Research on the Structure and Function of Participation and Communication Oriented Employee Representation Plan

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The period between the WWI and the Wagner Act was an era of Employee Representation Plan (ERP). In this period, hundreds of US manufacturing companies introduced various types of ERP into their shops and plants. Consequently, ERP became a major way of collective dealing in none-union sector firms.However, quite a few of them had a substantial influence to the later development of industrial relattions in the US.These influential minority plans had a strong orientation towards inspiring rank and files commitment to production problems and adjustment of shop floor grievances. In the research, these influential minority plans are defined as "participation and communication oriented ERP".The "participation and communication oriented ERP", originally formed by W.L.Mackenzie King and John D.Rockefeller Jr.at Colorado coal field, spread to huge manufacturing firms through industrial relations managers' network knitted around the Special Conference Committee (SCC).Among the ERPs of the SCC com … More panies, Works Council in General Electric Company (GE) had well developed participation and communication functions.The Works Council was introduced and settled in as a result of the competition with the trade unions for the support of the rank and files. In this process, the two different communication-grievance settlement-employee participation systems competed each other for their effectiveness. By the end of the 1920s, the Works Council was accepted by the employees as an only realistic way of communication and grievance settlement in the Works. Without full and strong support of the Works management, however, the Works Council would have never gained enough support from the rank and files.The Works Council could never be an effective alternative to the collective bargaining between the management and the unions. The Works Council's structure itself was not suitable for negotiations of two parties and the enforcement of the agreement between them. The fact about the formation process of the Works Council, not the IRP,reveals that the Works management did not intend to substitute the unions by the Works Council.With all its effectiveness in communication and grievance settlement, the Works Council could survive only when the Works management was able to maintain the high standard of major working conditions like high wage level and relatively stable employment. Less