Institute for Research on Labor and Employment

This paper considers certain international differences in organizational and bargaining expense with the aid of an extended model of industrial relations which is sketched at the outset. In this model the prevailing preferences of a nation's workers vis-a-vis radical alternatives to capitalism, collective bargaining, and nonunion industrial relations constitute a critical determinant of employer recognition (or resistance thereto) and of structure, scope, and economic performance of collective bargaining. It is also suggested that various economic and political developments in the postwar era might have been combining to devalue the social role of traditional collective bargaining and to generate renewal interest in alternative systems of determining labor income.