A HISTORICAL EXAMINATION OF THE USE OF ACCOUNTING-BASED INCENTIVE PLANS IN THE STRUCTURING OF LABOR-MANAGEMENT RELATIONS

In this paper we examine organized labor's involvement with accounting -based incentive plans, and the role this involvement played in labor- management relations. More specifically, this research examines differ ences between organized labor's response to engineering versus account ing measures of productivity, and how these differences affected union support for, or opposition to, incentive systems. We also explore lab or's ability and willingness to confront accounting representations. O ur study of these issues involves an extensive review of the labor pre ss, and case studies of profit-sharing plans implemented at three firm s - Parker Pen, Kaiser Steel, and American Motors - in the 1950s and e arly 1960s. The paper concludes that both local and national unions we re centrally concerned about their ability to manage incentives so tha t they could obtain other union objectives. However, the construction of both labor's objectives, and the way these objectives were pursued and legitimized, was limited by the circumscribed nature of U.S. union ism during this period. Thus, these episodes suggest that the local pa rticularities of profit sharing cannot be understood without placing t hese episodes in the larger context of labor processes.