[Excerpt] The six short essays in this modest publication assess the impact upon industrial relations of the accelerating democratization of American life

Neufeld, Maurice F

English

Royal Society of Western Australia

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Industrial Relations: Now and in 1984 Catherwood Library 
1976 
Preface 
Maurice F. Neufeld 
Cornell University 
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Preface 
Abstract 
[Excerpt] The six short essays in this modest publication assess the impact upon industrial relations of 
the accelerating democratization of American life. 
Disciplines 
Collective Bargaining | Unions 
Comments 
Suggested Citation 
Neufeld, M. F. (1976). Preface [Electronic version]. In Industrial relations: Now and in 1984. Papers 
presented at the Founders Seminar (pp. ix-xiii). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, New York State School of 
Industrial and Labor Relations. Retrieved [insert date], from Cornell University, School of Industrial and 
Labor Relations site: 
http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/indrelnow84/1 
Required Publisher’s Statement 
© Cornell University. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved. 
This foreword is available at DigitalCommons@ILR: https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/indrelnow84/1 
Preface
Maurice F. Neufeld
The six short essays in this modest publication assess the 
impact upon industrial relations of the accelerating democratization 
of American life.
Milton R. Konvitz, who brings to his reflections a lifetime of 
renowned scholarship on civil liberties and civil rights, establishes 
the theme of the symposium in the opening address. He celebrates 
the right to human dignity and to legal and social equality now 
accorded by statutes and the courts to organized workers, women, 
aliens, bilingual Americans, the poor, students, illegitimate 
children, mental patients, and prisoners. He notes "that of the 140 
other member states of the United Nations, not one can compare with 
the United States in the legal rights to equality enjoyed by our 
racial minorities, or the great progress that has been made toward 
political, social, and economic equality in the last several decades." 
Konvitz, at the end of his eloquent statement of faith, first invokes 
Emma Lazarus' famous poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty which 
calls upon the rejected peoples of the earth to seek freedom in 
America. He then rounds the argument: "Now we have begun to turn the 
Statue of Liberty around, so that its message is to be read as 
addressed to ourselves. For at long last we have begun to see that 
it is we how have huddled masses who yearn to be free and that it is 
our own teeming cities that have wretched refuse who wait for liberation.
Maurice F. Neufeld, in pursuing Konvitz's motif, maintains that 
no institution in the nation's history has struggled so long and so 
valiantly for the democratization of American life as the organized 
labor movement. Trade unionists had asserted from the 1830s onward
ix
Xthe right of the larger and larger number of Americans who labored 
in shop, mill, plant, factory, railroad district, and mine pit to 
redress wrongs suffered at their place of work. Union members there­
fore stood prepared before the turn of the nineteenth century to 
strive for the establishment of regular procedures for the settle­
ment of grievances. Neufeld claims that the ordered but still 
varied and adaptive grievance procedures which they devised are 
unique in the world. These procedures, however, have never received 
the close attention which they should have commanded long ago 
because of their importance to the democratization of industry and 
their influence upon the character of work itself. He therefore 
examines the evolution of grievance procedures which trade unions 
and employers developed between 1880 and 1900 and finds that the 
principles and procedures which evolved at that time served as the 
principal bases for later developments. He states: "Indeed, labor 
and management employed them with such sensible flexibility that the 
arbitration of primary issues of interests, and not alone secondary 
issues of rights, found acceptance" during those early decades.
Jean T. McKelvey--ski11ed and enthusiastic teacher, voluntary 
and superb placement officer for students, champion literary agent 
for term papers, scholar of wit and foresight, and arbitrator of 
national fame--demonstrates that the concern for individual rights 
under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has circumscribed 
the large freedom of judgment formerly enjoyed by arbitrators in 
interpreting collective bargaining agreements. She points out that 
the concern of the courts for individual rights has activated a 
conflict between the law of the shop and the law of the land since 
the arbitrator is now "surrounded by constraints imposed by law, 
public policy, and affirmative action" and is therefore responsible 
"to a larger public, not a private, constituency." She concludes
xi
her provocative essay by quoting from an article which she published 
in April 1971: "As more and more contract issues--once regarded 
