ABSTRACT
American capital has shown a pronounced resistance to macroeconomic conceptions - i.e., the recognition that unions play a socially useful role. Besides the few traces of institutionalized influence of American unions on the political system, and the lack of stable forms of cooperation between capital and labor, it is the decentralized and fragmented organizational structure of American "unions" that render corporatist models largely unsuitable for the USA. Despite a multitude of mergers of individual unions since the end of the 60s, American unions are far from a model of centrally organized industrial trade unions. In contrast to the Federal Republic, the center of union politics is in the plant for which the union plant organization, the "local," as a rule conducts wage negotiations and controls agreements that have been reached. Besides changes in the general economic importance of the branch, historical fluctuations in membership also have their basis in the changing structure of union organization.
