What makes workers happy: Empowerment, unions or both?

Does the negative effect of union membership on job satisfaction, as shown in Anglophone countries, also hold for Continental Western Europe? Given the differences in industrial relations, I hypothesize that the effect will be different. I also test hypotheses about the effect of empowerment on job satisfaction, which might explain the negative union effect, and broaden the analysis to include pay satisfaction. Analyses of European Social Survey data show that the negative union effect does not exist for Continental Western Europe and that this can be explained by empowerment of employees.

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Political attitudes and trade union membership in the Nordic countries

European Journal of Industrial Relations ◽

10.1177/0959680117708372 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 23 (4) ◽

pp. 381-395 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Carsten Strøby Jensen

Keyword(s):

Survey Data ◽

Trade Union ◽

Union Membership ◽

Trade Unions ◽

Political Attitudes ◽

European Social Survey ◽

Nordic Countries ◽

Left Wing ◽

Social Survey ◽

The Impact

Do political attitudes influence the likelihood of employees being members of a trade union, and to what extent is this the case in the Nordic countries with their high aggregate levels of membership? In this article, I address these questions using European Social Survey data from 2012. The results show that left-wing political attitudes have the most impact on the likelihood of trade union membership in Sweden and to a lesser extent in Denmark. In Norway and Finland, there is no statistically significant impact. I argue that the impact of left-wing political attitudes on unionization in Sweden and Denmark reflects a conception among employees that trade unions are normative organizations.

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Trade unionism in Europe: Are the working class still members?

European Journal of Industrial Relations ◽

10.1177/0959680119838881 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 26 (1) ◽

pp. 107-120

Author(s):

Carsten Strøby Jensen

Keyword(s):

Social Class ◽

Working Class ◽

Survey Data ◽

Trade Union ◽

Union Membership ◽

Trade Unions ◽

European Social Survey ◽

Upper Class ◽

Social Survey ◽

Trade Unionism

How far does social class position influence the likelihood that employees will be members of a trade union? I use European Social Survey data to compare trade union membership of ‘working-class’ and ‘middle- and upper class’ employees in different European countries. Although the former dominate the trade unions in absolute numbers in most (but not all) countries, the likelihood that the latter will be members of a trade union is higher in most of the countries analysed.

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Is there a paradox of lower job satisfaction among trade union members? European evidence

Transfer European Review of Labour and Research ◽

10.1177/1024258912459312 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 18 (4) ◽

pp. 471-489 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Chiara Paola Donegani ◽

Stephen McKay

Keyword(s):

Job Satisfaction ◽

Trade Union ◽

Large Scale ◽

Empirical Studies ◽

Industrial Relations ◽

European Social Survey ◽

Social Survey ◽

The Us ◽

Paradoxical Finding ◽

The Uk

In most of the literature on industrial relations, union members are found to be less satisfied with their jobs than non-members. Analysts have applied various statistical and econometric approaches to try to resolve what seems like a paradoxical finding, with mixed results, using theories based on selection bias and ‘exit-voice’ considerations. We review this literature, and note that most empirical studies are from only a few countries – especially the US and the UK. Analysis of a wider range of 18 countries participating in the large-scale European Social Survey in both 2006 and 2010 finds that trade union members generally tend to express higher rather than lower job satisfaction than others, although results differ by country. We use regression models (ordinal logistic) to show that union membership is generally associated with higher job satisfaction, even after controlling for individual, job and workplace differences. Attempts to link the union factor in job satisfaction to typologies of countries, either by welfare regime or extent of collective bargaining coverage, have not been able to address the puzzle of why a negative link persists in a few countries, but not in most.

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Power Values and Power Distance Moderate the Relationship Between Workplace Supervisory Power and Job Satisfaction

Journal of Personnel Psychology ◽

10.1027/1866-5888/a000257 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 19 (3) ◽

pp. 135-141

Author(s):

Kenneth D. Locke

Keyword(s):

Job Satisfaction ◽

Multilevel Modeling ◽

Power Distance ◽

European Social Survey ◽

Social Survey ◽

The Relationship ◽

Workplace Power ◽

Over Time

Abstract. Person–job (or needs–supplies) discrepancy/fit theories posit that job satisfaction depends on work supplying what employees want and thus expect associations between having supervisory power and job satisfaction to be more positive in individuals who value power and in societies that endorse power values and power distance (e.g., respecting/obeying superiors). Using multilevel modeling on 30,683 European Social Survey respondents from 31 countries revealed that overseeing supervisees was positively associated with job satisfaction, and as hypothesized, this association was stronger among individuals with stronger power values and in nations with greater levels of power values or power distance. The results suggest that workplace power can have a meaningful impact on job satisfaction, especially over time in individuals or societies that esteem power.

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