee rights and its ethical foundations. Hoyt N. Wheeler treats the subject of employee rights from the human rights perspective, while George E. Ogle, for instance, discusses its religious dimension. The third and last part of Employee Rights and Industrial Justice is devoted to the situation and views which exist in different countries and the differences and similarities that may exist between them. The article, by Frank M. Horwitz, for instance, treats the current situation in South Africa, with regard to democracy in industry and in the political system. Other interesting topics include nonunion grievance procedures and due process in the workplace.