I-O psychology and labor: Making up for benign neglect, antipathy, and missed opportunitiesFootnote 1
This article comprises six sections: (1) an introduction that describes the nature of the relationship between industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology and labor and justifies the focus on unions; two sections explaining some of the reasons why that relationship developed as it has—that is, (2) historical circumstances in the early development of the field, as well as (3) the consequent professional value system that reinforced that relationship; (4) a section illustrating unacknowledged potential ethical issues resulting from that I-O value system; (5) examples from the related field of industrial relations (IR) illustrating how many of those issues might be resolved in I-O psychology; and (6) the need to acknowledge the current antilabor, antidemocratic sociopolitical zeitgeist in the United States.
Introduction
It seems incontrovertible that I-O psychology ignores organized labor, and—despite some meager early- and mid-20th century forays—pretty much always has. For example, the 57 chapters of the four-volume Handbook of Industrial & Organizational Psychology (Dunnette, & Hough, Reference Dunnette and Hough1990, Reference Dunnette and Hough1991, Reference Dunnette and Hough1992; Triandis et al., Reference Triandis, Dunnette and Hough1994) include no such topics; The Guidelines for Education & Training in Industrial-Organizational Psychology (SIOP, 2016) showcase only four work areas: academe, consulting, industry, and government. A marvelously detailed history of I-O psychology in the United States fails even to mention labor (Katzell & Austin, Reference Katzell and Austin1992). Although that historical summary lists 38 topics in I-O psychology, the term labor unions does not appear. In the words of a famous I-O psychologist more than a generation ago, “the tendency of industrial psychologists to ignore labor unions has been remarkable” (Stagner, Reference Stagner1981, p. 321).
There have been a couple of exceptions, but they only serve to accentuate the point. For example, Zickar and Gibby (Reference Zickar, Gibby, Koppes, Thayer, Vinchur and Salas2007) point out that “many of the early industrial psychologists would work with these [labor leaders at the turn of the 20th century] and consider them important colleagues and constituents…. [But] industrial psychologists soon became allied with management and focused on topics of interest to management” (pp. 62, 65). One topic in I-O psychology that has been studied in the context of unions is leadership (Barling et al., Reference Barling, Loughlin and Kelloway2002, Reference Barling, Christie, Hoption and Zedeck2011; Fullagar et al., Reference Fullagar, McCoy and Shull1992; Kelloway & Barling, Reference Kelloway and Barling1993; McClane, Reference McClane1991; Fullager et al., Reference Fullagar, McCoy and Shull1992), although the amount of research on union leadership is meager compared to leadership of for-profit organizations.
Despite the relative lack of research on organized labor by I-O psychologists, Wood (Reference Wood, Rogelberg, Shockley and Tonidandel2017) noted four areas in which they have made contributions related to organized labor. First, psychologists have studied conflict and conflict resolution, but their focus has been mainly on interpersonal sources of conflict, not the larger structural conflicts of interest and power dynamics embedded in employment relationships. Second, they have explored why people join and participate in trade unions and, more broadly, why they value certain forms of workplace participation and voice. Third, they have examined many of the substantive issues behind workplace grievances, such as job insecurity, job design, discrimination, workplace violence, and bullying. And fourth, as interest grows in job quality and employee well-being, measures of commitment, engagement, retention, and job satisfaction are increasingly included in employment studies in disciplines outside of I-O psychology.
Why focus on unions?
The right of workers to organize has been viewed as so fundamental that it was enshrined in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of his [sic] interests” (1948, Article 23[4]). Carriere (Reference Carriere2020) notes that “organized labor has a myriad of positive effects on an individual’s psychological well-being by fostering a sense of social connectedness, trust, and fellowship,” including higher life satisfaction and greater charitable giving than nonunionized workers (p. 61).
