Nonunion forms of collective voice, such as joint consultative committees of managers and employees, are common in Britain. However, in the absence of membership dues and true independence from management, it seems unlikely that they can overcome the collective-action problem in delivering public goods.4

There are a number of possible explanations for this unanticipated result. First, union members may have a higher level of dissatisfaction with the organisation and management processes (Freeman and Medoff, 1984: 21; Bryson et al., 2004), including communications and participative arrangements, and therefore perceive less favourably their degree of influence within the organisation (Kleinman, 2000: 403–404) or the degree of managerial responsiveness (Bryson et al., 2006). Bryson (2004) found that union members had a higher level of job dissatisfaction than non-union workers but that after an extensive array of control variables were included, no significant negative relationship was found. This finding, they suggested, may well be due to a selection bias on the part of employees. Employees who had higher aspirations for their working life may be more likely to join a union. This proposition resonates well in the case of PSR, where some 63.8 per cent of unionised employees indicated that a major reason for joining the union was because they wanted to have a say in matters affecting their working life. Unions themselves may also contribute to this dissatisfaction by raising employee expectations that they are unable to meet (see also discussion on ‘consciousness raising’ in Guest and Conway, 2004: 115–116) and by providing their members with considerable information about problems within the organisation and the problems they are encountering with management. This is likely to be part of the explanation for the findings of this research as at the time of the survey, PSR management were keen to introduce a performance-related pay scheme which had led to an active campaign of opposition by the union.A second explanation is that union members may have higher expectations of voice. Employees join unions for a variety of reasons (Peetz, 1998), but overall, they expect unions to make a difference to their working lives. As Bryson and Freeman (2007: 84) found, ‘unionised workers reported more problems with management’ than non-union workers. In the case of PSR, the major reasons for employees joining the union were a belief in unions, wanting to have a say in things that affect their working life and a belief that unions generate better wages and conditions. Clearly, these union members had high expectations concerning voice. Yet, it was also the case that these expectations were not being met. Improved wages and working conditions were becoming harder to achieve as the enterprise bargaining system, with its emphasis on productivity improvements, had led to trade-offs involving redundancies, a decline in wage relativities with the private sector, and the possibility of a new performance-based pay scheme being introduced.A third explanation is that the overall focus within PSR at the time of the research had shifted from curiosity-led to commercially-driven research with an emphasis on productivity and efficiency. For employees of PSR, most of who were accustomed to the more protected working environment of the public sector, this meant that external factors were now driving research, and the scientific arguments used in the past for justifying research projects were becoming less important. In this environment, the value of union membership was becoming more marginal as union members had less protection than that of the past in the case of redundancies and adverse performance appraisals. In addition, other benefits of union membership such as access to grievance procedures were available to all employees regardless of their union status. It may also have been the case that management's approach to reform, for example the introduction of a performance-based pay scheme that ran counter to the wishes of union members and past practices, may have led many unionists to believe they were being targeted. In this context, the tense state of the relationship between management and the union may have created a negative perception of collective union voice (Freeman and Medoff, 1984).

. Organisational commitment was measured by the nine-item version of Porter's organisational commitment scale (Porter et al., 1974; Mowday et al., 1979). This scale was used because of its reliability and validity (Mowday et al., 1979), and its widespread use and acceptance (Morris et al., 1993). A five-point Likert scale was used and individual scores were calculated by averaging the responses to the items (α = 0.86).

Various meanings and definitions of voice had been advanced in the literature. Dundon et al. (2004: 1153) noted that the ‘precise meaning of the term “employee voice” ’ was open to question, though there were some commonalities. Voice mechanisms were generally seen as a way to provide employees with the ability to articulate concerns and to influence the actions of management. Employee voice had commonly been defined as a two-way process of communication, which is characterised by an exchange of information (Marchington et al., 2001; see also Wilkinson et al., 2004). Employee voice could therefore be seen in terms of three dimensions: the provision of information by management to employees, the willingness of management to listen to employees and management's preparedness to discuss work-related problems and issues (see Van Dyne et al., 2003; Marchington, 2006; Bryson and Freeman, 2007; Cannell, 2008).

They are not alone in that view. Some of the world's biggest soccer clubs, such as Manchester City, Santos, Schalke 04, Ajax and Paris St Germain, have signed up soccer players to represent them in esports in recent years.

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This article addresses this deficiency by focusing on the question ‘does union membership enhance employee perceptions of voice?’

We suggested that employee perceptions of voice vary between the different levels of an organisation and proposed that trade union membership will be more likely to enhance individual employee perceptions of voice at the wider organisational level.

While a small, although growing, body of research has emerged that focuses on individual perceptions of voice (Withey and Cooper, 1989; Leck and Saunders, 1992; Luchak, 2003; Avery and Quiñones, 2004; Bryson, 2004), little attempt has been made to understand how trade union membership impacts these perceptions.

Contemporary research findings contest the accepted wisdom in the industrial relations literature that unions are the primary mechanism of employee voice through their representative role (Freeman and Rogers, 1993; Lansbury et al., 1996; Kaufman and Taras, 1999; Bryson and Freeman, 2007). As Addison and Belfield (2004: 564) argued, the collective voice model is deficient for ‘uncritically equating collective voice with autonomous unionism’.

As Addison and Belfield (2004: 564) argued, the collective voice model is deficient for ‘uncritically equating collective voice with autonomous unionism’.

(Freeman and Rogers, 1993; Lansbury et al., 1996; Kaufman and Taras, 1999; Bryson and Freeman, 2007).

Over the past two decades, the collective union voice view has been challenged as research has broadened to include direct voice mechanisms within a variety of non-union settings (McCabe and Lewin, 1992; McLoughlin and Gourlay, 1994; Terry, 1999; Benson, 2000; Gollan, 2003, 2006; Butler, 2005; Dietz et al., 2005; Dundon et al., 2005; Haynes, 2005; Machin and Wood, 2005; Taras and Kaufman, 2006; Bryson and Freeman, 2007; Dundon and Gollan, 2007).

(Freeman and Medoff, 1984).

(Gospel and Wood, 2003: 2; see also Lewin and Mitchell, 1992; Haynes et al., 2005; Freeman et al., 2007).

The company had been owned by members of the same family for more than a century and their management style was characterized by benevolent paternalism. However, with increased market competition, declining profits, lost export contracts and redundancy, the company’s owners decided to distance Beverage Co from its informal industrial relations history. In its place they introduced a more strategic form of human resource management, which included several employee participation (EP) schemes.

A similar team structure exists at the head office, with clerical workers engaged in administration, sales and marketing. However, there is no union recognition for these employees and despite several requests from the GMB union; management has decided to keep this side of the business non-unionized.

Here, the nature of work is organized around distinct production cells. Each production cell comprises approximately 10 employees, all of whom work on different production lines thatmake food and drink flavourings, including vanilla, coke, soup and meat additives.

There is union recognitionfor around 65 process operatives based at the manufacturing plant.