What does the history of the idea of industrial democracy offer in the way of guidance to those promoting or opposing its revival?

Given current interest in this ambiguous idea stirred by the Dunlop Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations, by Labor Secretary Robert Reich, by union turmoil (including dissent inside the UAW-GM Saturn experiment), and union setbacks abroad (as in Israel and Sweden), a scholarly analysis of the last century of industrial democracy efforts is quite welcome, especially one as informative, wide-ranging, and provocative as this one.

Eleven original essays explore lessons from history for the "remarkable rights consciousness," the new set of judicially enforceable rights at work that have emerged over the last thirty years. Not surprisingly, no consensus emerges about the prospects of an emergent, enterprise-based "cooperative" system of work and production.

Students in labor ed courses will find four aspects of the volume especially helpful: First, the editors have arranged the contents to mark three distinctive periods in the definition of "industrial democracy," and this periodization enriches the matter.

Second, the contributors debate the doctrine of American exceptionalism, and the argument pro and con is enlightening.

Third, the essays offer cogent and understandable discussions of otherwise lengthy and "heavy" matters, as in the case of Ronald S. Schatz's synopsis of the history of the industrial relations field.

Fourth, the contributors do not waffle unnecessarily and often take emphatic positions; e.g., Mike Parker, a union activist, concludes "there are no competitive, market, or technological imperatives driving management to offer workers dignity or democracy on the job. Workers who aspire to decent working conditions still need a union that can organize and fight for them." (274)

Overall, the volume makes clear how difficult it remains to make the idea of "industrial democracy" concrete and relevant. Unions will have to "find some way to identify their organizational fate with the rights consciousness that remains so pervasive in American society." As well, "fear and repression at work must decline."

And as if this wasn't problematic enough, "the reemergence of democracy in the workplace requires more than ever the growth of a vigorous social and political democracy without." (282-3)

Thanks, however, to this mind-stretching and refreshing volume, the task is better grounded in historical lessons, more accessible to labor ed students, and thereby possibly abit less formidable. Academics and activists alike will find this a sound addition to their "must-reading" shelf.

Industrial Democracy in America: The Ambiguous Promise. Edited by Nelson Lichtenstein and Howell John Harris. New York: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Cambridge University Press, 1993. 283 pp.