Author:

Keywords:

worker representatives, gender, conflict management, social support and culture.

Abstract:

Changing industrial relations are affecting the role of worker representatives around Europe. Worker representatives more and more are negotiating with management on behalf of the employees, and act as a mediator between management and their co-workers. This challenging position is still mostly occupied by men, with only a small percentage of worker representatives being female, although participation of women would contribute to more social innovations, according to Dean (2006). One reason might be, that female representatives act differently in negotiations, do get involved less in tough bargaining, and perceive less support in the organisation for this demanding role. Therefore we hypothesized: a.) Female representatives are more accommodating in conflicts with management, compared with men. b.) Accommodating behaviour is related with less perceived job resources (autonomy and social support), especially for women. In this study we approach different theoretical frameworks to analyze the differences in the behaviour of women in their position in the union and in their role as negotiators. We explore the experience of work by male and female worker representatives, focusing on the relation between the perceived job resources (autonomy and social support) and the behaviour in organizational conflicts. We focus on accommodating ( giving in) behaviour, which we see as detrimental to their position and the holding of power inside the organizations. To investigate these issues we analyze a sample of 1938 shop stewards, both male and female, from four European countries (Spain, Belgium, Holland and Denmark). Using multiple regression for testing our hypotheses, we arrive at the conclusion that female representatives perceive autonomy and social support differently than male. This differentiation is only significant in countries where women posses less power positions (Spain and Belgium). Consequently, the conflict management behaviour of male and female is affected differently. We explore interventions to promote women in the role as worker representatives, as trade unions seem to be still male – dominated organisations.