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118 INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR RELATIONS REVIEW

The relating of a myriad of events in nearly chronological order with satis- factory indexing may make possible the use of the Perrys' book to develop and test hypotheses of union growth, wage movements, and collective bargaining trends; yet unfortunately the Perrys do not make such tasks easy for the reader. Experiences of the transportation, indus- trial, service, and building trades work- ers are related in disconnected para- graphs. The only exception to this arrangement are two consolidated chap- ters on the movie and maritime workers. The authors attempt to tie these dis- jointed paragraphs together to illustrate the tactics of the open shop employers for each period studied; but because of an almost complete lack of statistics on industrial development and work force, the reader can seldom make even crude estimates of the percentage organized or of the importance of the industrial seg- ment under discussion to the total pic- ture. It is unfortunate that at least for the final period of the 193O's the NLRB election figures were not used to vali- date findings. The lack of labor market information is particularly unfortunate for it would appear that the constant inffux of workers is important for the success of the open shop.

Apparently neither the "Angels" nor the authors have an agreed standard definition of "open shop." At one point "open shop" means discrimination against union membership, at the next no signed agreements, and later, no closed shop clauses in written agree- ments. Such fuzziness is understandable for the Merchants and Manufacturers Association, but without more careful definition, the Perrys' chronicle becomes confusing.

The authors tempt readers with a number of extremely interesting refer- ences and personalities which they, un- fortunately, leave before developing. For example, AFL organizer Joshua Dale obviously cut a broad swath during the critical expansion period of World War I, yet the authors have him dropped into the city only to let him fade out after numerous but disjointed references to his endeavors, leaving little notion of the qualities or ideology of the man.

Similarly, the IWW appears as a shadow over the harbor in the 192O's, yet is not analyzed or even adequately described.

Despite these criticisms, the Perrys are to be thanked for their contribution. It is to be hoped that California will keep up the Los Angeles chronicle so that we have a continuous story for at least one major metropolitan center in the country.

BARBARA WARNE NEWELL

Assistant Professor of Economics Purdue University

LABOR-MANAGEMENT RELATIONS The Management Function: A Positive Approach to Labor Relations. By Leon- ard A. Keller. Washington, D.C: Bureau of National Affairs, Inc., 1963. xi, 289 pp. $9.75.

This is a manual for managers and industrial relations personnel on how to deal with organized labor in negoti- ating and administering contracts, with particular reference to the areas of or- ganization structure, seniority, work as- signment, scheduling, work standards, and discipline. The foreword states that the book is an outgrowth of workshops for management officials led by the au- thor and sponsored by the Employers' Association of Detroit in cooperation with the Institute of Labor and Indus- trial Relations, University of Michigan- Wayne State University. Essentially, how- ever, the book expresses the values, spec- ulations, observations, readings, and prescriptions of a lawyer who has de- voted many years to advising and repre- senting management on labor relations, following service with the NLRB and the University of Michigan's School of Business Administration.

One may seriously question whether this type of book ought to be reviewed in an academic journal. I write this without disrespect for either the author or his work because, within its genre, it ranks high. The author "knows" man- agements, unions, and collective bargain- ing; he is thoroughly familiar with labor law, court decisions, and arbitrators' awards; his numerous quotations from

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first-class arbitrators like the former Harry Shulman are well chosen; and he represents a point of view regarding man- agement labor policy (he is a staunch advocate of the conflict of interests con- cept, management rights, and the "fair but firm" approach) which can be strong- ly defended. But the infonned student of collective bargaining will find little that is new in terms of either fact or theory.

What particularly interests me about the book is that it makes virtually no reference to the extensive scholarly lit- erature on management and union or- ganization or on collective bargaining apart from writings on arbitration. The only significant study which is given more than passing notice is the Slichter, Healy, Livernash volume on The Impact of Collective Bargaining on Manage- ment. Bakke gets one paragraph, Har- bison and Coleman two sentences, Perlman a few words. Familiar concepts from some other scholars are used with- out name reference, but it is not the absence of footnotes that concerns me. (Many legal references and arbitrators' opinions, incidentally, are amply cited.) The key question is why an experienced practitioner feels that he can ignore the studies of social scientists in advis- ing managers on labor relations. Is it because of the author's legal training and predilections? Or is it an indication that the typical practitioner, whatever principles and concepts he may have ab- sorbed, finds little in the research and theoretical literature to challenge his experiential judgments?

MILTON DERBER Professor Institute of Labor and

Industrial Relations University of Illinois

Strategy and Collective Bargaining Ne- gotiation. By Carl M. Stevens. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1963. xiii, 192 pp. 16.95.

Professor Stevens's book has very plain- ly been the object of loving and pains- taking care and an intense effort to bring

a mass of diverse material into some scheme intelligible as a whole. The ideas and facts which compose his mo- saic have been drawn from many au- thors, to whom his debt is carefully acknowledged in some twenty-three pages of notes, and from official records and proceedings. The most remarkable aspect of the result is the volume and variety of problems, observations, hypo- theses, and theories for which he has been able to find a place in a frame of thought which is basically of the utmost simplic- ity, and which could be describea as the Scylla and Charybdis model of the wage-demand situation. The view ap- pears to be that from time to time each labor union is impelled to abandon the existing state of affairs and adventur- ously seek improvement for its mem- bers by a dangerous voyage. The source of this impulse is no doubt easily found in the political constitution of the union, whose leaders must continuously justify their appointment, and in the rivalry among unions. Once having launched their boat, the leaders cannot turn back but must get somewhere with it, and the only route lies between the dangers of a settlement disappointing to their members and an ultimate collision with the employers, resulting in a strike. On its side, the employers' organization or firm must likewise avoid both paying too high a price for a settlement and on the other hand becoming involved

a strike with all its entailed loss.i n Professor Stevens calls this picture the "avoidance-avoidance model." It is a sort of game of chicken, where nobody wants or will benefit by ultimate col- lision but each hopes to out-nerve the other. The parties to negotiation, one might say, are like two drowning men, who, having dared each other to jump into the water, are then driven to cling to each other in the hope of achieving a double rescue: the only good escape from the challenge-situation is a com- promise.

The bilateral monopoly situation offers inviting scope for ingenious formaliza- tions and the invention of new concepts, and calls for a combination of logic, shrewdness, and a keen grasp of po- litical human nature. Professor Stevens.