Union Characteristics and its Impact on Absenteeism in the Context of Metal Industry in South Korea

Purpose – This study aims to examine whether key differences in characteristics of unions have significant implications for absenteeism. To uncover what characteristics of union made workers make decisions to be absent, this study used such key dimensions of unionism as democracy, cooperative strategy of a union, and d density rate. Research design and methodology – The research model of this study is that absenteeism has positive relations with union s democracy and density. But it has negative relations with union cooperative strategy. This study was conducted by survey method on 333local unionized business entities of metal industry in South Korea. Results – The result shows that significant and positive relationship between unions with high density rates, democracy and absenteeism which is in line with the argument of the previous studies. Different from the expectation, the hypotheses 2, it has been shown that there is positive relation between cooperative strategy of union and the decision of workers to be absent. Conclusions – Employers with unions with high density rates could not fully exercise disciplinary power against those workers absent at workplace since a strong union shields them effectively from punishments by employers.