The Curious Case of the Grumpy Union Member

Relying on the data of the Swiss Household Panel, the paper aims to make sense of the puzzling dissatisfaction union members exhibit in most dimensions of their job. A longitudinal approach reveals that the dissatisfaction is to a large extent explained by contextual and individual time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity. A decline in job satisfaction is for many workers the main reason to join a union. Job satisfaction climbs back as the years of membership increase, which confirms that unions do indeed have positive effects on the professional well-being of their members.