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korean management review - Vol. 51 , No. 4

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korean management review - Vol. 51, No. 4, pp. 1049-1073
Abbreviation: kmr
ISSN: 1226-1874 (Print)
Print publication date 31 Aug 2022
Received 02 Jan 2022 Revised 03 May 2022 Accepted 22 May 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17287/kmr.2022.51.4.1049
Changes in the Attitudes Toward Trade Unions of the MZ Youth Generation
Minju Shin ; Heung-Jun Jung
(First Author) Research Center for Innovative firms, Kookmin University (minjushin@kookmin.ac.kr)
(Corresponding Author) Seoul National University of Science and Technology (hjunjung@seoultech.ac.kr)
MZ세대의 노동조합에 대한 태도 변화

Copyright 2011 THE KOREAN ACADEMIC SOCIETY OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.


Funding Information ▼ Seoul National University of Science and Technology

Abstract

This study analyzed the changes in the perception of the youth generation about the trade unions and their instrumentality. Using data from the 2006 and 2019 labor panels of the Korea Labor Institute, it was confirmed that the MZ youth generation perceived the possibility of improving their socioeconomic status as lower than that of the younger generation who responded to the 2006 data. The authors judged that the leading causes of the lower socio-economic status improvement potential were the discriminatory labor market and lack of opportunity. In this context, the authors hypothesized that the recent generation of young people will perceive union instrumentality to be higher than that of the previous youth. As a result of the analysis, as hypothesized, it was confirmed that the younger generation's awareness of the union's instrumentality toward wages, employment, and fair treatment has increased. At the same time, it was statistically significant that the younger generation's willingness to join the trade unions increased compared to the previous one, and the youth who had already joined the union had a lower intention to withdraw from the trade unions.


Keywords: the MZ youth generation, socioeconomic status, union instrumentality, willingness to join the union, intention to withdraw from union membership

Acknowledgments

This research is supported by Seoul National University of Science and Technology Research Fund (in 2022)

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∙ The author Minju Shin is a senior researcher at Research Center for Innovative Platform, Kookmin University. She received her Ph.D in Business Administration from Korea University. Her research interests include gender discrimination, MZ generations, and platform labor.

∙ The author Heung-Jun Jung is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Business Administration, Seoul National University of Science and Technology, College of Technology and Management. He received his Ph.D. in Business Administration from Korea University. After obtaining his doctorate, he worked as a research fellow at the Korea Labor Institute. His major research areas are labor relations, business ethics, non-regular workers, and platform labor.