ABSTRACT
Recent years have witnessed a flurry of, predominately U.S., interest into the effects of international competition on domestic wages and employment. 1 Somewhat less conspicuous has been research into the reaction of trade unions to such competition. This is unfortunate because the union response can tell us much about what lies at the heart of their objective function. Do unionists, for example, sacrifice some wage premium in order to protect the jobs of their members? The staunch opposition of U.S. union leaders to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) suggests that organized labor itself perceives international competition as unequivocally pernicious. 2
