Employee voice: does union membership matter?

Abstract

Industrial relations research has traditionally viewed trade unions as the primary mechanism for employee voice. With the decline in unionism in many advanced industrial economies over the past two decades, new direct non‐union voice mechanisms have been introduced by employers. This focus on the mechanisms for employee voice, however, fails to take account of employees' perceptions of voice. We suggested that employee perceptions of voice vary between the different levels of an organisation and proposed that trade union membership will be more likely to enhance individual employee perceptions of voice at the wider organisational level. Contrary to our expectations, our analysis of 2,949 employees of a public sector scientific research organisation found that union membership had a significant negative impact on employee voice at the organisational level. The article concluded by offering possible explanations for this unexpected finding and the implications for theory, management and future research.

Voice, silence, and diversity in 21st century organizations: Strategies for inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender employees

“…Even where employee voice is legally protected by trade unions, however, GLBT employees can still remain silent. As Benson and Brown (2010) noted, unions differ in their capacity to represent their members. Research by Morehead, Steele, Alexander, Stephen, and Duffin (1997) demonstrated that only 24% of unionized workplaces in Australia were characterized as active, with senior delegates present, membership meetings held, and negotiations taking place between management and labor.…”

“…Various mechanisms provide employees with the opportunity to express their voice (Benson & Brown, 2010). Among these are legal regulations, trade unions, and specific GLBT and human rights organizations, which will be explored in this section.…”

Employee Voice Scale: Is There a Need of Reconsideration of Dimensions?

“…And the receiver responds to the message. Researches also support that employee voice is a two-way communication where information is exchanged [9,21,43]. The parts written in Italics refer to one-way communication; decisions of employees whether to stay or exit and employees' reaction toward the organization when he or she decided to stay unwillingly.…”

“…The role of union in the presence of HR department is quite ambiguous and unnecessary because HR department supports individual employee voice, information sharing, collective decision making, and employee participation [42][43][44]. For the decline of unionization in organizations, two major reasons are widely documented in literature [41,45,46].…”

“…In terms of two-way communication, it can be classified into three dimensions; i) Provision of Information by Employee-positive and negative voice behaviour in the first cycle and the angry voice in the fifth phase, ii) Platform-the second phase, and iii) Manager's responsethe third phase [43,75,91,92].…”