purely as matters of consensual law--become subject to overriding 
public regulation and control, the once tight little ship of private 
adjudication is indeed becoming a leaky vessel." She went on to 
observe that many arbitrators "who are experts in the law of the shop 
shy away from the notion of learning more about the law of the land." 
In a spirit of jocular hope, McKelvey, who made it her business 
three decades ago to master the law of the land, suggested as early 
as 1971 that "arbitrators are in need of continuing education."
Alice H. Cook--keen student of the government of unions, 
indefatigable investigator of child-care facilities throughout the 
world, pioneer university ombudsman, long-time vindicator of women's 
rights, and now novitiate in arbitration-sketches a disturbing view 
of the present state of industrial relations in higher education.
She sees "the waves blown up by Title IX of the Equal Employment 
Opportunity Act and its guidelines, the brewing storm of unionization, 
the rising consciousness of blacks and women who see the universities 
as one of the most resistant institutions to their acceptance" 
battering against the "frail procedures" which universities have 
devised to meet their labor relations needs. Central to this 
dilemma, she points out, is a distinctive aspect of college and 
university life: "its accepted system of peer governance within 
the faculty and between the faculty and administration." Special 
problems therefore "derive from the overlay of collective bargaining 
and the grievance procedure developed under it on these sophisticated 
patterns of governance and on the professional ethics long 
established as norms for faculty prerogatives and behavior." Of 
four types of employees within this fragile structure, she is 
particularly concerned about that group of professionals which is
almost invisible, many of whom are women with advanced degrees in 
their specialities: language instructors; editors and illustrators 
at the press; architects, designers, and engineers in buildings and 
grounds departments; librarians; museum curators and taxonomists; 
and extension associates. Cook's experience as an arbitrator of 
grievances at institutions of higher education leads her to the 
conclusion that under the pressure of a grievance system which ends 
in arbitration, "the university, like any other employer, falls back 
not upon the peer system which is its unique glory in a society 
which organizes itself in hierarchies where power flows from the 
top down, but upon management prerogatives, exactly like a 
manufacturer of automobiles."
Vernon H. Jensen bases his long-standing concern for the 
preservation of free collective bargaining upon detailed knowledge 
derived from meticulously researched and highly praised studies of 
labor relations in industries both here and abroad. He sees the 
American system of collective bargaining as part of the nation's 
quality of life associated with freedom. He is consequently troubled 
about the equivocal position of the collective bargaining agreement, 
created by consent between employers and unions, in a society where 
legislation and contract are that society's cornerstones. He asks: 
"But where does the collective bargaining agreement fit in?"
Since it takes its character from both legislation and contract, but 
is different from each, Jensen maintains: "What is needed is a law of 
associations, recognition of the role of groups, or associations, in 
contrast to government and legislation and individuals and contract." 
Although Jensen maintains that the pluralism of our society has 
helped to accommodate the countervailing forces produced by it, he 
nevertheless insists that "the law is behind the times and a compre­
hensive body of law, recognizing associations for what they are, 
would be helpful. The collective agreement would then fit into it."
George W. Brooks--di1igent public servant in pioneering agencies 
of the federal government, experienced and influential union aide, 
and eloquent, witty, learned, zealous, and beloved teacher--has long 
served as the conscience and sentinel inside and outside the School 
for democratic rights within the labor movement. He agrees with 
Jensen that "a belief in freedom is at the heart of our commitment 
to collective bargaining." He is therefore sensitive to "a growing 
disposition on the part of unions and collective bargaining institutions 
to withdraw from workers freedoms which were once considered essential 
to the effective operation of those institutions." Under the lively 
flow of democratization in American life, Brooks discerns an under­
current, set in motion since the 1930s through public and private 
policy, which has "carried us to the point where employee freedom 
of choice has been seriously eroded by union and employer, by 
decision of the NLRB, and by decisions of the courts. The collective 
effect is awesome." He reminds us that 1984 is perhaps closer at 
hand than we think, that the shadows at the near horizon are 
Americans whose right to human dignity and to legal and social 
equality have been overcast.


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