Compensation Appraisals and Labor Union Membership

Given the beneficial effects of labor unions on “bread and butter issues,” union members should appraise their economic circumstances more favorably than nonunion members do. Yet, research on the anomaly of the dissatisfied union worker challenges this expectation. Using the General Social Survey’s Quality of Work Life module, this article examines whether union members appraise their economic circumstances less favorably than nonunion members. Results suggest that union membership is associated with more favorable appraisal of benefits but not wages. These findings may help to provide at least a partial explanation for the anomaly of the dissatisfied union worker. Because income constitutes a vital component of job satisfaction, this study contributes more broadly to our understanding of employee well-being. It also connects the study of occupational health to that on institutions, contributes to the growing literature on the political economy of health, and highlights latent effects of union security agreements.

Revolution or Reform? Union-Worker Cooperative Relations in the United States and Korea

This paper examines to what extent union-cooperative partnerships might revitalize labor movements and identifies important factors shaping the nature of union-cooperative partnerships. The premise is that the level of strong or weak class consciousness is an important factor in shaping the nature of union-cooperative relations. Using a case study of Denver’s immigrant taxi union cooperative in the United States and a bus drivers’ union cooperative in South Korea, the paper argues that union-coop partnerships built with strong class-conscious organizing (as in Korea) bring more transformational energy to the labor movement than union-coop partnerships in the “business unionism” model, as in the United States.