Of books and studies on multinational corporations there is, apparently, no end in sight. Nevertheless, little attention has been given to the various factors that cause employee-corporation relations to vary from country to country.

From my trade union experiences in the USA and parts of the developing world I have learned that employee relations are heavily influenced by factors such as the strength of the trade union movement, national labor legislation, the labor market, and conditions affecting job security. Because these factors differ from place to place, it is impossible to generalize about the employee relations of any single multinational corporation; we often find multinational corporations with good employee relations in one country and poor relations in another.