Workers Want Research Articles

The “Other” Workplace Design Factors: An Insight into What New Zealand Workers Want

The “Other” Workplace Design Factors: An Insight into What New Zealand Workers Want

In Their Own Words: What do Healthcare Workers Want from Their Organization during the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Pandemics are associated with heightened distress among healthcare workers (HCWs). We report qualitative findings from a two-stage survey administered to HCWs at a large acute care hospital in Ontario during the COVID-19 pandemic to identify their concerns and wellness needs. Responses reflected HCWs' desires to be heard, protected, prepared, supported and cared for by the organization. HCWs' concerns were diverse and dynamic, reflecting the specific circumstances of their work and personal lives as well as the shifting landscape of the pandemic. We discuss implications for organizations seeking to promote and protect HCWs' psychological well-being and resilience during pandemics.

What Millennial Workers Want? Turnover or Intention to Stay in Company

What Millennial Workers Want? Turnover or Intention to Stay in Company

Too Hard to Find with Too Little Time: What School Social Workers Want in Online Resources for Evidence-Based Practice

Too Hard to Find with Too Little Time: What School Social Workers Want in Online Resources for Evidence-Based Practice

Do Factory Managers Know What Workers Want? Manager–Worker Information Asymmetries and Pareto Optimal Human Resource Management Policies

This paper evaluates the conjecture that factory managers may not be offering a cost-minimizing configuration of compensation and workplace amenities by using manager and worker survey data from Better Work Vietnam. Working conditions are found to have a significant positive impact on global life assessments and reduce measures of depression and traumatic stress. We find significant deviations in manager perceptions of working conditions from those of workers. These deviations significantly impact a worker's perception of well-being and indicators of mental health. Such deviations may lead the factory manager to underprovide certain workplace amenities relative to the cost-minimizing configuration, which may in part explain the persistence of relatively poor working conditions in developing economies.

What Workers Want Depends: Legal Knowledge and the Desire for Workplace Change among Day Laborers

In this article, we identify legal knowledge as a key difference between workers who desire workplace change and those who do not. Based on surveys with 121 day laborers, we find that not all day laborers are equally dissatisfied with their jobs, despite uniformly difficult working conditions. Some day laborers do not want to make any real changes to the day labor industry, while others desire a range of industry changes, from higher wages to greater government regulation and unionization. A key difference between these workers is their knowledge of employment law: Those who know the law are more likely to desire workplace change.

Building Teams in Primary Care: What Do Nonlicensed Allied Health Workers Want?

Nonlicensed allied health workers are becoming increasingly important in collaborative team care, yet we know little about their experiences while filling these roles. To explore their perceptions of working as health coaches in a chronic-disease collaborative team, the teamlet model, we conducted a qualitative study to understand the nature and dynamics of this emerging role. During semistructured interviews, 11 health coaches reflected on their yearlong experience in the teamlet model at an urban underserved primary care clinic. Investigators conducted a thematic analysis of transcriptions of the interviews using a grounded theory process. Four themes emerged: 1) health-coach roles and responsibilities included acting as a patient liaison between visits, providing patient education and cultural brokering during medical visits, and helping patients navigate the health care system; 2) communication and relationships in the teamlet model of care were defined by a triad of the patient, health coach, and resident physician; 3) interest in the teamlet model was influenced by allied health workers' prior education and health care roles; and 4) factors influencing the effectiveness of the model were related to clinical and administrative time pressures and competing demands of other work responsibilities. Nonlicensed allied health workers participating in collaborative teams have an important role in liaising between patients and their primary care physicians, advocating for patients through cultural brokering, and helping patients navigate the health care system. To maximize their job satisfaction, their selection should involve strong consideration of motivation to participate in these expanded roles, and protected time must be provided for them to carry out their responsibilities and optimize their effectiveness.

What Workers Really Want: Voice, Unions and Personal Contracts

One of the leading theories for why employees join unions, represented in Freeman and Rogers’ influential book, What Workers Want, is that employees' main concern is to be given a greater voice in the workplace and that unions best serve this function. This line of literature, while doing much to explore the functioning of unions, has overshadowed the voice associated with personal contracts in employees' everyday life. The current study analyses Israeli employees' preferences for voice through a comparison of their perception of collective agreements and unions in comparison to other available legal instruments and institutions, with special emphasis on personal contracts with their employers. The Israeli workforce is an especially interesting case study, due to the major changes undergone in Israel in the nature of employment relations. The data for this study was collected from a representative sample of 600 employees in Israel, using a combination of survey questions about their own work experience and scenario-based questions. Findings revealed an expected effect where stronger employees were more likely to trust personal contract rather than their unions for gaining a voice. Whereas workers with low levels of voice showed a stronger desire to join unions and manage their employment rights through collective agreements. In contrast to the current view in the literature on collective voice, our findings suggest, however, that gaining more of a voice did not predict the desire to stay unionized. Furthermore, the comparison between unionized and non-unionized employees, suggests that the latter group felt they had more influence on their employment conditions and were generally more satisfied with it. Unionized employees were far less involved and aware of their employment conditions and status. Furthermore, only among employees with personal contracts, was there a relationship between their influence, and their satisfaction from the legal instrument. Nonetheless, unionized employees were more likely to resist a change in the legal instrument that regulates their behavior. Hence, while a personal contract has the upper hand in providing a voice and a sense of control to employees; collective agreements are still desired, especially among weaker employees. The theoretical focus on voice as experienced on the individual level, leads to policy discussion about the choice of the optimal legal instrument for employees.