The SAGE Encyclopedia of Industrial and Organizational Psychology contains a useful, informative general entry on unions. It notes that “a substantial body of research indicates that the protections and benefits that all workers enjoy can be attributed in large part to unions…. Any scientific field that has as its aim the study of people in the workplace must acknowledge the influence that unions have on organizational behavior” (Fullagar, Reference Fullagar, Rogelberg, Shockley and Tonidandel2017, pp. 1682, 1684). However, although the productivity of the US economy increased by 86% from roughly 1980 to 2024, the compensation of nonsupervisory production workers increased by only 32% (Economic Policy Institute, 2025). Not coincidentally, over this same period, union membership declined precipitously—inversely associated with an ever-widening income gap between the top 10% and the rest of the workforce (Schierholz, Reference Schierholz2019). It has been estimated that the decline in organized labor explains about one-third of the growth in income inequality (Mishel, Reference Mishel2021b), and “despite its great wealth, for decades the United States has had greater income inequality than all other developed economies” (Mishel, Reference Mishel2021a; Tsui & Enderle, Reference Tsui and Enderle2018, p. 156). If I-O psychologists want to address the pressing societal problems of our time, we cannot continue to ignore what unions have done historically, and as we note later in this paper, unions are in the forefront of current efforts to reverse the long-term stagnation in wages and income inequality.
A US Treasury Department report, “Labor Unions and the U.S. Economy” (Feiveson, Reference Feiveson2023), documents not only that union members earn 10–20% more than nonunion members (the so-called “union wage premium”) but that unions also “serve to strengthen the middle class and grow the economy at large” (p. 1). They do so by virtue of several “spillover” mechanisms such as when “nonunionized firms in competition with unionized workplaces…choose to raise wages, change hiring practices, or improve their workplace environment to attract workers” (p. 6).
Therefore, a profession like I-O psychology, whose avowed mission is “to enhance human well-being…in organizations and work settings” (SIOP, 2025), ought to be actively supporting unions and studying how they contribute to worker well-being. Yet, Fullager’s (Reference Fullagar, Rogelberg, Shockley and Tonidandel2017) encyclopedia entry acknowledges that I-O psychology “has largely chosen to ignore unions, in terms of both its research focus and its exclusion of union-related topics in popular textbooks” (p. 1683). As social scientists, there is probably much we could learn about organizational dynamics if labor unions were included as a focus of our curiosity and concern. A recent example illustrates the fertile ground for exploring how workers experience and, in some cases, demonstrate through their actions strong views on the need to address their frustrations. In September 2024, Boeing factory workers voted overwhelmingly (95%) to go out on strike and did so for more than 7 weeks, rejecting two tentative contracts that their own union representatives had successfully negotiated and endorsed (Weber & Terlep, Reference Weber and Terlep2024). There were likely multiple (undocumented) reasons for these workers’ frustration with negotiators on both sides of the table, but the fact that they had not had a significant raise in a decade seems a likely precipitating factor (Chokshi & Kay, Reference Chokshi and Kay2024).Footnote 2 In addition, new wins for organized labor include the unionization of more than 600 Starbucks locations around the country (84.9% of stores that have held a unionization vote have voted to unionize) as well as, in 2024, the first successful unionization drive in the South with the United Auto Workers winning representation in a VW plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee.Footnote 3
As will be made clear in the pages that follow, we suggest that this schism between I-O psychology and labor was not inevitable and should end. Consider just some of the topics in I-O that align with union concerns: work-family balance, burnout, job design, fair pay, organizational justice, worker safety, and employee engagement. In fact, we believe a case could be made that we overlook labor in general—that is, the working class and individual workers—not just organized labor (Bergman & Jean, Reference Bergman and Jean2016; Lefkowitz, Reference Lefkowitz2011, Reference Lefkowitz2016; Weiss & Rupp, Reference Weiss and Rupp2011).
What has I-O failed to appreciate about Unions?
