ABSTRACT
Unions are organizations designed to protect and enhance the social and economic welfare of their members. As organizations they are concerned with two sets of relations, external and internal. Unions’ external relations express their reason for being and their uniqueness as organizations. First and foremost, a union relates to a private or public enterprise or group of enterprises. A union's attachment to an enterprise implies dependency, since the union cannot exist without the other organization. The enterprise implicitly defines the membership of the union, sustains that membership, and provides the (primarily economic) benefits for members which it is the purpose of the union to achieve. Customarily, these benefits are not offered willingly; the union must extract them. Thus, the union is dependent upon the enterprise and at the same time is in conflict with it.
