Trade unions’ objectives and inflation

Important results recently achieved in games between trade unions and central banks rest on the assumption that workers’ organisations are interested, besides real wages and employment, in inflation per se. This hypothesis is crucial because: (i) the results are not robust to its removal; (ii) the justifications provided to support it are not without problems. The paper raises the issue, critically examines the positions emerged in the debate and stresses that an existing and more convincing explanation of unions as political organisations has been disregarded. However, under this alternative view, the recent results hold only in a special case: under a left-wing government.