Are the Unions Still Needed? Employees' Views of their Relations to Unions and Employers

Abstract

Collectivist attitudes among workers are often said to have become replaced by individualistic leanings. Some argue that individualism is also spreading within the traditional manual working class and in particular among the young. On the basis of a survey carried out in Sweden in 1997, aspects of the collectivism-individualism issue are studied empirically: whether employees think that trade unions are necessary for successful negotiation with their employers, and whether they prefer to take care of negotiations individually. Data are cross-sectional and thus cannot tell us much about change among respondents, but the connections between attitudinal patterns and age and social class are analysed. The main conclusions are that the perceived need for the union is clearly more widespread among manual workers than among white-collar employees, especially higher-level white-collar workers Accordingly, it matters which union people belong to, but the non-unionized are the most negative. There are no significant age differences. Second, the view that negotiations are best taken care of by the individual him-/herself is mainly endorsed by white-collar workers, in particular those in higher positions, and by non-unionized employees. Moreover, the young tend to be more individualistically oriented than older employees, but this difference is statistically significant only insofar as union membership is not taken into account. It should be noted that youth have a lower rate of unionization. This may be due to negative attitudes towards collectivism, or that they have found little reason to join the union because they have unstable job situations - which would then in turn explain their individualistic orientation.