scholarly journals Evidence on Trade Union Members’ Dissatisfaction with Inequalities at a Scottish University

2020 ◽  
pp. 30-39
Author(s):  
Dr. Theresa Marie Majeed
Keyword(s):  
Trade Union ◽  
Union Membership ◽  
Union Member ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Job Dissatisfaction ◽  
Non Union ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The University

The present paper includes insights on trade union members’ perceptions of job dissatisfaction related to inequalities at a Scottish university. Research spanning more than five decades has consistently shown that trade union member employees report higher levels of job dissatisfaction than non-union employees, although industrial relations scholars have been unable to agree on as to why that is the case. Prior research of trade union membership and its link to job dissatisfaction has largely been quantitative. The present study therefore added much needed, individual-level insights to the industrial relations literature through its use of a qualitative approach that included interviews with 23 individuals. This research is part of a wider project in which trade union membership and job dissatisfaction were explored, and that led to the author being awarded a PhD from the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom.

scholarly journals Evidence of Trade Union Membership and Expectations at a Scottish University

2020 ◽  
pp. 77-86
Author(s):  
Dr. Theresa Marie Majeed
Keyword(s):  
Trade Union ◽  
Union Membership ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Union Member ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Job Dissatisfaction ◽  
Diverse Group ◽  
Quantitative Analyses

This work presents insights on trade union member employees’ expectations of union membership and its association with their perceptions of job dissatisfaction at a Scottish university. For over five decades, employees in trade unions have reported higher levels of dissatisfaction with their jobs than non-unionized employees in studies from different countries. The question of trade union membership and job dissatisfaction remains open to inquiry because previous studies used quantitative analyses, yet industrial relations scholars still do not possess a salient explanation for why the phenomenon exists. In contrast to those studies, this work used a qualitative approach of 23 interviews with trade union member employees. The results of the present work contribute to an area in need of data, as the expectations of trade union membership presented here were gathered from a diverse group of trade union member employees to which contemporary trade unions are focusing their recruitment efforts.

Purging the Trade Unions

2020 ◽  
pp. 343-373
Author(s):  
Ewing Mahoney
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Union Membership ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
Service Trade ◽  
Public Sector Employment ◽  
Legal Foundations ◽  
Legal Position

This chapter looks at government attempts to ban trade unions, considering the steps that were taken in lieu of an outright ban on trade union membership. Consistently with other measures taken at the time under the cover of security, government intervention to deal with the alleged menace of Communist infiltration of the civil service trade unions did not take the form of legislation. The legal position reflected both the lack of legal regulation of industrial relations generally and the lack of legal regulation of public-sector employment in particular. In practice, governments rarely needed to reveal or justify the legal foundations for their actions. The benefit for government is that although security policies might well be announced and made public, there would be little accountability thereafter if operated unobtrusively.

scholarly journals Restoring Democracy to the Workplace? An Analysis of Union Membership Patters Before and After the Employment Contracts Act

1970 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Cregan ◽  
Chris Rudd ◽  
Stewart Johnston
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Union Membership ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Employment Contracts ◽  
Market Participants ◽  
Before And After ◽  
One Year ◽  
The Impact

This paper investigates the impact of the Employment Contracts Act on trade union membership. Two separate surveys of labour market participants lvere conducted in Dunedin on the eve of the legislation and one year later. The findings demonstrated that for these samples, trade union membership in aggregate was not based on compulsion before the legislation and remained at a similar level a year later. Democracy was not restored to the workplace it was already apparent there. This implies that changes in the industrial relations system had already taken place prior to the legislation and it is suggested that these findings are explicable if the effect of the exigencies of the recession on both parries is taken account of In the ensuing discussion, reasons for the persistence of the same level of union membership after the legislation were considered. It was demonstrated that most members li'anted the union to act as their bargaining agent and felt few pressures regarding their choice of employment contract. In other words, employers did not utilise the provisions of the Act to weaken union membership, at least in the short term.

Institutional effects on the presence of trade unions at the workplace: Moderation in a multilevel setting

2011 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoltán Fazekas
Keyword(s):  
Multilevel Analysis ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Union Membership ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Institutional Effects ◽  
Collective Agreements ◽  
Very High

Previous research has found that the presence of a union at a workplace is an important individual-level determinant of union membership. The present article, drawing on a multilevel analysis of 21 European countries, provides further evidence which nuances the conclusions of previous studies by introducing and testing institutional moderation effects. Thus, in countries with Ghent systems, having a union at workplace is less important, since probability of membership is already very high. Conversely, if there are extension mechanisms for collective agreements there is less incentive to join a trade union, and this is not compensated even when there is an active union at the workplace.

Union Amalgamations and the Decline in Union Density

1999 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Wooden
Keyword(s):  
Panel Data ◽  
Regression Model ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Union Membership ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Union Density ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
Marked Decline

Confronted by a marked decline in trade union density, the union movement in Australia bas responded by promoting the restructuring and amolgamation of trade unions. As a result, the number of active trade unions in Australia has fallen markedly since 1990. Despite tbis, the decline in trade union density accelerated during the 1990s, leading some analysts to suggest that the union amalgamation process may actually have been counterproductive in terms of overall trade union membership. This article tests this hypothesis using panel data collected as part of the Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey. A regression model of changes in union density in the period 1989/90 to 1995 is developed and estimated. The results indicate that while declining union numbers have been associated with the decline in union density, none of the blame for the fall can be traced to the amalgamation process.

