Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Labor and Industrial Relations [PAGE 8]

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fore, the attainment of common goals entails negotiated accommodation. This process would doubtless proceed more effectively if scholars would take the trouble to cogitate about the meaning of some of the basic concepts used in industrial relations. As one example, illustrative of many, consider how little attention has been given to this well-established phrase: "The union is the exclusive representative of all employees in an appropriate unit." Just what are the unions' representational functions? And, what criteria should be utilized for determining an appropriate unit? In itself, the phrase presently identifies an area of conflict. About the representational function, chronic confusion exists as to whether the union should (a) press vigorously for an immediate satisfaction of all "demands" expressed by the employees (this can be a very long list) in order to avoid any subsequent 1 charge of having made a so-called sweetheart conAs respects this matter, it is interesting to recall certain remarks of Senator Robert Taft: " . . . if a majority want tract, or (b) somehow impose restraints upon these X as a bargaining agent, the right of the other people to bargain themselves or to choose their own bargaining agent employee demands lest there be an impairment of the is destroyed, . . . and so, when you go on to the union competitive position of a company or an industry shop theory and say that you have to join the union, it does upon which the well-being of the employees ultinot seem to me to be nearly as important a deprivation as that which takes place at the very basis of the Wagner Act." mately depends; the employees commonly object to U.S. Senate, Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, such restraints and management generally opposes, Hearing?, Proposed Revisions of the Labor-Management often for ample reason, the assumption by union repRelations Act of 1947, 83d Cong., 1st Sen., April, 1953, Fart 2, p. 717. The quoted comment was made with respect resentatives of any managerial role, or (c) impose to a presentation on behalf of the Aircraft Industries additional restraints upon employee wage demands Association. in order to avoid inflation and to help achieve an not to pay dues would not be too staunchly undertaken by any company which had seen fit to recognize a union with but an unimpressive minority membership as the exclusive bargaining agent for all employees. That subordination of individual rights not required by law, and doubtless contrary to the spirit of the law, might be understandable as a matter of expediency (i.e., to gain a contract bar against raids by other unions, or to secure the benefits of a no-strike clause in a contract), but scarcely as a position consistent with the defense of individual employee rights as a matter of strict adherence to high principle. 2 Here is a so-called kind of logic which is incomprehensible to me. So far in this discussion an emphasis has been placed upon the responsibility of the scholar to deal with the realities of decision-making in a democracy where economic power is diffused and where, there-