ABSTRACT
Three trends have led to an increasing concern regarding the potential unionization of the American armed forces. One of these was the winding down of military conscription to a zero draft in the early 1970s, and the subsequent conversion to an all-volunteer armed force in 1973. As the armed services have had to sustain their personnel requirements by competing with civilian employers for high quality manpower, military service has increasingly come to resemble civilian employment [1]. Following the recommendations of the President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer Force, the armed services have, since the early 1970s, competed with commerce, industry, and civilian government agencies for quality personnel, using many of the same recruiting incentives, including salary and benefits, as civilian sector employers. A natural outgrowth of this strategy has been the transformation of military service from a calling to a job [2].
