CONFLICT MANAGEMENT The Psychology of conflict and conflict ...

354 FRIEDMAN, HUNTER, AND CHEN
Their efforts were met with hiring blacklists, jail terms, beatings, threats
from armed Pinkerton detectives, and even death. They responded with
violence of their own.
Such an approach to conflict resolution proved unsustainable. With the
advent of the Great Depression, labor–management conflict appeared to
threaten the stability of American commerce and the system of government.
The U.S. Congress and President Franklin Roosevelt responded by
establishing a new set of laws and practices with the intention of increasing
industrial stability and order. Most prominent among these was the
1935 National Labor Relations Act, popularly known as the Wagner Act
after its sponsor, Senator Robert Wagner of New York.
U.S. labor relations, which today continue to rest chiefly on the Wagner
Act, institutionalize a conflict resolution system that was designed to minimize
violence and disorder, while protecting the rights of management,
workers, and their chosen representatives. Some 70 years on, the institution
has faced challenges in adapting to changing times. In this chapter,
we will review the major elements of this system, discussing recent trends
and avenues for research. In our discussion, we give special consideration
to attempts to transform the system from one that resolves conflict through
negotiation between parties with a rough balance of power, accompanied
by careful definitions of the rights of the parties, to a system that focuses
relatively more heavily on the parties’ underlying interests.
historiCal Context
Ury, Brett, and Goldberg (1988) observed that disputes could be resolved
with reference to “power,” to “rights,” or to “interests.” In this conceptual
scheme, conflicts resolved by power are those in which economic,
physical, or political strength enables one party to force a solution upon
the other. In rights-based conflict resolution, the focus is on rules and
law—outcomes are not determined through power struggles but rather
through calm deference to rules and procedures. Conflict resolution based
on interests focuses on what the parties really need and care about. Ury
et al. (1988) argued that healthy dispute systems are ones that focus most
on interests, less on rights, and even less on power.
Power
Different eras in American labor relations have featured a variety of
approaches to conflict resolution. Beginning in about 1875, American labor
relations featured intense conflict for over 60 years. Early labor organizations
such as the Knights of Labor, and subsequently, the various craft unions
that made up the American Federation of Labor and the broader-based
industrial unions of the Congress of Industrial Organization, attempted to