Union member speaks

IN MARCH, 1951, District 9 of the International Association of Machinists-AFL, asked the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, University of Illinois, to make a study of membership attitudes toward the union. The request came about largely as a result of Institute extension programs with the District, and, since it fit into the Institute's on-going research program, was accepted. Although District officials were interested primarily in the practical implications of such a study, the Institute and the authors were concerned mainly with increasing our knowl edge of one particular type of institution-the labor union-as well as testing and developing social science concepts and methods in an empirical situation.

The Union Member Speaks is a report on the study that ensued. Previous mimeographed reports, stressing the imme diate practical implications of our findings, have been made to the business agents of District 9. Several reports on theoretical and methodological aspects of the research, largely of interest to the academician, have appeared in scholarly journals. This volume is addressed primarily to the lay reader, in the hope that studies such as this one may help him to gain insight into one of the powerful forces of our nation today-unions. But it includes a detailed, technical set of appendices for our aca demic colleagues or others who may be interested in the methods by which our findings were obtained. The appendices deal with the formulation and implementation of a research design, as well as some of the statistical findings.