The postwar years are generally described as a period of relative stability in mass-production industrial relations. It is often claimed that a set of mutual understandings and a web of rules and regulations guided the actions of employers and organized workers during this period toward the maintenance of industrial peace through the attainment of mutual prosperity. A particularly concise description of this view is contained in the account of the postwar capital–labor accord found in social structures of accumulation (SSA) theory. SSA theorists argue that under the accord workers in the unionized sector gave up their bid for greater control over the labor process (a goal originating in the 1930s' organizing drives) in exchange for wages tied to productivity, employment security, and better working conditions (Gordon et al., 1982; Bowles et al., 1983, 1986).

I will argue that this description of postwar capital-labor relations does not square with the reality of shopfloor practice. The postwar industrial relations system may have offered a stable set of institutional arrangements for determining wages, hours, and fringe benefits, but it never encompassed a similar set of arrangements for determining shopfloor conditions. A closer look at postwar shopfloor relations reveals that collective bargaining agreements and grievance procedures were initially unutilized and ultimately inadequate mechanisms for shopfloor dispute resolution, and that the set of mutual understandings concerning the bounds of collective bargaining was struck between employers, the state, and the labor leadership, without the consent of the rank and file.