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Union-Management Cooperation in the United States: Lessons from the 1920S

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This paper presents an analysis of several experiments in union-management cooperation that took place during the 1920s. The author examines the economic and social factors that influenced the formation, operation, and decline of these experiments. Although observers at that time hoped that union-management cooperation would be widely adopted, it extended only to industries suffering from declining markets for union-made products and failed to survive the Great Depression. When the author compares these early experiments to current cooperative endeavors, he concludes that unions and employers will voluntarily work together to improve productivity only within an intermediate range of economic stress. (Abstract courtesy JSTOR.)
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On clothing, seeMen's Clothing Twentieth Century Fund, 1945), pp. 431-42; and Daniel Nelson, Unemployment Insurance: The American Experience On hosiery, see Gustave GeigesWaste Elimination in the Full-Fashioned Hosiery Industry On the railroadsThe Technique of Cooperation
  • D C Washington
  • J Robert
  • Joseph W Myers
  • S Otto
  • Jr Beyer
Cooperation: Experience in the Clothing Industry (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1947). On clothing, see Robert J. Myers and Joseph W. Bloch, "Men's Clothing," in Harry A. Millis, ed., How Collective Bargaining Works (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1945), pp. 431-42; and Daniel Nelson, Unemployment Insurance: The American Experience, 1915-1935 (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), pp. 79-103. On hosiery, see Gustave Geiges, "Waste Elimination in the Full-Fashioned Hosiery Industry," Bulletin of the Taylor Society, Vol. 12, No. 2 (April 1927), pp. 410-15; and Gladys Palmer, Union Tactics and Economic Change (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1933). On the railroads, see Otto S. Beyer, Jr., "The Technique of Cooperation," Bulletin of the Taylor Society, Vol. 11, No. 1 (February 1926), pp. 7-20;
Union-Management Cooperation on the Railroads
  • Louis A Wood
Louis A. Wood, Union-Management Cooperation on the Railroads (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1931);
Waste Elimination in the Full-Fashioned Hosiery Industry
  • J Robert
  • Joseph W Myers
  • Bloch
  • S Otto
  • Jr Beyer
Cooperation: Experience in the Clothing Industry (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1947). On clothing, see Robert J. Myers and Joseph W. Bloch, "Men's Clothing," in Harry A. Millis, ed., How Collective Bargaining Works (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1945), pp. 431 -42; and Daniel Nelson, Unemployment Insurance: The American Experience, 1915-1935 (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), pp. 79 -103. On hosiery, see Gustave Geiges, "Waste Elimination in the Full-Fashioned Hosiery Industry," Bulletin of the Taylor Society, Vol. 12, No. 2 (April 1927), pp. 410 -15; and Gladys Palmer, Union Tactics and Economic Change (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1933). On the railroads, see Otto S. Beyer, Jr., "The Technique of Cooperation," Bulletin of the Taylor Society, Vol. 11, No. 1 (February 1926), pp. 7-20;
Experiences With Cooperation Between Labor and Management in the Railway Industry
  • Otto S Beyer
Otto S. Beyer, Jr., "Experiences With Cooperation Between Labor and Management in the Railway Industry," Wertheim Lectures on Industrial Relations-1928 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1929). On Naumkeag, see "Naumkeag's