WHO WANTED COLLECTIVE BARGAINING IN THE FIRST PLACE?

This paper considers certain international differences in organizational and bargaining costs using an extended model of industrial relations sketched at the outset. In this model, the prevailing preferences of a nation's workers vis-a-vis radical alternatives to capitalism, collective bargaining, and nonunion industrial relations constitute a critical determinant of employer recognition of collective bargaining (or resistance thereto) and of the structure, scope and economic performance of collective bargaining. The analysis also suggests that various economic and political developments during the postwar era might have combined to devalue the social role of traditional collective bargaining and to generate renewed interest in alternative systems of determining labor income.