Evidence On Scottish Trade Union Members’ Job Dissatisfaction

This paper includes insights on trade union members’ expectations of trade union membership and its influence on their experiences of job dissatisfaction. Trade union members have been shown to report higher levels of job dissatisfaction than non-union members across five decades of research, and in multicountry analyses, although the factors that influence trade union members’ perceptions remain unclear. Given that previous studies are mostly quantitative, the present study uses a qualitative approach of interviews with 20 trade union member employees at a manufacturer in Scotland, and adds insights to debates on employee participation. The results suggest that trade union members may join unions mainly for protection from managers and express dissatisfaction when their trade unions do not protect them in accordance to their expectations. Furthermore, this study suggests that trade union member employees may prefer stronger forms of trade unionism that enable long-term job security. The site used in this study, a factory, will close in 2020, and many companies are exiting the UK as a result of Brexit. As such, the data in this work may be some of the last, if not the last, data collected from trade union member employees at a major manufacturer in Scotland