"Welfare Capitalism in the Age of Neoliberalism: The History of the Council for a Union-Free Environment, 1977-1994"

This project focuses on the activities of an anti-union business group called the Council for a Union-Free Environment (CUE) between 1977 and 1994. In the 1970s, American business leaders intensified their search for a new form of industrial relations amidst a series of challenges, including international competition, productivity decline, and a wave of strikes. They did not see labor-management confrontation as an effective solution and proposed the renewal of the industrial relations that had supported the American postwar prosperity. With the economic constraints and workforce changes, American business leaders agreed that they could enhance productivity by reforming the “human” aspect of their businesses and promoting class cooperation free from unions. Organizations like CUE functioned as a space for businesses to exchange information and educate each other on employee management to make industrial relations less “adversarial” and more “progressive” without unions. CUE’s “progressive” employee management strategies leveraged earlier welfare capitalism policies, including human relations theory, attitude surveys, communication, and supervisory training but adapted them to the new economic and social contexts of the 1970s and 1980s. By capitalizing on the neoliberal emphasis on individualism and flexibility, CUE enhanced the effectiveness of these measures and integrated popular management concepts such as the Quality of Working Life, team production, and employee involvement. By investigating CUE’s records, this project explores how American manufacturers collectively envisioned a new, “cooperative” relationship with their employees and without unions between the 1970s and 1990s. Although some NAM member firms and their unions were engaged in cooperative initiatives in this era, this project shows that the elimination of unions was deeply embedded in the initiatives of progressive employee relations, raising questions about the credibility of American employers’ commitment to industrial democracy.