NEGOTIATING QUALITY OF WORKLIFE, PRODUCTIVITY AND TRADITIONAL ISSUES: UNION MEMBERS'PREFERRED ROLES OF THEIR UNION

Recognizing the importance of the union in successfully implementing quality of worklife programs, numerous commentators have called for union-management collaborative programs. In response to these pleas, recent studies have addressed union activists'perceptions of their unions'roles in negotiating quality of worklife as well as other issues. Although important, these studies have focused on the union leadership and have generally failed to consider the rank and file union members' views. The primary objective of the present study was to examine union members'preferred roles of their union in negotiating quality of worklife, productivity, and traditional bargaining issues. A second purpose was to explore the correlates of their views concerning the union's role in dealing with these issues. Using data collected from 171 members of a railroad, union, the results showed that members' support for union involvement tended to vary depending upon the type of issue in question. They strongly preferred collective bargaining when dealing with traditional union concerns and joint union-management efforts when quality of worklife issues were involved. In predicting preferred union-management cooperation, the importance of the individual predictors varied across the types of negotiation issues. However, attitudinal measures were generally found to be more important in explaining members'preferences than demographic or union participation measures. The results are discussed in terms of implications for implementing joint union-management programs.