The aim of this article has two aspects: to explore the procedure and structure of union recognition in the statutes of the United States on the one hand, and to examine its actual advantages of helping to develop the collective bargaining relations on the other. To achieve such the aim, the article discovers whether or not the legal policies of union recognition are beneficial to the development of collective bargaining and to what extent these legal policies discourage or promote collective bargaining. The main argument is that if American labor laws recognize both the necessity of collective bargaining and the representative role of trade unions at work, legal arrangements for union recognition need to be established institutionally. The article concludes that legal recognition procedures on which management and unions greatly rely are most likely to bring union recognition into an institutional difficulty.