The meaning of business unionism has changed over a period of time.
This sort of business unionism is what Eugene Debs often referred to as the "old unionism".
One major characteristic of "business unionism" is the principle that unions should be run like businesses!
There is an tendency to think business unionism is automatically non-militant but that is not true.
All of that changed in the early 1930s when the companies began to perceive a difference between the business unionism of the United Mine Workers, and their more radical competitors.
In the United States, yellow socialism was associated with the business unionism of Samuel Gompers (and thus described as "yellow unionism").
Although the notion of community unionism was being put into practice in certain areas, it was not widely accepted by majority of people, and business unionism dominated.
He ties a union's gains to the success of its employers -what the still vocal but politically weak left refers to derisively as business unionism.
"You're seeing a taste of business unionism," in which union leaders become too close to management, Mr. Yettaw grumbled.
For these critics, business unionism has not only proven to be a failure but in fact has been supplanted by social movement unionism in the last six decades.