I doubt that unionization had much to do with piece work versus hourly rate. As a veteran of managing union shops (United Steelworkers) I can state that piece work burgeoned under those conditions. In fact, a strong union could make the piece work system thrive- it gave them infinite grounds for negotiations. God, the horror stories I could tell...
Thanks for that, was just taking a wild guess. Guessing it's more that rising wages across the nation just didn't allow the man-hours to be dedicated to fine detail work and still have a product that could be sold at a profit for the company. Still a problem today.
