Labour–Management Partnership in the USA: Islands of Success in a Hostile Context

The current context for labor–management partnerships in the USA is unfriendly in almost all ways. Union density, at 11.1 % overall and 6.6 % in the private sector, is at a modern low (US BLS 2015). With few exceptions, there is no significant encouragement of partnerships from either the federal or the state governments. There is no organization or forum that regularly brings together leaders of the labor and business communities for social dialogue about economic or other policies. And many of the “best examples” of partnerships in the last couple of decades have not been sustained. There are still “islands” of success, but they function in spite of the system rather than because of it.