Labor unions, work contexts, and workers' access to work-family policies

Unions serve as primary labor market institutions that improve employees' working conditions, yet existing literature offers mixed results of their influence on workers' access to work-family policies. This may be partially due to the extant literature having not considered possible variation across work contexts. In this study, I ask whether union coverage can increase workers' access to work-family policies and examine how family-friendly work contexts-public sector organizations and female-dominated occupations-can modify these union effects in the United States. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 97 (2000-2017) and individual-fixed effect models, I analyze the impact of transitioning from a nonunion worker to a union-represented worker on the worker's access to three work-family policies: paid parental leave, schedule control, and paid sick/vacation days. Results show that changing from a nonunion position to a union-represented one increases workers' access to paid parental leave and paid sick/vacation days but decreases access to schedule control. The findings also show that workers in public sector organizations and female-dominated occupations tend to experience outsized benefits of union coverage on access to longer paid sick/vacation days. These findings suggest that the advantages of union coverage in workers' access to work-family policies may be influenced by gendered work contexts.