Book Review

Canada and the United States

Joseph A. McCartin. Labor's Great War: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy and the Origins of Modern American Labor Relations, 1912–1921. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1997. Pp. xvi, 303. Cloth $49.95, paper $18.95.

Most scholars would probably concede that World War I was a turning point for American labor relations. The expanding scope of the administrative state propelled the development of new representational forms that would shape the workplace for the remainder of the century. These two books, in large measure, agree about the important new role of the state in giving birth to "modern American labor relations," but projecting into the future just what characteristics the wartime state bequeathed to worker representation elicits divergent responses. For Joseph A. McCartin, the war left a legacy that reached fruition in the New Deal labor relations system. For Jeffrey Haydu, government provided "new support for America's distinctive open shop order" (p. 10), which would thrive in the 1920s and, some would argue, has enjoyed a resurgence in the late twentieth century.	1
Haydu, a sociologist, develops his thesis through a series of comparative case studies. The first part explores what historians have called American exceptionalism in labor relations by sketching the impact of the war on forms of worker representation in the munitions industries of Germany, England, and the United States. Although all three faced the challenges of war mobilization and labor shortages which increased the bargaining power of workers, the impact of government intrusion into labor relations left varied legacies, depending on the legitimacy and power of the state and the prewar balance of class forces. In Germany, worker radicalism challenged state authority as well as autocratic management. To defuse militancy and restore order, employers cooperated with the Social Democratic Party in a corporatist system that routinized labor-management cooperation under government supervision. In England, worker unrest focused on protecting craft interests rather than threatening political upheaval. Postwar accommodation, then, relied heavily on encouraging employers to bargain privately with national unions to undercut the more radical shop stewards' movement. American workers neither endangered the political order nor had the reservoir of union strength that their European counterparts exploited. American state involvement largely left in place the open-shop system characteristic of the prewar metal trades with a twist: it stimulated the adoption of employee representation plans (ERPs) as an alternative to real collective bargaining. This solution would dominate the 1920s and, in many ways, return in the 1980s.	2
Part two of Haydu's book provides additional case studies of American state involvement in railroads and two different shipbuilding centers to further test his notions of "exceptionalism." Munitions, shipbuilding and railroads fell under the jurisdiction of different agencies. Moreover, although many of the national unions involved represented workers in all three industries, each had a distinct pattern of prewar labor relations. By holding politics constant, these case studies enable Haydu to examine industrial characteristics and government policies within one country.	. . .