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

Abstract

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.