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In the first recorded labor skirmish at RCA, workers tried to break through the turnover system. In the spring of 1977 the employees publicly condemned the company's policy of forcing workers to resign when they reached the age of twenty-five or accumulated five years on the job. The "mass demonstr…

Before the company made its demands, events may have led the employees to believe that their jobs were safe for at least a little while. Two years earlier the city of Bloomington had granted the company an "enterprise zone" status that had already saved it over $1 million in taxes. As one city offi…

Few things demonstrate the process of silent integration more effectively than the fact that about 75 percent of the Bloomington RCA jobs had been lost before the acronym "NAFTA" even entered the political discourse. Indeed, the threat of capital flight had hung over all labor relations at the plan…

The 1970s were difficult times for the company as the combined effects of the recession, foreign competition, and poor management eroded RCA's competitive position. After a dramatic sixty-year history of expanding sales and product innovation, Fortune magazine pronounced the corporation one of the …

Indeed, many critics pointed to the cheaper labor employed by Japanese firms as the factor behind the relocation of jobs in the consumer electronics sector, but by the mid-1970s the Japanese advantage in labor costs had almost disappeared. In 1963, U.S. wages were six times higher than those in Jap…