A 6 page research paper that examines the text Negotiating the Future by Irving and Barry Bluestone who call for replacing the American system of adversarial industrial relations with a cooperative alternative in which management shares decisions with worker unions, with employee representation at every level. To prove their argument, the Bluestones rely heavily on the example of the Saturn division of General Motors. The writer looks at the Bluestones' proposals for labor/management relations and evaluates them according to relevant criticism and the subsequent history of Saturn since the publication of the Bluestones' text. Bibliography lists 6 sources.
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in reshaping the fundamental relationship between employees and management and creating a new work culture" (xiii). It is because of such statements that reviews of Negotiating the Future
pronounced its principal thesis to be nothing "short of revolutionary" (Gray 18). The Bluestones call for replacing the American system of adversarial industrial relations with a cooperative alternative in
which management shares decisions with worker unions, with employee representation at every level. To prove their argument, the Bluestones rely heavily on the example of the Saturn division of General
Motors. The following analysis looks at the Bluestones proposals for labor/management relations and evaluates them according to relevant criticism and the subsequent history of Saturn since the publication of the
Bluestones text. In their book, the Bluestones propose that American business should be restructured so that there is employee representation at every level of decision-making within the management structure.
They also emphasize that unions are critical to this process. To substantiate this point, the authors refer to numerous studies that indicate that employee-involvement management structures are more likely to
increase productivity in a unionized setting. According to the Bluestones, the unions aid in filtering out bad ideas and simultaneously increase company morale. Most significantly, the Bluestones argue
that unions prevent management from reverting to old paradigms. They feel that it is only through union participation that employees can have a real voice in company decisions, a voice
that the management cannot take away if the company should encounter hard times. As a model for this new paradigm, the authors hold up the General Motors Saturn plant located
in rural Tennessee. In the 1980s, when the concept for Saturn was being developed, the UAW negotiated an entirely new kind of contract, one that has no management-rights clause
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