Why Are Union Members More Willing to Strike and Protest than Non-Union Members? Evidence from Argentina and Chile
In this article, co-authors Pablo Pérez-Ahumada and Charo Astorga-Pinto reflect on the inspiration behind their research paper, “Why are union members more willing to strike and protest than nonunion members? Evidence from Argentina and Chile,” published in the Journal of Industrial Relations.
Labor unions are fundamental for workers. On the one hand, unions strengthen workers’ bargaining power, thereby improving their working conditions and salaries. On the other hand, unions shape workers’ political attitudes outside the workplace by reinforcing their political interest and their commitment to democracy. Focusing on these “political effects” of unions, scholars have long demonstrated that there is a significant relationship between membership in unions and political participation. Compared to non-unionized workers, union members are not only more likely to participate in conventional political actions (e.g., voting and joining political parties), but they are also more likely to participate in non-conventional political actions such as protests, demonstrations, and strikes
In spite of this, we still know little about why union members are more willing to act collectively than non-union members. Furthermore, despite the importance of unions in political activism in Latin America, empirical investigations on the political effects of union membership are practically non-existent.
In this article, we make two contributions. First, focusing on two Latin American countries—Argentina and Chile—we studied whether union members are more likely to participate in strikes and demonstrations than non-union members. Argentina and Chile are good cases for analysis because they represent two contrasting examples of industrial relations (IR) systems and labor mobilization in Latin America. While Argentina represents a prototypical case of a neo-corporatist system rooted in centralized bargaining, quasi-monopoly of union representation, and strong labor unions, Chile is an extreme case of a fragmented IR system based on decentralized bargaining, fragmented unions, and a weak labor movement. Consistent with our hypothesis, we found that, in the two countries, union members are significantly more likely to strike and demonstrate than non-union members.
Surprisingly, we found that the relationship between union membership and collective action participation was essentially the same in the two countries. In other words, unions’ “political effects” on their members are essentially the same, regardless of the institutional and political context in which unions operate.
Second, we employed mediation analysis to explain why union members are more willing to strike and demonstrate than their non-union counterparts. All in all, we found that union members’ propensity to participate in this type of collective action is because they are more politicized and have stronger left-leaning orientations than non-union members. This result is consistent with the argument that establishes that, despite their weakness, unions continue to be crucial in increasing workers’ propensity to participate in politics. The implication is that strengthening labor unions is fundamental for building more democratic societies.
