The Impact of Unions on Job Satisfaction, Organizational Commitment, and Turnover

"Union membership is not a free good, however. It carries both economic and social costs. The most obvious economic costs to the individual worker are union dues and potential loss of income due to strikes. In addition, job security, supposedly a benefit of union status, is not a certainty for all members. The monopolistic model of unions shows that they lower the demand for union labor by raising wage rates above competitive levels, which results in a shift of jobs to the nonunion labor force (Farber, 1986; Hirsch and Addison, 1986; Addison and Chilton, 1997). This increases the probability that low-seniority union workers may lose their jobs the more unions are achieving success in increasing the wage premium (Kleiner, 2002; Thieblot, 2002).1 The social costs of union status can include a more adversarial relationship with the employer, a more rigid or bureaucratic organization of work, and more narrowly defined job tasks with less individual discretion."

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