Some of us might wonder, “What’s the big deal?” After all, only 9.9% of wage and salary workers in the United States in 2024 were union members—about half of what it was 40 years earlier (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025).Footnote 4 And the membership rate in the private sector is only 6.7%, whereas in the public sector it exceeds one-third (35.7%).Footnote 5 On the other hand, from 2021 through 2024, petitions for union elections at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) have more than doubled, indicating growing interest in unionization (Poydock et al., Reference Poydock, McNicholas, Sherer and Shierholz2025). In addition, survey data show a substantial increase in the percentage of the workforce that is curious about unions and would join a union if given the opportunity to do so on their jobs (Ahlquist et al., Reference Ahlquist, Grumbach and Kochan2024; Kochan, et al., Reference Kochan, Riordan, Kowalski, Kahn and Yang2019a). That is corroborated by polling data from the AFL-CIO (Giorno, Reference Giorno2023) and from Gallup (Saad, Reference Saad2023) indicating that approval ratings of unions have been increasing (from an all-time low of 48% in 2009, just after the 2008 recession) to just over two-thirds (88% of those under age 30, according to the AFL-CIO data). Although a number of factors likely contributed to the declining rate of unionization, including improvements in human resource practices in some firms that reduced the incentives for workers to organize (Kochan et al., Reference Kochan, Katz and McKersie1986), there is clear evidence that aggressive anti-union actions by powerful employers, as well as weakened federal and state labor laws, have been important contributing factors (Logan, Reference Logan2025; Poydock et al., Reference Poydock, McNicholas, Sherer and Shierholz2025). Indeed, several states have recently either outlawed collective bargaining for public employees or have imposed significant new restrictions on public-sector unions (Keith & Zickar, Reference Keith and Zickar2025; Mayorquín, Reference Mayorquín2025). How should the data illustrating increased interest and declining membership affect the field of I-O psychology?
The history of our disinterest, neglect, and/or antipathy has been fairly well documented (e.g., Gordon & Burt, Reference Gordon and Burt1981; Huszczo et al., Reference Huszczo, Wiggins and Currie1984; Kochan et al., Reference Kochan, Yang, Kimball and Kelly2019b; Shostak, Reference Shostak and Fisk1964; Vesper et al., in press; Zickar, Reference Zickar2004; Zickar & Gibby, Reference Zickar, Gibby, Koppes, Thayer, Vinchur and Salas2007). Moreover, there is evidence that it has extended to I-O psychologists employing personality assessments, attitude surveys, and pre-employment selection procedures on behalf of management for active union avoidance (Hamner & Smith, Reference Hamner and Smith1978; Schriesheim, Reference Schriesheim1978; Zickar, Reference Zickar2001). Relatively little has been written in I-O psychology by way of explanation.
Why is this the case?
I-O psychology’s longstanding disinterest and antipathy prompt the following questions: Why has this occurred? What does it signify? What have been the consequences for the social science of I-O psychology; for its practice; for our understanding of work, workers, and organizations; and for the well-being of employees as well as organizational effectiveness? As will be made clear in the pages that follow, there are indicators that this schism was not inevitable, and it likely has much to do with the values of the field.
History of the relationship
Although the field of I-O psychology largely ignores organized labor, several early applied psychologists treated labor unions as an important constituency that was worthy of collaboration and consultation. In 1913, Hugo Munsterberg worked with Samuel Gompers, the president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), to survey blue-collar workers on their levels of job satisfaction; Gompers also corresponded with James McKeen Cattell and Walter van dyke Bingham on issues related to labor and the workplace. Gompers was the initial vice president of the Personnel Research Federation, a pioneering effort between social scientists and business leaders to study and promote best practices in business (Personnel Research Federation, 1921). Finally, Walter Dill Scott refused to consult with organizations that were virulently anti-union, and he worked in Chicago to promote peace between organized labor and the business community (Ferguson, Reference Ferguson and von Haller Gilmer1962; Zickar, Reference Zickar2004). These early I-O psychologists were generally neutral in their opinions of organized labor, not fighting on its behalf, although they worked to include them in deliberations about work. They viewed labor as an important constituency in the business world (what we would refer to today as primary stakeholders)—organizations to consult and work with in establishing the value of the new field of I-O psychology.