What Workers Want. Updated edition by Richard B. Freeman and Joel Rogers and What Workers Say. Richard B. Freeman, Peter Boxall, and Peter Haynes, eds.

What Workers Want. Updated edition by Richard B. Freeman and Joel Rogers and What Workers Say. Richard B. Freeman, Peter Boxall, and Peter Haynes, eds.

What workers say: employee voice in the Anglo-American workplace

This book brings together research in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand to answer a series of key questions: * What opportunities do employees in Anglo-American workplaces have to voice their concerns and what do they seek? * To what extent, and in what contexts, do workers want greater union representation? * How do workers feel about employer-initiated channels of influence? What styles of engagement do they want with employers? * What institutional models are more successful in giving workers the voice they seek at workplaces? * What can unions, employers, and public policy makers learn from these studies of representation and influence? The research is based largely on surveys that were conducted as a follow-up to the influential Worker Representation and Participation Survey (WRPS) reported in What Workers Want, coauthored by Richard B. Freeman and Joel Rogers in 1999 and updated in 2006. Taken together, these studies authoritatively outline workers' attitudes toward, and opportunities for, representation and influence in the Anglo-American workplace. They also enhance industrial relations theory and suggest strategies for unions, employers, and public policy.

What Workers Want or What Labor Experts Want Them to Want? A Review Essay of What Workers Want By Richard B. Freeman & Joel Rogers, Updated Edition, ILR Press (2006)

Richard B. Freeman & Joel Rodgers offer an important addition to the industrial relations literature. This work is grounded in survey methodology. The authors' original thesis, premised on the Worker Representation and Participation Study (WRPS) which Freeman & Rogers designed more than ten years ago, concludes there is large gap between the kind and extent of representation and participation workers had and what they desired. The updated edition of their book, What Workers Want, does not present new or innovative polling or original empirical research directed by the authors. Instead, much of the new data cited come from several polls that come closest in spirit to the WRPS focus on particular aspects of the workplace and compensation package as opposed to job satisfaction broadly defined. This review essay examines Freeman and Rogers's conclusions drawn from the survey material they put forth and their latest recommendations and proposals. Torn between optimism and despair, ?What Workers Want? (Updated edition)? endeavors to offer a balanced approach to labor relations in America. From a positive perspective, their approach puts forward an alternative to another round of endless proposals and counter-proposals for reforming the National Labor Relations Act. However, closer scrutiny is likely to uncover grave problems in their analysis and proposals for reform. Because factual and analytical gaps exist in their analysis and because actual data appear to be available which undermine their conclusions and recommendations, this essay finds Freeman & Rogers's book is less than fully persuasive.

Book Review: Freeman, R. B., & Rogers, J. (2006). What Workers Want (updated ed.). Ithaca, NY: ILR Press (with Russell Sage Foundation). 238 pp. $19.95 (paper)

Book Review: Freeman, R. B., & Rogers, J. (2006). What Workers Want (updated ed.). Ithaca, NY: ILR Press (with Russell Sage Foundation). 238 pp. $19.95 (paper)

Do American Workers Want Unions?

Do American Workers Want Unions?

What Workers Want

What Workers Want

What Social Workers Want from Research When Planning for Children's Permanent Care

What Social Workers Want from Research When Planning for Children's Permanent Care

Book Review: What Workers Want

Book Review: What Workers Want

What Workers Want

What Workers Want

Book Review: Labor-Management Relations: What Workers Want

Book Review: Labor-Management Relations: What Workers Want

What Workers Want

What Workers Want

Victims in the Shadow of the Law: A Critique of the Model of Legal Protection

The twentieth anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act marked the end of an era of uncertain progress. Despite dramatic victories in constitutional litigation and the visibility of group-based struggles, civil rights strategies had limited success in initiating major economic and social change.' The limited progress has prompted a new sense of realism among groups who experience discrimination-a sense of how little the situation has changed even though overt prejudice may be less prevalent. The modest progress of the civil rights movement has not made "rights-focused" struggles unattractive, however; in fact, there is a proliferation of civil rights strategies