Adversarial Relationships between Unions and Employers

Students who have little knowledge of unions wonder why these organizations sometimes take a combative, adversarial stance toward employers. Would not unions better serve their members by working cooperatively with management to increase productivity and thereby increase profits so that employers could spend more money on employee wages and benefits?

Two historical factors may explain why unions often take the adversarial approach they do. First, the only reason that employees are permitted to collectively bargain with employers through unions is that employees and union leaders fought long and hard against employers, and often against contrary government and court actions as well, to win the right to negotiate over wages, hours, and working conditions. Employers have, in this regard, traditionally been the “enemy” of organized employees. Moreover, while the days of employers hiring goons and thugs to literally engage in “union busting” are hopefully past, many employers still actively oppose unions at their workplaces by whatever legal (and sometimes illegal) means are available. Thus, the historical relationship between unions and employers has been characterized more by confrontation than cooperation.

Second, it is significant that the legal framework for collective bargaining has actually encouraged adversarial, rather than cooperative, relationships between unions and employers. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) is the primary statute that governs collective bargaining in the private sector (it is also the model upon which most public sector collective bargaining statutes are based). The only mechanism the NLRA provides for the resolution of union-management bargaining disputes is the strike, in which the parties essentially engage in economic warfare against one another, with the stronger party emerging triumphant. In addition, if unions work too cooperatively with managers, they may be charged with violating provisions of the Act which prohibit “employer-dominated” labor organizations.

Both the resistance of unions and the nature of the NLRA have influenced the system of union-management relations that has developed in the public sector.