WORKPLACE conflict should be "a trigger for problem-solving, not warfare", according to the head of the United States industrial relations service. The US has become "a nation littered with shuttered industrial plants that stand in silent testimony to the inability to adapt", said Mr John C. Wells.
Mr Wells is director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the US counterpart of the Labour Relations Commission. At a meeting for trade unionists and managers hosted by the LRC in Dublin, Mr Wells said experience had taught him that "conflictive partnership" is the most viable strategy for good industrial relations in the emerging global market.
In an ideal world, working relationships would be built on trust, but a more practical approach was to find issues of common interest between unions and employers. This way both sides can set aside adversarial agendas without pretending there are no real differences between them.
If unions and management can be persuaded to co-operate in "baking a bigger and better economic pie" they can afford to "fuss and fight about how it is shared out afterwards".
A wide range of US industries are beginning to experiment with this new model, he says. But while industrial disputes are becoming rarer in the US, those that do occur tend to be prolonged and frequently lead to companies replacing strikers with new staff. In some companies, the drive to have non-union workforces has marginalised labour-management relations.
Unions, for their part, have to see their job as not simply the redistribution of wealth created by companies in favour of their members, but actively to promote the creation of that wealth in the first place.