From union hegemony to union disintegration: collective bargaining in cement and related industries

Article Abstract:

The cement industry provides an interesting examples of the impact of collective bargaining where management determines that it cannot afford a strike, yields to extreme union demands, but deludes itself that it can withstand the economic impact of unionism under such circumstances because almost all competitors are similarly situated and labor costs can be partially offset by automation. The small Cement, Lime, and Gypsum Workers Union won not only high wages and benefits, but imposed restrictive rules as severe as those in any industry. Eventually, however, foreign competition and economic realities forced the companies to revolt, and the union found that it could sustain strikes. An ill-conceived merger broke up, an independent union was formed, and today unionism, once so strong, is weak and divided as management imposes or forces acceptance of its condition. The story, while unique in many ways, resembles what has occurred in other industries with high fixed costs, militant unions, and the reluctance of management to sacrifice current gains for longer run needs. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Economic policy, Cement industry, Collective bargaining

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Arizona construction labor: a case study of union decline

Article Abstract:

Labor relations in the Arizona construction industry provide an interesting and informative case study of what occurs when unions push costs beyond what the market will bear. The industry was highly unionized, even including the home-building sector, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when a series of strikes and major wage and benefit increases led one sector after another in the industry to turn to open-shop contractors. The construction unions and unionized contractors attempted to counter this move by agreeing to wage, benefit, and rule concessions, but the trend to open-shop work continued. Currently, the unions control only a small segment of the work with little prospect of improvement. Although special factors may have reduced union power more in the Arizona construction industry than nationally, developments in this state do indicate a probable decline in the national union share of work beyond what we found in the 1984 nationwide study. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Construction industry, Employment, Arizona, Carpenters

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The twelve-hour shift in the North American mini-steel industry

Article Abstract:

The twelve-hour shift is now widely practiced in the chemical and petroleum industries but has not spread to many other continuous operations, in part because of the belief that the stress and heat in heavy metals precluded its use there. The innovators who created the mini-steel industry, however, have adopted this shift widely. This article, based principally upon a 1988-89 survey, supplemented in 1990 by a survey of additional Canadian plants, examines the experience of the mini-steel industry with the twelve-hour shift and finds that managements consider it a 'definite plus', particularly in terms of employee relations. The posture of the United Steelworkers, is, however, ambivalent, with reservations about the shift by national and some local officials, and support by other local officials. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Human resource management, Steel industry, United Steelworkers of America, Shift work, Iron and steel workers

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