The conclusion one might draw from the dismal record of the last thirty years of union concessions is that collective bargaining, once an effective, although two-edged, weapon in labor’s struggle, has reached a watershed. Today, collective bargaining in production, service, and public sectors is more a blunt instrument of management than a workers’ sword. There are a number of reasons why this is so. Certainly, the paramount factor is the historic three-way bargain between the unions, the state and corporate capital, which, as we have seen, chained labor to a legal framework that inhibited its freedom of action. It is true that for at least a generation, millions gained from this arrangement. But the regular wage and benefits increases that were characteristic of the postwar period until the 1970s presupposed the continued dominance of the United States in the global economy and global politics. When Europe and Japan revived from wartime devastation and became exporting nations, and when in the 1990s China emerged—with the help of American capital—as a potentially major economic power, U.S. capitalists moved to reign in workers’ living standards by sharply resisting money wage and social wage demands. And companies lost no time introducing labor-saving technologies into the workplace, while demanding expanded management prerogatives aimed at increasing productivity, presumably to reduce labor costs. Claims of economic necessity formed the ostensible reason for capital’s offensive. But as labor’s share of the social product was sharply reduced by technological innovations, a more important reason became clear: the subordination of workers and their unions. That is, capital saw in the new world economic order a chance to reduce workers’ power to determine working conditions and, especially, to limit its control over the pace of production.