The day may yet come when the Serbs and Bosnians shake hands and say it’s time to end the madness. If and when that happens, it won’t be any more remarkable than the peace treaties of the 1980s between construction labor unions and their employers.
In the late 1970s, the Business Roundtable’s landmark Construction Industry Cost-Effective study told a harrowing tale of management-labor hostility and jobsite atrocities. Projects shut down as unions squabbled with one another over work jurisdiction; the rank and file came to expect $3–$5 hourly increases like clockwork every year, while at the same time negotiating ever more restrictive work rules and featherbedding provisions; strikes became routine; card-carrying foremen regarded business agents and stewards as sovereign over contractors and project managers.