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The association between union membership and perceptions of safety climate among US adult workers

OBJECTIVES: An individual’s perceptions of their workplace safety climate can influence their health and safety outcomes in the workplace. Even though union membership has been declining in the US, union members still comprise 10% of the working population and have higher-than-industry average non-f...

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Autores principales: Le, Aurora B., Wong, Su-Wei, Lin, Hsien-Chang, Smith, Todd D.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Ltd. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7544701/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33052171
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2020.105024
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author Le, Aurora B.
Wong, Su-Wei
Lin, Hsien-Chang
Smith, Todd D.
author_facet Le, Aurora B.
Wong, Su-Wei
Lin, Hsien-Chang
Smith, Todd D.
author_sort Le, Aurora B.
collection PubMed
description OBJECTIVES: An individual’s perceptions of their workplace safety climate can influence their health and safety outcomes in the workplace. Even though union membership has been declining in the US, union members still comprise 10% of the working population and have higher-than-industry average non-fatal illness and injury rates. Due to limited research focused in this area, this study examined whether union membership was associated with worker perceptions of safety climate. METHODS: This was a secondary data analysis study utilizing data from the Quality Work Life module from the General Social Survey centered on US workers aged 18 and above. Propensity-score matching was implemented to reduce potential selection bias between unionized and non-unionized workers. Linear regression explored the association between union membership and perceptions of safety climate, controlling for age, sex, education, industry, resource adequacy, supervisor support, co-worker support, and workload. RESULTS: For perceived safety climate (on a 0–16 scale, the higher the more positive), those in union had a lower mean of perceived safety climate (12.44) compared to those not in a union (13.20). Based on the regression results, those who were in a union reported more negative perceptions of their workplace safety climate in a 12-month period (β = −0.61, p < .001). CONCLUSIONS: By demonstrating a commitment to proactive injury prevention and bolstering the business’s overall safety performance indicators, businesses who are open to collaborations with unions may see some long-term benefits (e.g. return on investment, increased job satisfaction) and enhance union workers’ perceptions of safety climate.
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spelling pubmed-75447012020-10-09 The association between union membership and perceptions of safety climate among US adult workers Le, Aurora B. Wong, Su-Wei Lin, Hsien-Chang Smith, Todd D. Saf Sci Article OBJECTIVES: An individual’s perceptions of their workplace safety climate can influence their health and safety outcomes in the workplace. Even though union membership has been declining in the US, union members still comprise 10% of the working population and have higher-than-industry average non-fatal illness and injury rates. Due to limited research focused in this area, this study examined whether union membership was associated with worker perceptions of safety climate. METHODS: This was a secondary data analysis study utilizing data from the Quality Work Life module from the General Social Survey centered on US workers aged 18 and above. Propensity-score matching was implemented to reduce potential selection bias between unionized and non-unionized workers. Linear regression explored the association between union membership and perceptions of safety climate, controlling for age, sex, education, industry, resource adequacy, supervisor support, co-worker support, and workload. RESULTS: For perceived safety climate (on a 0–16 scale, the higher the more positive), those in union had a lower mean of perceived safety climate (12.44) compared to those not in a union (13.20). Based on the regression results, those who were in a union reported more negative perceptions of their workplace safety climate in a 12-month period (β = −0.61, p < .001). CONCLUSIONS: By demonstrating a commitment to proactive injury prevention and bolstering the business’s overall safety performance indicators, businesses who are open to collaborations with unions may see some long-term benefits (e.g. return on investment, increased job satisfaction) and enhance union workers’ perceptions of safety climate. Elsevier Ltd. 2021-01 2020-10-09 /pmc/articles/PMC7544701/ /pubmed/33052171 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2020.105024 Text en © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Le, Aurora B.
Wong, Su-Wei
Lin, Hsien-Chang
Smith, Todd D.
The association between union membership and perceptions of safety climate among US adult workers
title The association between union membership and perceptions of safety climate among US adult workers
title_full The association between union membership and perceptions of safety climate among US adult workers
title_fullStr The association between union membership and perceptions of safety climate among US adult workers
title_full_unstemmed The association between union membership and perceptions of safety climate among US adult workers
title_short The association between union membership and perceptions of safety climate among US adult workers
title_sort association between union membership and perceptions of safety climate among us adult workers
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7544701/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33052171
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2020.105024
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