ABSTRACT

Richard Freeman and James Medoff's twin focus was on the efficiency effects of unionism, which they concluded are largely negative, and on the governance effects of unions, which they concluded are largely positive and more than counterbalance unionism’s negative efficiency effects. Although Freeman and Medoff criticize 1920s-type employee representation for “lacking power” their own invocation of exit-voice theory to analyze union- management relations can be criticized on the very same ground. While voice may be a useful construct in any theoretical framework of employment conflict resolution, power is a necessary construct in such a framework; Freeman and Medoff strongly emphasize the former, while de-emphasizing and perhaps ignoring the latter. It is also difficult to accept their proposition that the positive effects of the collective voice face of unionism fully or more than fully offset the negative effects of the monopoly face of unionism.