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Paul D. Staudohar
Baseball survived the 232-day strike of 1994-95. While full recovery of the game to its former stature remains problematic, it is surely dependent on a prolonged period of labor-management peace. Using a model of collective bargaining set forth in the next section, this article examines the strike and its aftermath, in order to analyze what happened and why. Since 1972, negotiation between the union and owners over contract terms has led to eight work stoppages that have plagued baseball. Hence, there is a clear need for a critical review of the bargaining process.
Industrial relations scholars have long pondered the road to labor-management peace. Over the last half-century, a substantial literature has emerged that offers analytical models, as well as principles, for resolving negotiation problems and preventing work stoppages.1 One might suppose that because of the intractability of baseball's labor-management relations, there are no models or principles that apply. This is not the case, however, and the literature provides ample guidance.
This excerpt is from an article published in the March 1997 issue of the Monthly Labor Review. The full text of the article is available in Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document Format (PDF). See How to view a PDF file for more information.
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Footnotes
1 Some of the major texts on the subject are E. Wight
Bakke, Mutual Survival: The Goals of Labor and Management (New
York, Harper and Row, 1946); Frederick Harbison and John R.
Coleman, Goals and Strategy in Collective Bargaining (New
York, Harper and Row, 1951); Causes of Industrial Peace under
Collective Bargaining: Fundamentals of Labor Peace
(Washington, DC, National Planning Association, 1953); Ann
Douglas, Industrial Peacemaking (New York, Columbia
University Press, 1962); Thomas A. Kochan, Collective
Bargaining and Industrial Relations: From Theory to Policy and
Practice (Homewood, IL, Richard D. Irwin, 1980); G.G.
Somers, ed., Collective Bargaining: Contemporary American
Experience (Madison, WI, Industrial Relations Research
Association, 1980); Richard E. Walton and Robert B. McKersie, A
Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations: An Analysis of a Social
Interaction System (Ithaca, NY, ILR Press (Cornell
University), 1991); and Roger Fisher and William Ury, Getting
to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving In (New York,
Penguin Books, 1981, 1991).
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