Management Views the Local Union

IN UNION-management affairs public attention is typically centered upon strikes or other evidence of conflict, because of their dramatic nature. In those union-management relationships which have had a stormy career, the common prevailing assumption is that management is basically antiunion and would welcome its disappearance. Yet, even where a conflict situation persists over a long period of time, the local union leaders and members of the management hierarchy must somehow solve the various problems that confront them, and this experience may have a profound effect upon their attitudes and their relations. Thus the authors were interested in inquiring whether there can be a growing acceptance of the union within the policy-making and operating levels of a company despite an apparently continuing conflict or armed-truce relationship between the company and the union. Does the management of the individual firm which has frequently clashed with the union view the local with which it has a bargaining relationship as a valuable and constructive influence or as an alien factor that impinges upon managerial prerogatives and interferes with productive efficiency? Do they believe that the union has been responsible for changes in the plant, and which of such changes are thought beneficial and which detrimental from management's point of view? How did managerial personnel view the union when it was organized, and how have their attitudes been affected by their work with the union over a period of years? Now that they have had experience with unionism, would they prefer to operate under union or nonunion conditions? On all these points, are there significant differences to be found as one goes up or down the management hierarchy? In an effort to assess the degree of acceptance of the union in a conflict situation, the authors sought answers to these questions, among others, in a study of the managerial group in a large basic steel company, 14,000 of whose employees are organized into a local of the United Steelworkers of America (CIO) which has maintained bargaining rights since 1937.1