Why Do Workers Join Unions? The Case of Israel

Abstract

The author argues that because almost all Israeli wage earners were covered by collective agreements in the early 1980s, neither the “collective voice” hypothesis nor the earnings premium hypothesis—the two prevailing explanations of workers' decision to join unions—was then applicable to Israel. Using 1982 survey data on Israeli workers, he examines four alternative explanations of unionization in Israel: non-work benefits; political ideology; social values, especially workers' attitude toward unions as a means for solidarity; and work and demographic attributes, such as employing unit size, gender, ethnicity, education, and age. He finds that Israeli workers' decision to join the Israeli Federation of Labor—the Histadrut—can be explained in part by non-work benefits of the Histadrut (health insurance and legal aid, for example) and by the workers' social values.