Dispute Settlement in Atomic Energy Plants

This article focuses on one of the most difficult problems of national labor policy: What are the limits within which collective bargaining may be permitted to operate in an industry whose product is regarded as indispensable to national interest and welfare? Because of government ownership and interest, as well as the unique character of its product, it would seem that substantial government intervention would be called for in the atomic energy industry. Yet, in 1957 a committee established to advise the Secretary of Labor on labor-management relations in atomic energy installations recommended that labor policy in this industry should conform to the general policy of nonintervention in other important industries, including those engaged in vital production of defense goods. In this article, David B. Johnson traces the record of labor disputes in the atomic energy industry and appraises the effectiveness of the nonpartisan fact-finding tribunal which has been employed to settle them in terms of the interruptions to production, the movement of wages, and the effects on the collective bargaining process. He concludes that neither the record of dispute settlement nor the changes in the nature of the atomic energy industry support the policy recommended by the Secretary of Labor's committee. (Author's abstract courtesy EBSCO.)

Agency (philosophy) · Atomic energy · Business · Collective bargaining · Courtesy · Economics · Epistemology · Government (linguistics) · Labor relations · Law and economics · Political science · Product (mathematics) · Production (economics) · Settlement (finance) · Sociology · Tribunal · Finance · Industrial relations · International Environmental Law and Policies · Law · Nuclear and radioactivity studies · Nuclear reactor physics and engineering · Philosophy