Why do employees vote for or against union representation? A survey of the scholarly literature and an investigation of National Labor Relations Board sponsored elections among Southern industrial workers were conducted to help answer this question. Four hypotheses were proposed to reveal the most important factors. No universally applicable laws were developed by the dissertation study. Although the hypotheses were supported, the response rate was very low in the field research study of sensitive issues. The field research did provide additional empirical evidence to support most of the previous research studies concerning union representation election voting behavior.