Welfare capitalism reconsidered

Nonunion employee representation in the pre-Wagner Act years: A reassessment

“…The evidence is clear-cut that a new paradigm of labor management emerged during World War I and matured during the Welfare Capitalism period of the 1920s, that it entailed major changes in organizational structure, management practices, and the treatment and utilization of labor, and that the executives fully realized that adopting this new paradigm was a strategic decision of the highest kind (Gitelman, 1992). As described below, only a minority of companies, generally from the progressive/liberal wing of the business community, actually adopted this new paradigm.…”

“…And at many companies employee representation was the crown jewel of this new paradigm (Brandes, 1976;Gitelman, 1992). One prong of the new paradigm was, following Frederick Taylor, to apply scientific management principles to the organization and performance of work and labor management.…”

“…By common assent, the real beginning of the NERP movement was in 1915 when the "Rockefeller Plan" was inaugurated at the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company in the aftermath of a bloody miners' strike popularly known as the Ludlow Massacre (Gitelman, 1988). The influence of the Rockefeller plan arose both because of the tremendous publicity it received and because CF&I's major stockholder, John D. Rockefeller Jr., one of the nation's leading industrialists, became a committed convert to employee representation and worked diligently to promote its adoption at other companies.…”

What - or Who - Started the Great Depression?

“…Prevention methods included company unions and modest corporate welfare programs that are widely perceived to have kept unions out of the workplace, and the use of violence when unions attempted to organize or when workers called a strike. Gittelman [24], Ozanne [16], and Jacoby [25] describe the use of company unions and welfare programs, and Bernstein [21] describes firm violence during several union organization attempts and strikes during the early and mid-1920s. These tactics included kidnapping union organizers, firing workers who met with organizers, evicting strikers from company-owned homes, denying medical care to striker families from company-directed health providers, and beating and shooting strikers.…”

Job embeddedness theory : can it help explain employee retention?.

“…However, the conflict between organized labor and management raged on in spite of improved working conditions, an increasing variety of benefIts, and a general decrease in union membership. The image of paternalistic employers who provided for the needs oftheir employees was perpetuated, with workers commonly staying with one employer their entire working lives (Gitelman, 1992).…”