Employees' Perspective on Non-Union Representation: A Comparison with Unions

This study uses survey data from 857 employees of three unionized and three non-union establishments in Korea to compare employees' perspectives on non-union works councils and unions with regard to perceptual, attitudinal and behavioural dimensions. A majority of the hypotheses received fairly strong empirical support. Compared with unions, works councils were found to be lower in terms of perceived performance and employees' commitment, and depended more on employers. Union commitment and union participation were positively related with existence needs, but works council commitment and works council participation were positively related with relatedness needs. The results were interpreted to support the separate domain perspective (i.e. unions and non-union employee representation [NER] serve different purposes) and the complementarity view (i.e. union and NER develop interdependencies and NER cannot substitute unions).