American labor law and workplace control: Addressing the issues of deindustrialization and the increased utilization of temporary labor

This dissertation explores the historical development of workplace control and labor law in the United States. One objective of this study is to explain the recent dramatic increase in temporary labor by viewing it as a means of establishing workplace control through staffing arrangements. In addition, the role of labor law is analyzed as it affects investment decisions and plant closings associated with deindustrialization. This dissertation argues that the development of American labor law in the past fifty years has preserved notions relating to freedom of contract and the commodification of labor, and has preserved managerial prerogative in the areas of investment and staffing decisions. This development has inhibited the ability of labor to legally respond to the temporary labor issue as it manifests itself in the late 1980s.; The larger objective of this dissertation is to discuss the dissolution of the long-term employment relationship in late capitalism and to connect this development with the larger history of employment in American society since the early 1800s. By examining various forms of workplace control it is possible to demonstrate the historically contingent and political nature of the organization of work. In addition, by examining American labor law at specific points in its historical development, it is possible to understand the relationship which exists between the organization of work and worker resistance, and the impact of this interaction on the development of law.; The conclusion which is reached from this analysis is that the commodification of labor power has historically made the temporary employment relationship the rule and not the exception under capitalism. Only the unique historical circumstances existing after World War Two, which facilitated American hegemony in the world economy, enabled a brief period where the permanent employment relationship appeared to be the result of the maturation of the capitalist system or the "post-industrial society." The changes associated with deindustrialization have exposed the historically specific nature of the permanent employment relationship, and have generated a return to the temporary employment relationship which arises from the commodification of labor power under capitalism.