“Employee Involvement” Plans

At a recent educational conference of the Machinists union (IAM), I asked several groups of local officers and staff how many of their locals were involved in “employee involvement” (EI) or “labor-management cooperation” (LMC) programs. An overwhelming majority said they were.

This is remarkable because the IAM is one of the few unions that has had a clear, well thought-out position on these kinds of programs. Its position is to avoid them because even when no...