Book Reviews
Abstract
228 WORK AND OCCUPATIONS Karsh's account allows comparison of today's labor relations scene with that of the immediate postwar era. The important contrasts between then and now largely are ignored in the new and too brief preface. The old-fashioned paternalistic firm is a vanishing breed. Today's small manufacturing company will more than likely be owned by an absentee conglomerate. Whether or not it is, managers will, with credibility, threaten the labor force with plant relocation at any sign of new labor militance. Moreover, international unions are probably less willing to invest funds and organizers in marginal firms located in remote or rural areas unless, as in the case of J. P. Stevens, they are divisions of larger firms in which they hope to establish a beachhead. Management may well be as intractable as it was at Marinette, but its antiunion efforts almost certainly will be directed by a highly experienced and more detached outside labor-relations consultant. A last comparison: Both management and union relied heavily on the written word in long and detailed memos and letters to employees. In the current epoch of the snappy advertising campaign and the video presentation, this seems an almost quaint method of