| This thesis examines the questions of the role and control of industrial conflict within the context of a bitter labor-management conflict and third party intervention in a Kentucky coal mine in 1976-1980.;As it turned out, the closest functional alternative to the strike was not formal grievance processing, but rather informal problem-solving. This may explain Brett and Goldberg's discovered correlation between high strike frequency in Appalachian coal mines and the lack of a "problem-solving relationship" (1979: 465-483).;The subsequent reduction in strikes represented a reduction in overt and perceived conflict, but not in the underlying structural conflict of interest. The strikes reflected a changing relationship between labor and manaement in the U.S. coal industry in the late 1970s, and as such would tend to recur as external factors upset the local power balance.;The third parties played the role of neither a classical mediator nor a typical organizational development consultant, but rather a system-designer who institutionalized problem-solving activity. At variance with the conventional image of the third party as neutral facilitator, the third parties used their power to legitimize, solidify, and protect certain newly won powers of the rank and file. Conditions for the institutionalization included the intervention of an outside third party, a prior destructive trauma, and concomitant changes in the labor-management power relationship.;The wildcat strikes at this mine came about as each side contested, learned about, and adjusted to a certain power relationship at the local level. Contrary to institutionalist views of industrial relations, the wildcat strikes were neither anomalous nor wholly destructive. Rather they served to restore the implicit contract as perceived by the miners, to give the miners a sense of control over their problems, and to gain them power in certain domains over management. Moreover, as an alternative costly to each side, the strikes encouraged the parties to take seriously the grievance procedure and joint problem-solving activity. |
