Institutional change in shopfloor governance and the trajectory of postwar injury rates in US manufacturing, 1946-1970

Manufacturing injury rates followed a U-shaped pattern over the 1946-70 period, falling for roughly the first fifteen years after World War II and then rising by an almost equal amount in the following decade. Rapid economic growth, changing demographics of the manufacturing labor force, and technological changes in production cannot account for the rising injury rates during the 1960s. Basing his analysis on a variety of sources, the author of this paper argues, instead, that the rise in injury rates reflects institutional changes in the system of shopfloor governance during the late 1950s that reduced the power of workers to influence shopfloor conditions.