Determinants of Trade Union Membership in Australia
| Published date | 01 March 1991 |
| Author | Stephen Deery,Helen Cieri |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1991.tb00228.x |
| Date | 01 March 1991 |
British
Journal
of
Industrial Relations
29:
1
March
1991
0007-1080
$3.00
Determinants
of
Trade Union
Membership in Australia
Stephen Deery"
and
Helen De Cieri""
Final version accepted
24
September
1990.
Abstract
This
paper uses Australian cross-sectional data to examine the determinants
of
individual union membership. It analyses the separate effect
of
threegroups
of
variables on the probability
of
unionisation: personal attributes, occupational
and industry -related characteristics, and social and attitudinal factors. While
the personal attributes
of
an employee were found
to
have little effect
on
union
status, the other two groups
of
variables added significantly to the explained
variance
in
union membership. An important finding
of
the study was that
certain attitudes, ideologies and social values were clearly associated with
variations
in
union status.
1.
Introduction
In recent years there has been a growth in academic interest in the factors
that affect trade union membership (see Fiorito and Greer
1982,
Voos
1983,
Bain and Elias
1985,
Booth
1986,
Guest and Dewe
1988,
Rawson
1988).
This appears to have been prompted by the quite substantial fall in union
density rates that has occurred throughout the industrialised world in the
period since the
mid-1970s.
Australia has been no exception to this
phenomenon. Contrary to suggestions that the labour movement in
Australia had managed to 'swim against the international tide' (Niland
1987),
it
is evident that
it
has recorded a reversal in its membership base of
similar dimensions to that seen in most European countries (see Visser
1988).
A relatively new series of data on trade union members produced by
the Australian Bureau
of
Statistics has shown that the unionisation rate
dropped from a figure of
51
per cent in
1976
to only
42
per cent in
1988.'
This downward trend
in
union membership has naturally been a cause of
concern for trade union leaders, who have responded with a series
of
initiatives to try to arrest the decline (ACTU
1987).
There is a broadly based
*
Department
of
Economics. University
of
Melbourne
**
Graduate School
of
Management, Monash University
60
British Journal
of
Industrial Relations
belief in Australia that the depletion in union ranks can be explained largely
by changes in the occupational and industrial structure of the work-force
(see
Australian Financial Review,
8
June 1989). The growth in the
proportion of non-manual service sector employees, combined with the
significant increase in the female work-force and the expansion of part-time
and self-employment, are seen as the main contributing factors. There is
also a suggestion that the increasing unpopularity of unions
-
as measured
through public opinion polls
-
may be associated with the decline
in
union
density (see Rawson 1988).
The purpose
of
this paper is to gain an understanding of the factors that
explain differences in union status between individuals in Australia through
the use of cross-sectional analysis. Particular attention is focused on the
relative influence of personal attributes, occupational or industry-related
characteristics, and social or attitudinal variables on trade union member-
ship. The following section outlines the theoretical explanations of why
employees join unions. Section 3 describes the data set for the study and the
explanatory variables that were used in the empirical analysis. The results
of
the multiple regression model are presented in Section
4,
and the final
section gives the main conclusions.
2.
Theoretical explanations
of
union membership
Economists have taken the approach that unionism can best be viewed as an
asset which provides a flow
of
services over time to utility-maximising
employees (Ashenfelter and Pencavall969, Pencavall971, Ashenfelter and
Johnson 1972). From this theoretical perspective, a rational individual will
join a union where the expected utility of union membership exceeds that of
non-membership. The greater the sum of union-induced benefits over costs,
the higher the likelihood that an individual will prefer a union. These
benefits may take the form of monetary advantages or they may be related to
non-pecuniary gains such as the establishment of grievance procedures
where employee rights are recognised and enforced.
The utility derived from union membership would be expected to vary
according to such personal characteristics as age, gender, educational level
and family responsibilities. The usefulness
of
a union will depend on the
possible range of alternatives that an individual possesses
to
achieve his or
her employment objectives. Younger employees, for example, are likely to
be more mobile and less attached to particular jobs and consequently to use
personal rather than collective means to improve their employment status or
remedy work-place problems (Bain and Price 1983). As employees accumu-
late more firm-specific skills and deferred benefits, they may be less disposed
or less able to find comparable employment elsewhere and seek the
protection of unions. The perceived benefits of unions in the form of
grievance procedures, redundancy rules and superannuation could be
expected to have more appeal to older than younger employees (Bain and
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