Characteristics and Customs: Empirical Evidence on the Union‐joining Decision
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000001033 |
| Published date | 01 April 1993 |
| Date | 01 April 1993 |
| Pages | 27-41 |
| Author | Mike Ingham |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Characteristics
and
Customs
27
Characteristics and Customs:
Empirical Evidence on the
Union-joining Decision
Mike Ingham
Department of Economics, University of Salford
Fundamental to the study of the role of trade unions in the labour market is an
understanding of
why
individuals should actually
wish
to join such organizations.
In a period of declining membership
rolls,
this
question acquires added significance
and the answers to it which emerge should be of policy interest on all sides of
the market. This said, recent evidence[1] suggests that to date British unions,
unlike certain of their American counterparts, have
made
little use of the findings
of recent relevant research. However, it is important to be clear about what
precisely
is the
question under consideration. In particular, one must distinguish
between why individuals desire jobs in unionized
areas
of the economy and from
why individuals
in
unionized sectors might wish actually to join
the
union.
This
article is concerned with the second of these questions.
Obviously, the question disappears if there is a closed shop in operation and
only has
meaning when free
choice
exists.
In
the
latter
case,
the
answer revolves
around the nature of the services provided by unions and the price individuals
must pay to acquire them. Traditional approaches to the identification of the
determinants of union membership status
(e.g.[2,
3])
assume that these services
are
privately appropriable and therefore that individuals can only acquire them
if they pay the membership fee. They then represent the factors which they
believe should render union
services
more or
less
valuable
to
individual workers
by
a series
of personal and
job
characteristics and proceed
to
test
the
hypotheses
developed. Certain features of this earlier work
are,
however, problematic.
First, there is the question of whether union services really are private goods
and, second, there are deficiencies in the data sets used. More precisely, the
principal
services
provided by
unions
(e.g.
the negotiation of rates of
pay,
holiday
entitlements, working practices) are collective rather than private in character:
that
is,
they
are
freely available
to
all employees in
the
bargaining
unit,
whether
they are a member of the union or not. As to the data sets employed, these in
general neither allowed the analyst to identify those individuals who work in
closed shops nor to isolate those who work in organizations where there is no
union to join. In the face of these difficulties, it becomes hard to claim that a
theory based upon free choice has in fact been satisfactorily tested.
In the light of these observations, the aims of the present article are three in
number. First, to re-examine the hypotheses regarding the determinants of
individual membership status that are typically found in the literature with the Employee Relations,
Vol.
15
No.
4,
1993,
pp.
27-41.
© MCB University
Press 0142-5455
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