Output: Collective Bargaining and Productivity

Abstract

Organized labor is opposed to any attempt to diminish the force of the adversary process of collective bargaining, such as the Kelso Plan, codetermination, and the steel industry's Experimental Negotiating Agreement. The direct relationship between productivity and collective bargaining can also be seen in the results from continuing pressure at the collective bargaining table for better wages and other job-related benefits. In a very real sense, then, the development of laborsaving technology has been a direct result of collective bargaining. To the extent that collective bargaining is a mechanism for reducing the physical and psychological dangers of industrial employment, it serves as a catalyst for increased production. Collective bargaining cannot alone assure increasing productivity, but it is necessary for the achievement of any substantial gains. To maintain the viability of the collective bargaining system, its participants and practitioners must seek to expand the system's dimensions to encompass their burgeoning problems.