The Collective Voice
Archive: January 2007
Union members are a big segment of the population. One in
five adults is a union member. If the nation’s 4.4 million
union members voted as a bloc, they could elect a national
government. The union weight in the workplace is enormous:
unions bargain for 31% of non-farm workers.
THE COLLECTIVE VOICE is about the views
of union members. Rarely do mainline news media cover the
way union members think as a group. The Vector Poll™,
however, has the country’s longest running database
of union member opinions, all the way back to 1985.
Historical data shows how differently Canadians would think
without unions
One aspect of union member opinion that stands out in the
historical data is how differently Canadians would think without
unions. Union members are consistently more
likely than nonunion employees to favour a greater role for
government in the economy.
Part of the reason is that two thirds of union members work
in the public sector. One union, the Canadian Union of Public
Employees, presents 12% of all union members.
But that isn’t the entire explanation.
Twenty years ago, union members’ opinions were fairly
close to nonunion employees.
For example, in a 1987 national Vector Poll™, 74%
of union members said governments should spend more educating
young people. At the same time 69% of nonmembers agreed that
government should spend more on education. In the same poll,
almost the same proportion of members (54%) and nonunion employees
(52%) were willing to pay higher taxes so that governments
could increase education spending.
Two decades later, however, union and nonunion attitudes have
grown apart.
In a nationwide Vector Poll™ last September, 62% of
union members – but only 54% of nonunion employees –
said they would be willing to pay higher taxes to reduce class
sizes in the secondary schools:
Willing to pay higher taxes for education
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1987 |
1997 |
| Union members |
54% |
62% |
| Nonunion employees |
52% |
54% |
Today’s union members continue to think like yesterday’s
about the role of government.
There has been enormous turnover in the ranks of unions between
1987 and 2006. Yet today’s union members continue to
think like yesterday’s about the role of government.
What explains why union members continue to support higher
government spending and higher taxes?
Naturally, there is self-interest involved. However, it’s
not just unionized government employees who support higher
spending for education. Union members in the private sector
are as likely to support higher taxes for education as unionized
public employees. In the 2006 Vector Poll™, 64% of unionized
public employees compared with 60% of private sector union
members would be willing to pay more taxes to reduce the size
of secondary school classes.
Public and private sector union members mainly think alike
because of the work unions do to instill pro-government values
in their members through rank-and-file education programs
and political action campaigns.
Turning Questions into Strategies:
As Vector Research polls have shown over two decades, a
dramatic transformation occurs when nonunion employees get
into unions.
Unions do not organize only left-thinking employees. Many
employees who are indifferent or initially anti-union change
their mind – and their attitudes – after becoming
union members.
Business and government could learn a lot from unions on
how to motivate and mobilize the public.
Organized labour has nothing like the money and human resources
of the employers on the other side of the celebrated bargaining
table. Yet unions can bring 99% of their members to picket
lines for struggles with no guarantee of success. And as
the research shows, union membership is one of the forces
swaying public opinion.
The Vector Poll™ uses
today's most sophisticated market research techniques to get
the answers you need.
How can we help you?
Read more about The Vector Poll™ or Request Advice.
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