New social risk groups, industrial relations regimes and union membership

Abstract

The literature on new social risk groups (NSRs), such as single parents and temporary workers, has argued that they are less likely to join trade unions than other employees. It has been suggested that this is due to the unions' incapacity or unwillingness to promote policies that mediate new social risks. We argue that there are differences in unionization between different NSR groups, and that country-level institutional structures, operationalized here as industrial relations regimes, have effects on how likely NSR groups are to unionise. Our multilevel logistic models using ESS survey data produce three main results: (1) Family policy related NSR groups (single parents, female employees with children and female caregivers) are morenot lessunionised than the average worker, (2) precarious workers (low-skilled service employees, temporary employees and part-timers) are, indeed, less unionised than average but (3) this result concerns mostly the liberal and transitional industrial relations regimes.

Union Membership and Collective Bargaining: Trends and Determinants

“…18) shows that union density is typically much lower in small than larger firms. Studies using data on individuals from a wide range of European countries included in the European Social Survey find a positive correlation between establishment size and the probability of union membership when pooling across all countries (Ebbinghaus et al 2011;Kirmanoğlu and Başlevent 2012) as well as in the majority of countries or industrial relations regimes analyzed separately (Schnabel and Wagner 2007;Shin and Ylä-Anttila 2018). Studies for individual countries also tend to show that unionization is more likely in larger establishments, so that the decline in average firm size observed in many countries probably weakens unionization.…”

“…Full-time workers are twice as likely to be union members as part-time workers, but this gap in union density has decreased in most countries. In a multivariate analysis with pooled data for individuals from 19 European countries, Ebbinghaus et al (2011) obtain a highly significant negative relationship between atypical employment and the probability of being unionized whereas Schnabel and Wagner (2007) find very few significant correlations between working full-time and being a union member when using the same data set but analyzing countries separately (see also the mixed results for precarious workers obtained by Shin and Ylä-Anttila 2018). Quite a few country-specific studies show that part-time employment lowers or full-time employment increases the probability of union membership (see, e.g., Blanchflower 2007;Fitzenberger et al 2011; the survey by Schnabel 2013).…”

Precarious workers' choices about unemployment insurance membership after the Ghent system reform: The Finnish experience

“…This is probably because a larger number of women are employed in the public sector in Finland. Shin and Ylä‐Anttila () show that it is only in Nordic countries that female workers are more unionized than men. The primary and secondary education variables have a significantly negative impact on union membership, despite there being no significant effect of the low‐skilled service worker variable.…”

“…Scheuer () and Visser () show that a high level of collective bargaining coverage and the centralization of collective bargaining increase the likelihood of union membership in Western European countries, and in fact, the Service Union United (Palvelualojen ammattiliitto) and Union of Health and Social Care Services (Tehy) have been successful in recruiting employees in the service sector. Shin and Ylä‐Anttila () show that low‐skilled service employees are as likely to have union membership as other workers in the Nordic countries, where industrial relations are based on organized corporatism. On the other hand, there are also grounds for expecting that low‐skilled service workers would be inclined to choose the independent UI fund; above all, its membership fee is much lower than union membership dues.…”

Union Membership and Collective Bargaining: Trends and Determinants

“…Multivariate panel studies for groups of countries typically report that a higher share of public employment is associated with higher union density (e.g., Checchi and Lucifora 2002;Checchi and Visser 2005;Scruggs and Lange 2002). A positive relationship between public employment and unionization is also found in most cross-sectional studies with data of individuals in Anglo-Saxon countries (Blanchflower 2007) and for samples of more than 20 European countries (Kirmanoğlu and Başlevent 2012;Shin and Ylä-Anttila 2018). The problem for unions is that membership and density have also fallen in the public sector because of privatization and other government attempts to cut back the public sector.…”