Are Multinational Enterprises in less developed host countries charting the contours of union suppression or union substitution? Evidence from Ghana

The desire for MNEs to achieve global competitiveness is likely to position host-countries industrial relations configurations as an important determinant in the locational decisions of MNEs.

Academics and industrial relations practitioners all over the world have embraced and acknowledged the role of employee voice to organizational harmony, knowledge sharing and as a major source of employee empowerment (Tüselmann et al. 2014; McDonnell et al. 2014).

Yet, they have raised major concerns over the influence of alternative voice mechanism and individual performance management practices to union decline and union avoidance over the last few decades (Collings 2008; Dundon & Gollan 2007).

Union avoidance or in other words, employers’ resistance to unions and its forms has been noted within the industrial relations literature to have a long historical trajectory (O’Sullivan & Gunnigle 2008; Gunnigle et al. 2015).

The concept of ‘union substitution’ and ‘union suppression’ were first hypothesized by Kochan in 1980 within the unionization literature after observing a widespread of union avoidance through the use of suppression and substitution tactics in the US (Fiorito & Maranto 1987).

This paper draws from the concept of ‘union substitution’ and ‘union suppression’ to explore how MNEs in less developed host-countries are charting the contours of union suppression or union substitution which consequently undermine contemporary trade union development.