ABSTRACT
Repeated waves of corporate restructuring and downsizing have soured the attitudes of many American workers. It is always difficult to generalize across the broad spectrum of the American economy. Nevertheless, for some time, many people in private industry—blue-collar as well as white-collar, management as well as the rank and file—believed that they were working under a widely understood social contract. Traditionally, large staff reductions only occurred during periods of crisis that justified hardnosed re-examinations of company activities and the resulting tough actions. The key to developing a new workplace compact is the same key that unlocks the door to high-performance workplaces built on trust and mutual purpose. Developing a new social contract for the typical workplace in the United States requires reconciling a variety of paradoxes. Productivity must be enhanced while often the workforce is reduced. Competitiveness must be increased while the firm is meeting costly new social mandates imposed by government.
