An Alternative Theory of Labor Union Growth

Theories of labor unions tend to fall into two categories. On the one hand are the old "institutionalists" represented by Commons and Perlman [2, 7], and on the other are the efforts to integrate the study of unions into the traditional corpus of neoclassical eco nomics. Problems arise in the latter case, however, because unions are multi-faceted organizations with many constituencies and conflicting goals. This paper attempts a par tial reconciliation of these approaches by viewing the union as a conveyor of knowledge in a market with imperfect information. It is argued that part of the reason unions are not growing is because they don't supply the kind of information that results in economic ben