The Problem of Productivity: Inflation and Collective Bargaining after World War II

Unwilling to wait decades for the political decline of New Deal liberalism, the core industries of post–World War II America repurposed collective bargaining as a means to reduce the costs of organized labor. New industrial relation strategies known as “wage-price policies†linked labor compensation with productivity in order to stabilize unit labor costs and prices. After reviewing the emergence and diffusion of wage-price policy within the managerial community, the article analyzes its implementation during the tumultuous 1959 bargaining round between the steel industry and the United Steelworkers. The union claimed that the industry's goals centered on management's antipathy to work rules, but industry records reveal that work rules were only part of its broader efforts to contain the inflationary consequences of the New Deal.