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This research examined antecedent and outcome models for all four factors of union commitment (loyalty to the union, responsibility to the union, willingness to work for the union and belief in unionism). A hypothesis that union commitment would act as an intervening variable between the antecedents and outcomes was also tested. Unionized employees (n = 481) from a large mid‐western communications company completed a survey. Antecedents of loyalty to the union included national and local union mission fulfilment, and chief steward and officer accessibility. Chief steward accessibility and sex were identified as antecedents of responsibility to the union. Belief in unionism was predicted by local union mission fulfilment. Both national and local union mission fulfilment were significant antecedents of willingness to work for the union. All of the outcomes in the study, both behavioural (attendance at union meetings, union activity and member voting behaviour) and attitudinal (cognitive consideration in voting, member support for political action), were related to at least one of the four factors. Support was also found for establishing union commitment as an intervening variable between the hypothesized antecedents and outcomes.

and Spiller (1980) developed a Union Commitment scale and identified four underlying factors." Friedman and Harvey (1986), in a reanalysis of the Gordon et al. data, concluded that union commitment was best represented by two factors. Although several investigations have replicated the Gordon et al. factor structure, none of these have used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). In the present study we used CFA to test the explanatory power of the two a priori factor structures. A sample of 465 blue-collar workers working for a large utility company in the midwestern United States participated in this investigation. The results suggest that, first, a modified version of Gordon et al.'s four-factor solution provides a better representation of the factor structure of union commitment. Second, the use of either the four-factor solution or commitment as a unidimensional construct may be justified, depending on the research focus. Finally, we found that unit weighting of the union commitment items was the most appropriate strategy for generating composites. The implication of these results and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Responses to 29 of the original 48 items of the Commitment to the Union Scale (Gordon, Philpot, Hurt, Thompson, & Spiller, 1980) were obtained from 208 unionized employees at two points in time. Confirmatory factor analysis found support for the four factors of Union Loyalty, Responsibility to the Union, Willingness to Work for the Union, and Belief in Unionism. Furthermore, it was found that these four factors were stable and reliable over an 8-month time period.

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