Trade Unions Confronted with Employee Ownership: From Competition to Cooperation

The major issue addressed in this article is union involvement in conversions to employee ownership and the impact of such ownership on union roles and functions. The main point is that employee ownership appears to generate role conflict for unions as they thus potentially represent both employees and owners. The author hypothesizes that trade unions are ready to accept the conversion of a public firm to an EOC when the union is certain of maintaining political control over the company. There are two clearly defined situations in which unions might support a conversion: a) in the case of a failing firm that converts to employee ownership to save jobs; and b) in the case where a company is converted to protect it against a takeover by private competitors.