You can turn adversarial relationships into productive partnerships by observing a few proven principles.
TO WIN IN THE WORLD economy, we must develop a new and productive entente with organized labor-that historic adversarial relationship-by doing eight things:
1. Business and labor must adopt new criteria in dealing with one another. The old adversarial relationships have produced distrust. Unions have competed with management and other unions in a game of bargaining one-upmanship, creating an endless inflationary cycle. Despite management’s perennial position ("We can’t afford it!"), the unions were almost always able to push their demands through. What emerged was a tradition of distrust. Negotiations often boiled down to a brutish animosity indulged by both parties. What is needed is a united front against the erosion of productivity and foreign competition.
