‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’: Frustrated Demand for Union Voice in Britain∗

In this paper we model the desire for union voice as a consumer choice problem. For employees, unionisation is one way to satiate a generic demand for employee voice and due process at work. For suppliers, which in our model are either unions or personnel departments within firms, the problem resides in identifying worker sup-populations (segments) with greater demand schedules for employee voice. After formalising the segmentation model we turn to empirical estimates of desired unionisation in Britain. We do this by first tracking the observable purchase of voice through union membership across segments over the period 1983-1998. Next we estimate the independent effects of worker segments on the purchase of union membership in 1998 in a multivariate framework. Finally we estimate the degree of frustrated demand for unionisation across segments and show potential unionisation rates by segment based on rates of frustrated demand among non-members and satisfied demand among members.