1973 The Next Twenty-Five Years Of Industrial Relations

Abstract

Brave indeed are those who would attempt to penetrate the mists of industrial relations and define its patterns twenty-five years hence. As Philip Taft has noted, some of the dire predictions made a quarter-century ago have failed to materialize. The Taft-Hartley Act did not wreak the havoc that some unionists foresaw; nor did unionism collapse under the "crisis" envisaged then by some academic analysts of the labor movement. The failure to pass extensive further legislative controls over collective bargaining was contrary to many forecasts, and few writers in the forties predicted the dominance of public sector bargaining and dispute settlement in the labor relations of the 1 970's. And how many would have predicted that organizational behavior, multinational corporations or wage-price controls would be primary topics today? So much for the clouded crystal ball.