The determinants of trade union membership growth in Malaysia / Martina Angie Roea

Trade union is an organization of workers who have combined together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. Trade unions are important for several reasons. Unions not only negotiate wages for their members, it also affects fringe benefits, work allocation, job security and employee participation practices. A new model of trade union membership growth in Malaysia for the period 1980-2009 is proposed. In the model, it incorporates the economic factors as the explanatory variables. This paper examines whether consumer price index (CPI), growth of gross domestic products (GDP), and unemployment rate in Malaysia affect the trade unions membership growth in Malaysia. The annual Malaysian time-series data for the period 1980-2009 was used in this study. The ordinary least squares method was employed by performing simple regression analysis and multiple regression analysis. The final result shows that all of the explanatory variables determined the trade union membership growth in Malaysia.