Unions serve as primary labor market institutions that improve employees’ working conditions, yet existing literature offers mixed results of their influence on workers’ access to work–family policies. This may be partially due to the extant literature having not considered possible variation across work contexts. In this study, I ask whether union coverage can increase workers’ access to work–family policies and examine how family-friendly work contexts—public sector organizations and female-dominated occupations—can modify these union effects in the United States. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 97 (2000–2017) and individual-fixed effect models, I analyze the impact of transitioning from a nonunion worker to a union-represented worker on the worker’s access to three work–family policies: paid parental leave, schedule control, and paid sick/vacation days. Results show that changing from a nonunion position to a union-represented one increases workers’ access to paid parental leave and paid sick/vacation days but decreases access to schedule control. The findings also show that workers in public sector organizations and female-dominated occupations tend to experience outsized benefits of union coverage on access to longer paid sick/vacation days. These findings suggest that the advantages of union coverage in workers’ access to work–family policies may be influenced by gendered work contexts.

中文翻译：

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工会、工作环境和工人获得工作-家庭政策


工会是改善员工工作条件的主要劳动力市场机构，但现有文献对它们对工人获得工作-家庭政策的影响提供了不同的结果。这可能部分是由于现存文献没有考虑不同工作环境之间可能的变化。在这项研究中，我询问工会覆盖面是否可以增加工人获得工作-家庭政策的机会，并研究家庭友好的工作环境——公共部门组织和女性主导的职业——如何改变美国的这些工会效应。使用全国青年纵向调查 97 （2000-2017） 和个人固定效应模型，我分析了从非工会工人过渡到工会代表工人对工人获得三项工作-家庭政策的影响：带薪育儿假、日程控制和带薪病假/休假。结果表明，从非工会职位转变为工会代表职位增加了工人获得带薪育儿假和带薪病假/休假的机会，但减少了获得日程控制的机会。研究结果还显示，公共部门组织和女性主导职业的工人在获得更长的带薪病假/休假方面往往会体验到工会保险的巨大好处。这些发现表明，工会覆盖率在工人获得工作-家庭政策方面的优势可能受到性别工作环境的影响。