What is "business unionism"

A business union is a type of trade union that is opposed to class or revolutionary unionism and has the principle that unions should be run like businesses.

Business unions are believed to be of American origin. and the term has been applied in particular to phenomena characteristic of American unions. Hyman (1973) attributed the term "business unionism" to Hoxie, but Michael Goldfield (1987) notes that the term was in common usage before Hoxie published in 1915.

According to Goldfield, Hoxie used the term to describe trade-consciousness, rather than class-consciousness; in other words, according to Hoxie, business unionists were advocates of "pure and simple" trade unionism, as opposed to class or revolutionary unionism. This sort of business unionism is what Eugene Debs often referred to as the "old unionism".