Hoyt N. Wheeler

Coming at a time of profound change in the global conditions under which American organized labor exists, The Future of the American Labor Movement describes and analyzes labor’s strategic alternatives. The analysis is broadly cast, taking into account ideas that range from the current European Social Dialogue to the methods of the nineteenth-century American Knights of Labor. There are a number of intriguing strategies that have potential for reviving the labor movement in the United States, of which worker ownership and labor capital strategies are examples. This book demonstrates the necessity for a number of diverse strategies to be pursued simultaneously. For this to work, one has to think in terms of a broad movement of labor, consisting of diverse parts, held together by a clear idea of its purpose and a new structure.

Even in countries which regard themselves as model democracies such as The United States of America the situation at the workplace may be entirely different with regard to the basic freedoms and equal treatment. In the USA, which is a genuine democracy in a political sense, the importance which is attached to democratic values is not always apparent in the codes of conduct in American enterprises and organizations. The degree to which democratic notions are put into practice in the industrial world is the basic theme of this 28th Bulletin entitled Employee Rights and Industrial justice. In the introductory chapter by Jacques Rojot the significance of the central theme, ethics in human resource management in the 1990s, its philosophical and practical meaning, as viewed from different perspectives, is discussed. This introduction is followed by general observations and points of view on the issue of employee rights and its ethical foundations. Hoyt N. Wheeler treats the subject of employee rights from the human rights perspective, while George E. Ogle, for instance, discusses its religious dimension. The third and last part of Employee Rights and Industrial Justice is devoted to the situation and views which exist in different countries and the differences and similarities that may exist between them. The article, by Frank M. Horwitz, for instance, treats the current situation in South Africa, with regard to democracy in industry and in the political system. Other interesting topics include nonunion grievance procedures and due process in the workplace.