The Future of the American Labor Movement

Coming at a time of profound change in the global conditions under which American organized labor exists, The Future of the American Labor Movement describes and analyzes labor's strategic alternatives. It casts its net broadly, taking into account ideas that range from the current European Social Dialogue to the methods of the nineteenth Century American Knights of Labor. There are a number of intriguing strategies that have potential for reviving the U.S. labor movement, of which worker ownership and labor capital strategies are examples. There is a necessity for a number of diverse strategies to be pursued simultaneously. For this to work, there has to be a a broad movement of labor, consisting of diverse parts, held together by a clear idea of its purpose and a new structure. Hoyt N. Wheeler is Professor of Management and Chair, Management Department, Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina. Wheeler is a former president of the Industrial Relations Research Association, and editor of its magazine Perspectives on Work. He has won teaching awards at the University of Minnesota and at the University of South Carolina. His publications include Industrial Conflict: An Integrative Theory (South Carolina, 1985), which was a Choice magazine as a Outstanding Academic title, and Workplace Justice: Employment Justice in International Perspective (co-editor, Flower, 1994). Wheeler is an attorney specializing in labor law, and labor relations arbitrator and a member of the National Academy of Arbitrators.