PREDICTING THE OUTCOME OF INTERUNION COMPETITION IN PUBLIC SECTOR REPRESENTATION ELECTIONS

JOSEPH DREW

DOI: 10.2190/7XML-PVX2-2233-Y5RV

Abstract

The advent of collective bargaining legislation in states generates intense competition between multiple national unions and existing state civil service employee associations seeking to gain exclusive representation rights for the large number of public sector employees who may be recruited. An increasing trend is to form coalitions between state civil service associations and a national union to compete against other unions. The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not such a coalition will succeed in a test case (State of Ohio), which has recently passed a comprehensive collective bargaining law, and is experiencing multimillion dollar recruitment efforts by both a coalition and unions. A random sample of 483 state of Ohio public employees was surveyed by mail with a multi-item questionnaire asking about job dissatisfaction, union preferences, union experiences, and demographic items. The job-dissatisfaction items were favor analyzed to generate weighted factor scores, which were then entered into a discriminant analysis to obtain a set of variables that predict: 1) whether either the coalition or another national union will win the election or employees will choose to have no union represent them; 2) the differences among employees leading them to vote for either the coalition or another national union; and 3) estimates of the final winner of the election. The findings were that the election for union representation will succeed; "extrinsic" job dissatisfaction factors are important predictors of the decision to vote for a union; but demographic attributes are the important predictors in employee preferences towards unions; and finally, that the coalition will win.

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