scholarly journals Does the Union Make Us Strong? Labor-Union Membership, Self-Rated Health, and Mental Illness: A Parametric G-Formula Approach

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerzy Eisenberg-Guyot ◽  
Stephen J Mooney ◽  
Wendy E Barrington ◽  
Anjum Hajat
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Union Membership ◽  
Union Member ◽  
Labor Union ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
Quality Data ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Non Union ◽  
Self Rated Health ◽  
And Gender

Abstract Union members enjoy better wages, benefits, and power than non-members, which can improve health. However, the longitudinal union-health relationship remains uncertain, partially because of healthy-worker bias, which cannot be addressed without high-quality data and methods that account for exposure-confounder feedback and structural non-positivity. Applying one such method, the parametric g-formula, to United-States-based Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data, we analyzed the longitudinal relationships between union membership, poor/fair self-rated health (SRH), and moderate mental illness (Kessler-K6>5). The SRH analyses included 16,719 respondents followed from 1985-2017, while the mental-illness analyses included 5,813 respondents followed from 2001-2017. Using the parametric g-formula, we contrasted cumulative incidence of the outcomes under two scenarios, one in which we set all employed-person-years to union-member employed-person-years (union scenario), and one in which we set no employed-person-years to union-member employed-person-years (non-union scenario). We also examined whether the contrast varied by gender, gender-race, and gender-education. Overall, the union scenario did not reduce incidence of poor/fair SRH (RR: 1.01, 95% CI: 0.95, 1.09; RD: 0.01, 95% CI: -0.03, 0.04) or moderate mental illness (RR: 1.02, 95% CI: 0.92, 1.12; RD: 0.01, 95% CI: -0.04, 0.06) relative to the non-union scenario. These associations largely did not vary by subgroup.

scholarly journals TRADE UNION RECOGNITION IN MALAYSIA: LEGAL ISSUES

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siti Suraya Abd Razak
Keyword(s):  
Trade Union ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Legal Issues ◽  
Freedom Of Association ◽  
Recognition Process ◽  
Federal Constitution ◽  
The Right ◽  
Malaysian Government

In Malaysia, the Federal Constitution protects the worker’s enjoyment as to freedom of association, in particular, the right to form and join the trade union. However, due to security purposes, various restrictions have been imposed on trade union activities. The recognition process is currently showing a decline in the number of recognition awards due to the government’s policy. This paper examines the legal issues and challenges confronting the trade union in the recognition process in Malaysia. This study adopted the qualitative approach to analyse the statutory procedures and cases relating to the issue. Interviews were conducted with the Department of Industrial Relations, Malaysia and the Department of Trade Union Affairs, Malaysia to obtain their opinion on the recognition process. It is suggested that the Malaysian government should abolish the employer’s recognition; provide a statutory definition on the managerial, executive, confidential and security positions; establish an independent administrative trade union board and ratify the Convention Concerning Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention No. 87.

scholarly journals Unions and Union Membership in New Zealand: Annual Review for 2004

1970 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leda Blackwood ◽  
Goldie Feinberg-Danieli ◽  
George Lafferty
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Union Membership ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Employment Relations ◽  
Employment Contracts ◽  
Annual Survey ◽  
Official Data

This paper reports the results of Victoria University's Industrial Relations Centre's annual survey of trade union membership in New Zealand for 2004. The survey has been conducted since 1991, when the Employment Contracts Act 1991 (ECA) ended the practice of union registration and the collection of official data. This year we report changes in union membership, composition, and density from December 2003 to December 2004, taking an historical perspective to compare the industrial relations periods framed by the ECA and the Employment Relations Act 2000 (ERA).

Young People and Trade Union Membership: An International Comparative Study

1992 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-180
Author(s):  
Christina Cregan ◽  
Chris Rudd ◽  
Stewart Johnston
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Young People ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Union Membership ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
National Differences ◽  
Early School ◽  
International Comparative

This paper attempts to test the recent British Industrial Relations model of trade union membership by an examination of a survey of early school-leavers in Dunedin, New Zealand which was carried out in October 1989. The findings offer strong support for the model because the same distinct strands of core motivation and remainder attitudes were evident. This demonstrates that the model could be successfully applied in a different institutional, cultural and economic context. The major cross-national differences to emerge were that most Dunedin youngsters intended to join a union; for them, collective instrumental reasons were very important and values of little significance. Furthermore, there was little evidence of disinterest or ignorance amongst the minority which was negative towards trade union membership. A recent article on trade union membership (Cregan and Johnston, 1990) suggested that conventional neoclassical theories are flawed by the free rider paradox, whereby a rational individual will not bear the costs of joining a union to gain rewards that are available to all the workforce as public goods. It proposed that the dilemma could only be solved by a membership theory which takes into account several different sources of individual motivation drawn from several disciplines. These were identified in a longitudinal survey of London early school-leavers, 1979–1981, in reasons given by young people for their membership decision, positive or negative, from which employees could be categorised in social movement parlance as core and remainder. However, the authors proposed that further direct investigations should be made in different contexts. For example, it may be that some responses were culturally or institutionally specific, or were based on economic context. Accordingly, a similar survey of a single cohort of early school-leavers was carried out ten years later in Dunedin, New Zealand. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to test the validity of the framework of the model within a different national context. The article will be organised in the following way. First, a brief summary of the Industrial Relations model of trade union membership will be presented and two hypotheses will be drawn from it. Second, the latter will be tested by a discussion of the results of the Dunedin survey and a comparison with those of the London survey. Third, implications of the findings for the consequences of the 1991 Employment Contracts Act will be briefly examined.

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