This chapter examines the extent and impact of ERPs and union-management cooperation committees in the US in the period from 1914 to the country's entry into the Second World War. While union-management cooperation committees only gained limited support from employers, ERPs spread dramatically and by 1934 were challenging unions in terms of coverage. While ERPs were an important anti-union device for employers, there is evidence that they could give workers a voice and allow them to gain concessions from management even though the latter had the right of veto. Later, legislative changes to US labour law in the 1930s led to the virtual demise of ERPs and reduced union interest in promoting union-management cooperation committees.

ERP – the Extent

The Rockefeller Plan spread to other companies. In the decade after the Ludlow Massacre, JDR Jr. promoted his Plan through publications and public speaking. He also encouraged the extension of ERPs to companies in which the Rockefeller family had substantial interests, such as Standard Oil of New Jersey, which had two major violent strikes at its Bayonne refinery in 1915 and 1916. Clarence Hicks, who had played an important role for Rockefeller in implementing the ERP at CF&I, transferred to Standard Oil to implement the ERP there. The Standard Oil ERP adopted in 1918 was part of an elaborate programme of personnel management that included extensive company welfare benefits and the assumption of many of the supervisors’ powers by industrial relations specialists. Although a Standard Oil executive, Hicks acted as a consultant to other oil companies interested in introducing similar ERPs. Progressive employers borrowed and modified the Rockefeller Plan. Arthur Young, a former employee of CF&I, and Mackenzie King drew up a modified ERP for International Harvester. William Dickson, Vice-President of the Midvale Steel Company in Pennsylvania, consulted with CF&I management before borrowing the ERP with modifications in September 1918. That same year, Bethlehem Steel employed Mackenzie King and Ivy Lee, Rockefeller's former publicity agent, to develop and promote an ERP. The SCC, which was linked to Rockefeller interests and included companies such as Bethlehem Steel, International Harvester, Goodyear Rubber Tire and Rubber, General Electric and GM, saw ERPs as the cornerstone of their industrial relations philosophy.