Management and Labor (Essay Sample)

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For the most part, yes the labor unions and management are inherently adversarial. Most industrial relations scholars and practitioners view the nature of the situation as "distributive," rather than "integrative." In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of cooperative union-management endeavors. Labor-management "accommodation" is the wave of the future, based on these recent changes.
An alternate possibility is that the current cooperative efforts are just a temporary variance in the system that will go away when the threats of insolvency and international competition are resolved. Union leaders, in particular, are likely to be suspicious of cooperative endeavors. After all, if labor and management can get along, is there any need for unions and union officials? Perhaps, the management and labor should recognize that their the time had come for management and labor to recognize that their affiliation was no longer adversarial in nature.
It was well put by Abraham Lincoln when he thought, "calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it true." Moreover, this is not an attack on capitalism and also its no more an attempt to demonize the profits motive than the acknowledgment of the presence of venom and fangs is an attempt to demonize a rattlesnake. It’s simply and clearly pointing out that management and labor do not want the same thing.
The appropriate process of negotiation is integrative bargaining. It is possible to produce greater outcome together between labor unions and management than one could reach on her own. However, integrative bargaining is usually used when the parties have a stronger relationship. The issues to be debate...