Reviewing the ways in which worker voice can shape political and civic participation

What is it about?

This chapter outlines the key theoretical channels by which worker voice can affect political and civic participation, highlights important methodological challenges in identifying causal relationships and mechanisms, and summarizes the major research findings pertaining to nonunion and union voice. In summarizing the major theoretical alternatives, a distinction is made between (a) experiential spillovers in which political and civic participation is facilitated by workers’ experience with voice, and (b) intentional efforts by voice institutions, especially labor unions, to increase political and civic participation. In practice, however, the experiential versus intentional transmission mechanisms can be hard to distinguish, so the review of the empirical record is structured around individual-level voice versus collective voice, especially labor unions. Attention is also devoted to the aggregate effects of and participation in the political arena by labor unions. Overall, a broad approach is taken which includes not only classic issues such as higher voting rates among union members, but also emerging issues such as whether union members are less likely to vote for extremist parties and the conditions under which labor unions are likely to be influential in the political sphere.

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Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash

Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash

Why is it important?

While individual and collective forms of worker voice are accurately viewed primarily as workplace phenomena, the interconnections to and ramifications for political and civic engagement should not be overlooked. Labor unions, with their own internal participatory, democratic systems and their incentives for political education and mobilization, are perhaps the form of worker voice in which it is easiest to expect there to be spillovers into the political and civic arena—including spillovers that are the byproduct of experiencing unionization and others that result from intentional union strategies. But even the experience of individual forms of workplace voice such as in-job autonomy can have spillovers by fostering democratizing attitudes and civic skills. Individual voice is likely to only have individual-level effects, but labor unions and other institutions might be sufficiently impactful to have measurable, aggregate impacts on a country’s democracy, too, and it is important to understand the nature and determinants of these aggregate effects. Hence, the research record has important implications for democratic and civic well-being.

Perspectives