Thomas Kochan on the United Auto Workers strike and the need for a new social contract at work

Thomas Kochan, the George Maverick Bunker Professor Emeritus of Management at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, joins the podcast to discuss his life’s work studying unions, arbitrating labor disputes, and advocating for the restoration of a social contract that rewards the contributions of workers. Kochan and Ashenfelter also discuss the “deep economic dimensions and deep political dimensions” of the currently ongoing United Auto Workers strike.

In this episode, Kochan and Ashenfelter discuss:

• Kochan’s mentors who first inspired his interest in unions at the University of Wisconsin, including Jack Barbash, Gerry Somers, Everett Kassalow, and Don Schwab.
• An organization Kochan started called Catholic Scholars for Worker Justice. “We should recognize that all work has dignity,” Kochan said of the organization's mission.
• Why Kochan gradually went against the advice of his mentors and started speaking to the press about unions and ongoing labor disputes.
• Kochan’s recent work on the need for a new social contract at work so that as the economy improves, so do workers’ standards of living. 
• Kochan’s work as an arbitrator and mediator for labor disputes, including his involvement in the merger of transportation agencies in Massachusetts when Deval Patrick was governor and a negotiation with the Boston Teachers Union when Marty Walsh was mayor.
• Kochan’s perspective on the current United Auto Workers union strike. “I do believe that given what's at stake, big stakes for the auto companies, big states for the union, big stakes for the economy and for the Biden administration, there can be an enormous amount of pressure to reach an agreement and to find solutions to these issues,” Kochan said. “They're not insurmountable.”

Thomas Kochan earned his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin in 1973. "The Work Goes On"—a podcast produced as Princeton's Industrial Relations Section (IR Section) celebrates its 100th anniversary—is an oral history of industrial relations and labor economics hosted by Princeton's Orley Ashenfelter.