ABSTRACT
Conventional wisdom holds that the raison d’être for labor unions is to function as bargaining agents for employees. In particular, unions represent workers in negotiations over wages, hours, and working conditions, including provisions for idleness resulting from business conditions, retirement, and injury. Although employee concerns about workplace matters have not changed radically since the early days of the American labor movement, the means and, in some cases, even the need to attain employees’ goals have been dramatically altered. Put simply, many important aspects of the employer–employee relationship have, over time, been circumscribed by laws and regulations that apply to all workers, not just union members. Common sense dictates that the greater the involvement of government in the relationship between employers and employees, the smaller the scope of issues that may be addressed at the bargaining table. After all, federal, state, and local laws take precedence over and shape agreements among private parties, i.e., employers, employees, and unions. So the more success unions achieve in the legislative and regulatory arenas, the less future workers will have to gain, relative to their colleagues from the past, from joining a union.
