ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with union-management relations under national labour contracts. In most cases, these agreements will be used as a foil or background for illumination of case materials. The contract may respect certain local practices, but in disputes over which shall prevail, local customs go by the board, and this outcome is usually promised in the contract. In the case of the Milo, Fruhling, and Attica firms at least, the central office managers had some awareness of the contractual ambiguities for they sent along for each supervisor a manual of interpretations for use with the contract. The chapter discusses behaviour in local plants under the agreement as resistance to the contract, individual initiative among workers, managerial expediency, and economic and production pressures. In the smaller Attica plant a tradition of personal, rather than contractual, relations was so strong that grievance committeemen wanted no part of the contract except in rare critical cases.
