UAW members at General Motors got a reasonably good deal with their tentative contract agreement. But it could have been even better if American labor law allowed a type of bargaining not possible today.

That's sector bargaining, and if America ever allows it to happen, it could produce major gains for American workers.

Today American labor law operates along the lines of “enterprise bargaining” — one union bargaining with one employer for one group of workers. That’s what we saw in the GM/UAW talks, where the tentative agreement calls for a path to permanent employment for temporary autoworkers and a faster route to top pay for workers hired after 2007, among other gains.

But that applies only to UAW members at GM. It’s how virtually all contract bargaining works today, one union, one employer.

But sector bargaining would allow a union or coalition of unions to bargain for all the workers in a given industry or area. Imagine, say, all the fast-food workers at the McDonald's restaurants in metro Detroit, or even nationally, bargaining at the same time despite all the different owners of the individual restaurants.

Or imagine that in future auto talks, the UAW could negotiate not with each company in turn but in one giant set of talks on behalf of all the workers at GM, Ford and Chrysler as well as Tier 1 suppliers — all for one overarching agreement. Gains might include those like the ones the UAW won in the GM talks, such as holding down workers' share of health care premiums to 3% compared to the 28% workers pay nationwide,

That's sector bargaining. In Europe, nations like Germany and France have long operated on broad sector bargaining. That type of bargaining results in much broader protections for workers against dismissal, and other gains as well.

And it differs dramatically from the enterprise bargaining we see in the U.S. today.

Some history

American labor law flirted with the concept of sector bargaining in the 1930s, before the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 made enterprise bargaining the norm. But the idea, long dormant, is coming around again.

Some of today's Democratic presidential candidates — Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O'Rourke — have endorsed the idea of sector bargaining. They like the concept because sector bargaining would give workers a much better chance of winning gains. And unions would have much stronger ability to achieve goals.

As Kate Andrias, a law professor of the University of Michigan has written in the Yale Law Journal, sector bargaining "is a more inclusive and political model of labor relations, with parallels to regimes in Europe and elsewhere. And it has the potential to salvage and secure one of labor law’s most fundamental commitments: to help achieve greater economic and political equality in society."

Because of its greater reach, sector bargaining would create a better forum to achieve things like equal pay for women and more opportunities for people of color. And sector bargaining should also lead to greater opportunities for workforce training. Employers will no longer need fear that other companies will poach their workers once they train them.

The pattern bargaining we see in the auto industry, where the UAW wins a contract with one firm and then tries to apply it to other automakers in turn, hints at what sector bargaining might be like. But true sector bargaining would go well beyond pattern bargaining.

From revolution to routine

Back in the 1930s, union leaders like the great Walter Reuther of the UAW saw their hard-won right to collective bargaining as a revolutionary act. And when the National Labor Relations Act gave workers the right to organize and bargain collectively,

In the 1930s and '40s, Reuther and other leaders went on to win historic gains for American workers by organizing major auto companies. By the 1950s, they had won gains that came to define a middle-class life for blue-collar workers: higher pay, pensions, company-paid health care, and protections against arbitrary firings.

But even as the law created a process in which workers could bargain through their unions, the act also narrowed the field of conflict. Instead of broad national economic issues, U.S. labor law restricted contract bargaining to strictly shop-floor issues at a given company — pay, hours, benefits and the like.

Reuther was a committed reformer who wanted to achieve broad change in American economic life. He wanted to see a more even distribution of wealth and give workers more say in setting both corporate and national economic policy.

Frustrated by the limits of collective bargaining, Reuther came to complain that bargaining, once so promising, had come to focus on just another nickel in the pay envelope.

Now, another nickel can be pretty important for people who don't have enough nickels to begin with. But any hope of using collective bargaining to achieve broad national goals had disappeared in the face of stiff corporate resistance.

More:UAW leaders send deal with GM to workers for ratification vote; strike continues

More:Uber, Lyft should treat drivers like real workers — and California law is a start

The DRUM movement

This became most evident in the late 1960s when Reuther, a lifelong backer of civil rights for people of color, grew frustrated that bargaining with the auto companies failed to produce any gains for black UAW members.

The auto companies at that time mostly restricted their black employees to the dirtiest and lowest paid jobs with little hope of advancement. And the employers weren't interested in opening up contract bargaining to deal with civil rights issues.

Regrettably, many of the UAW's rank-and-file white members also resisted change. They didn't want to give blacks more opportunity, fearing the competition.

So to agitate for reform, black workers formed the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, or DRUM, in the late '60s. And they aimed their anger not just at the auto companies but at their own union leaders, too.

It was understandable. Yet the fault lay not with Reuther, but with how labor law had so narrowed the scope of collective bargaining. The table proved a poor venue to advance civil rights. Instead, the great gains for people of color came elsewhere — at lunch counter sit-ins, in the courts, and in Congress.

Hard but not impossible

Now, I know that in our current divided political environment we are not likely to see sector bargaining become reality anytime soon. Conservatives and corporate leaders will howl in protest when the idea is discussed.

But even raising the possibility of sector bargaining has opened up a valuable debate on how to better protect workers. In a recent speech, Mary Kay Henry, president of the vast Service Employees International Union, called for sector bargaining.

"Many of the 2020 presidential candidates talk about banning right-to-work laws, or tweaking the rules to make it a little bit easier for workers to join unions. But to truly improve the lives of working people, we need all of them to think bigger."

So difficult does not mean impossible. When the next progressive era dawns, it’s a goal to work toward.

Contact John Gallagher at313-222-5173 or gallagher@freepress.com.Follow him on Twitter@jgallagherfreep. Read more on business and sign up for our business newsletter.