Of all the conflicts found in industrial organizations, those involving unions and management have received the most attention. Labour unions are the primary means workers have for advancing their collective interests at the workplace. Much of the history of industrial relations is filled with efforts on the part of workers to gain the right to organize into free trade unions—that is, worker organizations that are controlled neither by employers nor by a government.

While the actual percentage of workers who are organized into unions varies considerably from country to country and over time within individual countries, it is safe to say that there is no democratic country in the world where independent trade unions are not present. Unions serve an essential role in a democratic society by giving voice to worker interests. The best evidence of the importance of this function is that unions are often among the first institutions—along with the church and the press—attacked by totalitarian regimes.

Unions and union–management relations are also of special importance in that, through collective bargaining and other formal and informal means of interaction, unions and employers establish the wages, hours, and working conditions of large numbers of workers. In countries such as Sweden, Denmark, and Norway collective bargaining covers more than 80 percent of the labour force. In Britain, Germany, and Japan it covers between one-third and two-thirds. Even in countries like France or the United States, where less than 20 percent of the workers are unionized, collective bargaining often sets new patterns in wages and other conditions of employment that are eventually adopted by nonunion employers.

It should be noted that employers are often reluctant participants in collective bargaining. While the degree of opposition to unions varies among countries, this opposition is perhaps strongest in the United States, where employers have aggressively opposed unionization of their employees. This is one of the reasons why the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively is normally protected by law.

The decades of the 1980s and ’90s were a time of tremendous pressure for change in union–management relations around the world. This pressure came from increases in market competition within and between countries, the rapid rate of technological progress, the changing nature of the work force, shifts in jobs from highly unionized large manufacturing firms and industries to smaller, newer firms and service industries, and, in some countries, the election of governments less supportive of unions. As a result unions in the majority of industrialized countries have lost membership and continue to debate how best to adjust their strategies and practices to their changing environments. The following discussion, therefore, focuses both on the traditional union–management practices that have dominated relations since the 1930s and on how these practices have responded to pressures for change.

The typical way in which workers become organized into a union in the United States is through an election campaign and vote on representation. A majority of workers must vote in favour of union representation and collective bargaining. In these campaigns arguments about the need for a union and the benefits of collective bargaining are countered by employer efforts to convince workers that they do not need a union. American workers historically have taken a pragmatic approach to this choice: they vote in favour of union representation only when they are highly dissatisfied with their employer and when they see union representation as a viable means of improving their employment conditions.

In the case of clerical and professional employees, unions have appealed by arguing that one need not see the employer as hostile or untrustworthy to believe in the need for collective representation. When an organizing drive took place among clerical and technical employees at Harvard University, for instance, the union campaigned on the slogan, “It’s not anti-Harvard to be pro-union.” While this approach has gained favour among white-collar and professional workers, it still is the exception rather than the rule for these workers to join a union, with the notable exception of government employees.

Sometimes employers voluntarily recognize the union or remain neutral in the election process. This is most often the case in the public sector. Some private-sector employers have voluntarily recognized unions in new establishments in return for union cooperation and participation in the task of designing the work system, training the work force, and starting up operations. Such accommodation, however, is the exception in the United States; the typical picture of an organizing drive is still one of aggressive union campaigning in the face of aggressive employer opposition.

The more adversarial the organizing campaign, the more likely it is that the bargaining relationship will develop along similar adversarial lines. Conversely, the less resistance to organizing by the employer, the higher the likelihood that the union–management relationship will evolve along cooperative lines. For example, one large manufacturing company that voluntarily recognized a union in the 1940s, and has remained neutral in organizing drives held in new plants opened since then, has experienced only one brief strike in its entire history. This record stands in marked contrast to the pitched organizing battles and frequent strikes experienced over the years in the rubber, meat-packing, and coal-mining industries.