ABSTRACT
As a first step toward job improvement, the Council set up a Quality of Work Project to assist labor and management in efforts toward restructuring work. Despite the recent tendency of many companies to take their efforts underground, there exists ample evidence to support the assertion that much development is taking place. This chapter presents examples—taken from organizations where secrecy is not the rule—that are only a sampling, but sufficient to demonstrate this development. The most ambitious and important experimental attempt to restructure work in an American company began in 1973. By mid-1974, the restructuring work in the Bolivar Project was moving toward a beginning. Ultimately, the importance of the Bolivar Project may not be that it succeeds or fails, but simply that it began. In terms of American industrial history, it is the first joint union-management collaboration on a project of its type.
