Union Membership Alienation and Industrial Harmony in Nigeria

This paper is a discourse on the impact of union membership alienation on industrial harmony in the Nigerian Industrial Relations setting. With the aid of a historical/ analytical approach, the paper traced and viewed the emergence of labor organizations as the justification to balance the one-sided determination of price and conditions of labor and the relation of the state to industrial action. This led to the emergence of the three principal actors (employers and their representative organizations, workers and their representative organizations, and the State). The paper noted that the clamor for the emergence of labor organizations or worker collectivities was to ensure that workers have a say in the determination of the conditions under which they work. It was noted that the models and concepts relating to workers participation in decision making, decision making models and worker alienation thesis addressed only the inter group aspect of workplace decision making, with little or no emphasis on intra group (intra Union) or membership participation in decision making and the gamut of issues relating to intra union decision making and intra union membership alienation. Reviewing the structural dimension of the effect of union membership alienation which led to industrial adversarialism, the paper concludes with a recommendation that the worker participation models, and the decision-making models based on bounded rationality be adopted within the union membership structure so as to minimize industrial adversarialism in Nigeria.