Bargaining in grievance settlement

THE ORTHODOX VIEW of collective bargaining has long assumed that American unions can ably and legitimately represent the demands and needs of their members and at the same time ful Ell their responsibilities to management and the community through the plant-local or business agent-local type of organiza tion. The assumption rests upon the beliefs that the relationship of members to union locals is simple and direct and that shop stewards and foremen are passive agents of their respective or ganizations. Leonard R. Sayles and George Strauss in The Local Union (Harper, 1953) have pointed out that the local union and the plant shop are much more complicated organizations than those contemplated by the labor students who developed the orthodox view of collective bargaining.

This study explores the consequences for collective bargaining and grievance settlement of the complex relationship among workers, work groups, and the local union; it also analyzes the force exerted by shop politics upon union authority and responsi bility, and the pressures of conflicting goals upon the different levels of management. The study suggests that the differences between union (or workers) and management may often be overshadowed by the differing interests within either the union or management organization or by the common interests of man agement and union men at various levels in the plant. In ac commodating the dynamics of the shop, the grievance procedure has become more than a judicial process; it has developed into a complicated system that truly extends bargaining, if not always collective bargaining, to the lowest levels of the shop.