An understanding of the reality of wage determination and labor markets—apart from collective bargaining—requires, in my view, a conceptual blend of industrial relations and economics. Policy prescriptions to be listened to and to be effective likewise need to proceed from an integration of the two disciplines.

Economics must appreciate that wage rates are but one rule of the workplace among a vast array of rules. There are no fixed terms or rates of substitution with other rules, or even with other compensation rules. All terms of employment are not reducible to money. Industrial relations specialists likewise need to recognize, as should economists, how the complex of rules of the workplace is influenced, both in static and dynamic terms, by the contexts of technology, labor and product markets, and political power in the larger society—not by conventional labor markets alone.