THE IMPACT OF UNIONS ON JOB SATISFACTION: A REVIEW

Abstract

In the last 40 years, the effect of unions on job satisfaction has attracted the attention of those working in the fields of economics, industrial relations, and industrial psychology. It is known that in most of the studies in the literature, this effect results in negative and ‘out of the reasonable framework’. In studies published in recent years, it has been found that the direction of this effect has changed. This shows that the relationship between the union and job satisfaction is more complex than it seems. Thirty-five studies published in English included in the analysis section of this review by searching the Web of Science® database are included in the SSCI, SCI-Expanded, ESCI, CPCI-SSH indexes. Research articles, conference proceedings, and early access articles are included in the database search. In the literature, it is seen that the union membership status of the employee, the rate of unionization, the employee's being within the scope of the collective labor agreement and the existence of a union in the workplace are determined as the 'union variable'. In the 'exit-voice' hypotheses, the concurrent relationship between 'union variables' and job satisfaction is often not taken into account. In the 'reverse causality' hypotheses, it is seen that 'instrument variable' and 'fixed-effect' models have been developed to solve the endogeneity problem caused by the concurrent relationship. In the 'discussion and suggestions' section of this review; It is discussed how the effects of unions on job satisfaction can be tested in labor relations systems where the benefits obtained from the union gains do not depend on the membership status and the employees do not have the opportunity of collective labor agreement through the unions. In this framework, it is suggested that the employee's perception of union effectiveness scales, which are created in Likert type, should be determined as the predictor variable and the effect on job satisfaction should be tested instead of the predictive variables measured at the dichotomous level.

Keywords

• trade union
• job satisfaction
• quality of work-liife
• job dissatisfaction

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