Non-unionized young workers and organizing the unorganized

Stephanie Tailby and Anna Pollert
Additional contact information
Stephanie Tailby: University of the West of England, UK, Stephanie.Tailby@uwe.ac.uk
Anna Pollert: University of the West of England, UK

Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2011, vol. 32, issue 3, 499-522

Abstract: Young workers are concentrated in low-waged, poorly organized industries. Although poorly unionized, evidence suggests that they are positively predisposed towards unions. Most research on youth and unionization is attitudinal, however, with little evidence on the kinds of problems they face and how they respond. This article contributes findings from a British survey in 2004 of 501 low-paid, unorganized workers and focuses on two groups of young workers: those between 16 and 21 years and those aged between 22 and 29 years. It shows commonalities and contrasts between these age groups in terms of typical workplace, types of problems encountered, responses to them, including collective action, views on trade union support and likelihood to join as a result of grievances. The older group is more active individually and collectively towards resolving problems at work. Yet both youth groups are as keen, or more so, on trade union help, than the wider sample.

Keywords: employee voice; trade unions; unionization; union organizing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0143831X10388532 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:32:y:2011:i:3:p:499-522

DOI: 10.1177/0143831X10388532

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic and Industrial Democracy from Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().