Several more overtly prolabor I-O psychologists emerged in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Arthur Kornhauser worked with labor unions to apply I-O psychology techniques to help them function better. He also studied how to reduce stress and improve the health of unionized autoworkers (Kornhauser, Reference Kornhauser1965; Zickar, Reference Zickar2003). Stagner (Reference Stagner1956) published a book titled Psychology of Industrial Conflict, which explored the application of psychology to the study of organized labor, and spent much of his career advocating for the strengthening of labor unions (Lachman, Reference Lachman1998). Although there have been I-O psychologists since these early rounds of psychologists who were encouraging of labor and, in some cases, prolabor, the number of psychologists who have studied or worked with organized labor remains exceedingly small, as illustrated in the introduction to this article.
Moreover, starting in the 1930s, some work by I-O psychologists was seen as weaponized against organized labor, eventually leading cultural historian Loren Baritz (Reference Baritz1960) to derisively label I-O psychologists (whom he referred to more broadly as “industrial social scientists”) as the servants of power. He noted cases in which personality tests were used to identify likely union members, thereby thwarting national labor laws that prohibit employers from asking applicants directly whether they favor unions (Zickar, Reference Zickar2001). Companies such as Sears, Roebuck, and Company used employee opinion surveys to identify plants and stores particularly vulnerable to unionization efforts (Jacoby, Reference Jacoby1986). Management theorist Elton Mayo believed that union leaders were motivated by “psychopathic” tendencies (Bourke, Reference Bourke1982) and “afflicted with melancholia or nervous breakdown” (O’Connor, Reference O’Connor1999, p. 128), further promoting the idea that social scientists, with a few exceptions, were now, in his opinion, aligned appropriately with management to fight organized labor.
Zickar (Reference Zickar2004) examined the history of I-O psychology and compared the discipline to other social sciences, such as sociology and economics, which both have had more sizable aspects of their fields that consider labor unions. He considered explanations such as limited access to relevant data, early psychologists’ attitude toward unions, limited financial rewards, and the failure to appreciate power differences between workers and managers. He concluded that although all of those reasons were important, the dearth of early, passionate, prolabor psychologists (only Kornhauser and Stagner) helped define the field initially as indifferent to organized labor. In addition, I-O psychologists’ reluctance to acknowledge power differences between workers and management is likely why I-O psychology has remained uninterested in labor unions over the years despite later attempts to stimulate interest (e.g., Huszczo et al., Reference Huszczo, Wiggins and Currie1984). “The fact that these efforts have had little apparent effect reinforces the inference that antagonistic social, cultural, and political forces are at work, including the expression of basic values” (Lefkowitz, Reference Lefkowitz2023, p.370), which leads to the next section where we explore the underlying value system of I-O psychology as well as our ethical norms, and relate them to the field’s tendency to avoid research and practice with labor unions.
The influential role of values in I-O psychology
Suppose that,
As an organizational consultant, you have been recommended to conduct a climate survey for a company with which you have had no contact. You have been meeting with the senior management and others in preparation. Following the most recent meeting you held to discuss how the data will be utilized, the head of HR confidentially disclosed that they have a “hidden agenda.” It seems that a national labor union plans to attempt to organize their hourly employees. The actual (undisclosed) purpose of the survey is to identify “areas of vulnerability” and “problem employees” to reduce the likely success of the organizing drive.
There are several pragmatic and professional issues an experienced I-O practitioner might consider when deciding how to proceed. Rarely acknowledged, however, is the role played by one’s values. Some I-O psychologists probably would have little problem accepting this consulting opportunity; some would be strongly disinclined. What might account for that difference? Perhaps more important than pragmatic concerns are one’s beliefs, assumptions, preferences, attitudes, and expectations—that is, one’s evaluative values—regarding “labor unions,” “management,” “management prerogatives,” “worker rights,” “labor-management relations,” and so on.
So, what are your values as they relate to this scenario? Are you entirely sanguine about accepting this consulting project under the conditions described? Or do you view this potential client as an anathema? Or are you conditionally somewhere in between; for example, perhaps you would find nothing wrong with helping implement this client’s anti-union aims if they were acknowledged openly?
