| Summary: | Collision Course traces the dramatic rise and fall of workplace cooperation at Eastern Airlines. In so doing, the film uncovers the deep-seated assumptions which underlie our culture of industrial relations and prevent us from breaking out of our industrial impasse. Collision Course begins in 1983 with Eastern hurtling towards bankruptcy, beset by years of labor-management hostility, high wage cuts, and a poor service record. An informative history traces this adversarial relationship back to the dawn of the wage system and the rise of scientific management. When Eastern once again demanded wage cuts, the machinist union responded with a bold counter-proposal reconceiving the traditional "wage bargain" by giving workers both a 25% ownership stake and an unprecedented say in the company. It was the most profound change in labor-management relations in any major American Company. The results were stunning. Autonomous work teams took over the shop floor. Wage increases were tied to productivity improvements. Encouraged to use their brains, newly motivated "cost teams" invented ways to save the airline $100 million. Yet when competitive pressures re-emerged, the innovative agreement was pulled apart by the very people who put it together. In 1986, Eastern was sold to Frank Lorenzo's notoriously anti-union Texas Air and soon thereafter went down in flames. Eastern's rise and fall provides a vital case study of the do's, don'ts, and maybe's of workplace cooperation.
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