Lukewarm or enthusiastic supporters? : Exploring union member attitudes towards social investment and compensatory policy

Abstract

Although social investment has become an increasingly important topic in the welfare policy discourse, reform efforts are stalling in many contexts. We examine whether labour unions and their members may be one factor contributing to the varying implementation across countries. In particular, we focus on the difference in the policy attitudes of union members and non-members. Using a new comparative survey, we investigate how union member attitudes toward social investment and classic compensatory policy differ from those of non-members, and how these differences vary across countries. We find that union members appear to be lukewarm supporters: even though union members are generally supportive of social investment policies, they tend to support compensatory policies even more. We also find cross-national variation in these associations, for which we provide some tentative explanations.