Factors Related to Employees’ Desire to Join and Leave Unions

Employees desire for unionization has been studied often, and one finding that has been reached consistently is that employee satisfaction helps account for employee desire for representation. Employees who are more dissatisfied with various aspects of their jobs are more likely to demand satisfaction helps account for employees’ desire for union representation. Employees who are more dissatisfied with various aspects of their jobs are more likely to demand union representation, ceteris paribus. Furthermore, satisfaction helps account for employees’ desire for union representation.. Furthermore, economic or “extrinsic” satisfaction appears to be more important than noneconomic or “intrinsic” satisfaction in determining the desire for unionization among blue-collar workers. By contrast, however, few studies have been conducted with respect to decertification, and no direct relationship between employee satisfaction/dissatisfaction and decertification has been demonstrated. Freeman and Medoff (1984) and Barling, Fullagar, and Kelloway (1992) summarize much of this research. A unique aspect of this study is that a common set of independent variables that encompass work attitudes, perceived company performance, employees’ intention to leave their company, and several facets of employee satisfaction are used as predictors of the desire to join and to leave a union. This allows us to examine how the same factors affect both the desire to join and the desire to leave a union