Given the fundamentally hostile nature of labor–management relations in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century—when I-O psychology was developing and trying to demonstrate its worth to business—it is not surprising that the field adopted the value system of its clients and employers. This is likely one of the reasons the profession has been so successful. Indeed, an estimated 72% of all full-time I-O psychologists are practitioners (SIOP, 2022). However, unlike managers in production, finance, engineering, advertising, and so on, psychologists come from a tradition that incorporates both technical (i.e., scientific) as well as humanistic/beneficent values. Although I-O has preserved and emphasized the first component, it has allowed the second to be overshadowed and largely supplanted by a corporatist–managerialist perspective.
The implicit corporatist values of I-O psychology have been criticized for some years (e.g., Baritz, Reference Baritz1960; Kornhauser, Reference Kornhauser1947; Lefkowitz, Reference Lefkowitz1990, Reference Lefkowitz2005), highlighting their detrimental effects not only on professional practice but also on our science (Lefkowitz, Reference Lefkowitz2012, Reference Lefkowitz2013). The practitioner facet of the field’s only explicit values model, the scientist–practitioner (S-P) model, has:
long been dominated by the economizing and productivity values of an idealized free market capitalism…. [but] … when those served are business organizations dominated by a value system of short-term profit-making for shareholders, actions on their behalf may sometimes conflict with our avowed professional objective “to improve the condition of individuals, organizations and society” (APA, 2017). (Lefkowitz, Reference Lefkowitz2023, p. 373)
A vision of potential solutions to this problem has been proposed (Lefkowitz, Reference Lefkowitz2003, Reference Lefkowitz2008, Reference Lefkowitz2014, Reference Lefkowitz2023): the inclusion of a person-centered perspective by expanding our guiding values to a scientist–practitioner–humanist (SPH) model. Footnote 6 It can be seen as an elaboration of the tendentious query raised by Arthur Kornhauser (Reference Kornhauser1947) in the field’s early years for “industrial psychology as social science…. Do we work on the problems of the private businessman [sic], or on the problems of society?” (p. 224). His vision of such a social science included studying “what influences, positive and negative, are exerted by labor unions on the personal development and adjustment of working people?” (p. 225).
In addition to a humanistic values orientation, an expanded SPH model for I-O psychology would include: (a) heightened salience of a normative or moral perspective (e.g., explicit endorsement of what organizations should be like; “How ought companies treat their workers?” “Is this the right thing for us to be doing?”); (b) heightened concern for the well-being of individual employees on a par with that for the organization; and (c) heightened concern for the societal consequences of our work, on a par with our focus on its technical competence and economic utility (cf. Lefkowitz, Reference Lefkowitz2003/2023, Chap. 12).
The foregoing discourse concerning humanistic values issues has obvious implications regarding how one ought to react to the hypothetical consulting opportunity at issue. I-O psychology certainly should not be any less concerned for the well-being of employees because they happen to be organized or are contemplating organizing. Indeed, the SPH model is a more expansive model that includes all stakeholders.
The relevance of ethical issues
One’s values strongly influence one’s ethics: “they shape the domain of moral action in which ethical principles and standards are interpreted and followed” (Lefkowitz, Reference Lefkowitz2022, p. 8). One cannot discuss ethics meaningfully without considering the underlying values they represent.
According to the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (APA, 2017), psychologists are committed to using our knowledge “to improve the condition of individuals, organizations and society” (p. 3). The general principles of the code—what Wittmer (Reference Wittmer and Cooper2001), and many others, refer to as “ethical dimensions”—are intended “to guide and inspire psychologists toward the very highest ethical ideals of the profession” (APA, p. 3). However, it is not uncommon to hear I-O psychologists say that the APA code is “too vague, general or ambiguous,” is focused almost exclusively on clinical psychology and related healthcare providers, and is therefore not particularly relevant to I-O psychology (cf. Lefkowitz et al., Reference Lefkowitz, Greenberg, Jeanneret, Knapp, McIntyre, Lowman and Behnke2006). Those critics might be surprised to learn that a carefully designed and executed empirical study based on almost 400 first-person accounts of actual ethical incidents reported by SIOP members concluded that “In many respects, we found that the code generalized to the I-O psychology domain quite well” (Watts et al., Reference Watts, Lefkowitz, Gonzalez and Nandi2023, pp. 160–161).
