Originally from Dispute Resolution Journal

The relationship between collective bargaining and labor arbitration has given rise to a great deal of debate—and controversy— over the last 50 years. Peter Florey—a labor arbitrator of long-standing and stellar reputation with the National Academy of Arbitrators and the AAA—offers insightful selections from among the outstanding contributions to the proceedings of the Academy that examine these collective bargaining issues as they relate to arbitration.

Economic and social woes which threw other nations into the arms of dictatorships of the left or right were alleviated in our country by designing effective countermeasures within the framework of a democracy. Collective bargaining evolved as an appropriate antidote to conflict in the workplace before the virus of despair and rebellion could destroy the fabric of our society.

The “healers” who pulled collective bargaining out of the medicine chest as the best of all available remedies, and as the most suited one for our body politic, knew, in the words of George Taylor in his March 29, 1962 Benjamin Franklin Lecture, that “the national welfare could not be enhanced by any system that dismally chewed up people!”