Research On The Relationship Between Labor Relations Climate And Employee Union Commitment In The Chinese Context

Membership commitment has been a key issue to Chinese workplace trade union reform under the new situation. Although researches of union commitment in western countries are relatively mature, their conclusions can not explain union commitment in Chinese context, especially in the background that the All-China Federation of Trade Unions(ACFTU) places great emphasis on unions’ representative function through democratic workplace trade union elections. Although there is now a large degree of consensus about the antecedents of union commitment in western countries, there remains some argument about the relationships among workplace labor relations climate(LR climate), employees’ perceived psychological contract breach and union commitment. Consequently, appreciation of the effect of temporal and spatial dimensions, as well as more rigorous methods is needed. Therefore, this paper mainly focus on the following four questions in Chinese context:(1) the relationship between workplace LR climate and individual union commitment;(2) the relationship between employees’ perceived psychological contract breach and union commitment;(3) the process that how the workplace LR climate influences individual union commitment(mediating mechanism);(4) how the democratic workplace trade union elections influence the relationships among workplace LR climate, employees’ perceived psychological contract breach and union commitment.In order to get better understanding of those questions, this paper adopted the concurrent triangulation strategy. First, six hypotheses were developed based on Chinese union’s dual institutional identity, the union process democratic theory, psychological contract theory and social information processing theory. Then, these hypotheses were tested by hierarchical linear modeling results from a sample of 1211 rank-and-file employees nested within 37 enterprises in the Pearl River Delta. Finally, the quantitative study was supplemented by six in-depth case studies. The results were presented as follows:First, there was a significant positive relationship between the workplace LR climate and individual union commitment. Managerial industrial relations ideologies have been critical in determining union functioning in Chinese context, and then the employees believe that workplace trade union always sides with the management. Consequently, when the LR climate is conflictual, the workplace trade union will experience difficulties serving the representative function. The employees believe that workplace trade union can not help them to solve their problems, and their union commitment is relatively low. When the LR climate is cooperative, the workplace trade union will be effective in serving the representative function. The employees will be satisfied with the workplace trade union and their union commitment is relatively high. Besides, workplace LR climate can be considered as a particular labor relations context with the potential to influence individual union commitment equally in the same workplace.Second, there was a significant negative relationship between employees’ perceived psychological contract breach and union commitment. Chinese unions’ dual institutional identity guarantees ACFTU’s governmental status. However, the governmental status prevents the workplace trade unions from acting like a genuine representative of workers. Besides, the young rank-and-file employees appear to be demanding more about interest other than legitimate rights. However, the workplace trade union fails to effectively handle the interest-based disputes, as a result of the tripartite mechanisms “with Chinese characteristics”. Therefore, when the young rank-and-file employees perceive psychological contract breach, their commitment to the union is relatively low.Third, there was a positive indirect relationship between workplace LR climate and individual union commitment via individual psychological contract breach. Positive workplace LR climate transmit information to employees about fair allocation of employment relations and high-quality social exchange between management and employees, which influences employees’ perceived psychological contract breach, the most important and direct antecedent of employees’ union commitment.Fourth, the democratic workplace trade union elections moderated the relationship between employees’ psychological contract breach and union commitment, which indicated that whenever the enterprises implementing democratic union elections, the negative relationship was weaker. This can be explained by rank-and-file control to ensure union accountability and representativeness in the process of the democratic workplace trade union elections, and the process in turn increase rank-and-file employees’ union commitment. Besides, the democratic workplace trade union elections moderated the relationship between workplace LR climate and individual union commitment, which indicated that whenever the enterprises not implementing democratic union elections, the positive relationship was stronger. This can be explained by the enhancement of workplace trade union independence and representativeness in the process of democratic union elections, and the process reduces the influence of managerial industrial relations ideologies in determining union functioning.The theoretical contributions can be summarized as the following three points. First, based on Chinese unions’ dual institutional identity, this paper proposes and finds the relationships among workplace LR climate, individual perceived psychological contract breach and union commitment in the Chinese context. These results extend western union commitment research to a new context for understanding the effect of special dimension, and enrich the empirical research of trade unions “with Chinese characteristics” from union commitment perspective. Second, based on psychological contract theory and social information processing theory, this paper proposes and finds the cross-level mediating role of individual psychological contract breach in the relationship between workplace LR climate and individual union commitment. This extends previous union commitment research by considering individual-level psychological mechanisms through which workplace LR climate influences individual union commitment. Third, based on union procedural democratic theory, this paper proposes and finds the moderating role of the democratic workplace trade union elections on the relationship between individual psychological contract breach and union commitment, and the relationship between workplace LR climate and individual union commitment. These results confirm the boundary condition about the relationships among workplace LR climate, employees’ perceived psychological contract breach and union commitment in Chinese context. Besides, this paper integrates with democratic elections research and union commitment research, which provides theoretical explanation from the perspective of union commitment for the representation of democratic elected workplace trade union. Empirically, this paper provides implications to workplace trade unions for building membership commitment under the new situation.