This study examines the effectiveness of occupational safety and health committees within the public sector of New Jersey. Survey data collected from work-site representatives were matched with state-collected reports of injury and illnesses. While there remain methodological problems with this approach, the results indicate that committee scope and training play a positive role in perceptions of committee effectiveness and that committees with more worker involvement are associated with fewer reported illnesses and injuries.

This is a case study of the 2005 national contract negotiations between Kaiser Permanente and the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions. Given the scale and complexity of these negotiations, their successful completion provides an exemplar for collective bargaining in this country. In 1997 Kaiser Permanente and the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions formed a labor management partnership, and negotiations were structured around the principles of interestbased negotiation (IBN). Drawing on direct observation of all parts of the bargaining process, interviews with individuals from Kaiser and the Coalition of Unions, and surveys we conducted after bargaining was completed, we conclude that the parties employed a mix of interest-based and traditional negotiation processes across an array of integrative and distributive issues. We find that IBN techniques were used extensively and successfully to reach mutually satisfying agreements when the parties shared interests. When interests were in greater conflict, the parties resorted to more traditional, positional tactics to reach resolution. Strong intraorganizational conflicts limited the use of IBN and favored the use of more traditional positional bargaining. While a high level of trust enabled and supported the use of IBN, tensions that developed limited the use of IBN and required surfacing and release before either IBN or more traditional positional processes could proceed effectively. The use * The authors' affiliations are, respectively, Management Trust Fund has provided funds for this research. The views expressed are solely those of the authors.Bargaining Theory / 67 of IBN tools helped the parties apply the principles underlying the partnership in which these negotiations were embedded. We conclude that IBN served as a way of applying or operationalizing integrative bargaining and affected the process dynamics in ways the Walton and McKersie theory predicted. As such we see IBN as techniques that neither displace nor render obsolete other aspects of bargaining theory or practice but that show considerable promise for helping collective bargaining to address the complex issues and challenges found in contemporary employment relationships.

Data from two surveys are analyzed to identify determinants of the survival of participative programs in unionized settings. The first survey responses were collected in 1987 from local union representatives of 86 bargaining units involved in a participation program; the second were collected from 66 of those same representatives, as well as 49 of their management counterparts, three years later. A surprisingly low failure rate of approximately 20-30% was reported. The results indicate that the perspectives of managers and union representatives differed sharply. For example, union representatives, but not managers, often ascribed program failure to poor labor-management relations and concessionary bargaining; and union respondents were considerably more likely than management respondents to perceive a program as defunct.

In 1997, the Kaiser Foundation Health Care and Hospitals, the Permanente Medical Federation, and a coalition of unions signed a national agreement creating one of the most ambitious labor management partnerships in U.S. history, initially covering some 58,000 employees. Based on field research and archival data, this paper analyzes the first eight years of this partnership in light of three strategic challenges—initiating, governing, and sustaining partnership—and the organizational challenge of partnership in a highly decentralized organization.