Peer support in industrial action: How colleagues' anticipated social support affects willingness to strike

Abstract

This article studies how the support workers expect from colleagues for strike participation affects their willingness to participate in a strike. We formulate hypotheses on the effects of anticipated social support for participation as well as anticipated social support for nonparticipation. We include the potentially mediating effect of social identification and the social costs of (non-)participation. We test our hypotheses on survey data of 725 Dutch employees collected in 2010. Using structural equation modeling techniques, we find that the support for participation has a stronger positive effect on the willingness to strike than the support for nonparticipation has on the willingness to strike. In addition, our findings suggest that union membership substitutes the effect of social support of colleagues.