Introduction

The subject of this volume, nonunion employee representation (NER), until recently has languished in relative obscurity and neglect, particularly in Canada and the United States. Indeed, we are unaware of any book published in several decades in either country that deals explicitly with NER, while journal articles in business and the social sciences on this topic are sparse in number, nearly all historical in nature, and usually focused on the American experience with “company unions” of the 1915–35 period. When the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA, or Wagner Act) banned company unions and most other forms of NER in the United States in 1935, the subject abruptly passed from a major issue of contemporary research and policy debate to a peripheral topic in the field of labor history.