ABSTRACT
The claim that trade unions provide employees with “collective voice” has become the leading intellectual justification for unionization. Labor leaders and the advocates of unionism in academia, therefore, contend that the decline in unionization and collective bargaining in recent years has left American workers without voice, while concern about job security has curtailed their ability to exercise the exit option. Not all industrial relations scholars, however, agree that employees lack voice in the workplace. Many argue that employees can and do have voice, albeit outside the areas covered by collective bargaining. (Providing voice with respect to wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment is reserved to unions by the National Labor Relations Act.)
