This article contributes to debates about trade unions and conflict by studying how individuals’ perceptions of conflicts between management and workers relate to trade union membership, country-level trade union density and institutionalization (collective bargaining coverage, centralization and policy concertation). Hierarchical multi-level models are fitted to data from the International Social Survey Programme from 2009. The results show that union members tend to be more likely than non-members to perceive management–worker conflicts and that this appears not to vary substantially between countries. However, regardless of union membership, individuals in countries with higher trade union density and with policy concertation tend to be significantly less likely to perceive conflicts. These findings highlight the risk of atomic fallacies in research limited to the individual-level effects of union membership. Contrary to an argument often raised by pluralists, neither bargaining coverage nor centralization has significant effects. Overall, the results question depictions of trade unions as divisive organizations.

本文通过研究个人对管理者和工人之间冲突的理解如何与工会会员资格，国家级工会密度和制度化（集体谈判范围，集中化和政策协调）之间的关系，为有关工会和冲突的辩论做出了贡献。从2009年起，国际社会调查计划的数据就采用了多层次的模型。结果表明，工会会员比非会员更容易察觉管理人员与工人之间的冲突，而且各国之间的差异似乎并没有太大变化。但是，无论工会成员是什么，处于工会密度较高且政策协调一致的国家中的个人往往不太可能感觉到冲突。这些发现突显了原子谬论在研究中的风险，而这种谬误仅限于工会会员资格的个人层面的影响。与多数人经常提出的观点相反，讨价还价和集中化都没有产生重大影响。总体而言，结果质疑将工会描述为分裂性组织。