The APA general principles and ethical standards
The five general principles presented in the APA (2017) code are paraphrased below, with those portions highlighted that seem especially pertinent to the hypothetical scenario. It is also worth noting that they are commensurate with SIOP’s avowed vision statement to “promote worker well-being.”
Beneficence and nonmaleficence. Psychologists seek to safeguard the welfare and rights of those with whom they interact professionally…. They are alert to and guard against…organizational or political factors that might lead to misuse of their influence.
Fidelity and responsibility. Psychologists establish relationships of trust with those with whom they work. … [They] serve the best interests of those with whom they work.
Integrity. Psychologists seek to promote accuracy, honesty, and truthfulness…. [They] do not…engage in fraud, subterfuge, or intentional misrepresentation of fact.
Justice. Psychologists…take precautions to ensure that their potential biases…do not lead to or condone unjust practices.
Respect for people’s rights and dignity. Psychologists respect…the rights of individuals to privacy, confidentiality and self-determination.
The hypothetical (but realistic) consulting project under consideration would violate all five ethical principles. In addition, several of the Ethical Standards of the APA (2017) code, which “set forth enforceable rules of conduct for psychologists” (p. 2) are directly relevant:Footnote 7
1.03. Conflicts between ethics and organizational demands. If the demands of an organization with which psychologists are affiliated or for whom they are working are in conflict with this Ethics Code, psychologists clarify the nature of the conflict, make known their commitment to the Ethics Code, and take reasonable steps to resolve the conflict.
3.04. Avoiding harm. (a) Psychologists take reasonable steps to avoid harming their clients/patients, students, supervisees, research participants, organizational clients, and others with whom they work….
3.11. Psychological services delivered to or through organizations. (a) Psychologists delivering services to or through organizations provide information beforehand to clients and when appropriate those directly affected by the services about (1) the nature and objectives of the services…, (5) the probable uses of services provided and information obtained, … and (7) limits of confidentiality.
Implementation of the proposed consultancy as described would likely violate all three of those enforceable Ethical Standards.
To summarize briefly this and the previous section of the paper, the long-term refusal of I-O psychology to advocate for, engage with, or even study organized labor has its roots in our having long ago largely adopted the values of most of our patrons. That has introduced ethical issues and conflicts with psychology’s humanist tradition that we have rarely acknowledged and need to address going forward.
Potential contributions of I-O psychology to industrial relations
I-O psychologists have much to contribute to the study of workers and unions, but applying our skills in the current environment will require combining our normative perspectives, theories, and research methods with those from other disciplines that have a longer history of examining these issues. To demonstrate the necessary changes, we use examples of past and current research from industrial relations (IR), a field with an extensive history of exploring these topics.
Use I-O methods in an informed way
In the present context, one of I-O psychology’s greatest strengths lies in its ability to measure concepts central to union–management relations, which for many years had been examined by IR researchers primarily using qualitative case study methods. IR has a rich tradition of encouraging researchers to thoroughly understand the institutional context of an issue before defining a research question or selecting a research design. Furthermore, IR is guided by strong normative premises that recognize conflicts of interest and conflict behavior as natural aspects of employment relationships. It values worker voice, and unions as invaluable participants for engaging in negotiations and problem-solving with employers.
For example, in the 1970s one of the biggest challenges facing researchers in this field was to develop principles of collective bargaining in newly emerging union–management settings in the public sector. A debate arose over whether there was anything fundamentally different about public-sector bargaining and private-sector bargaining. However, the literature was not very specific about what features of public-sector organizations or negotiations might require a different analytical perspective. Field research was crucial for gaining a deeper understanding of the dynamics of bargaining in real-world, public-sector settings. This prompted researchers to conduct detailed case studies of negotiations and strikes in various public-sector environments. One of the main findings from these case studies was that city government executives—for example, mayors, city council members, police commissioners, fire commissioners—did not behave as a unified management team; each brought their diverse interests and political allegiances into negotiations with city employees (Juris & Feuille, Reference Juris and Feuille1973; Kochan, Reference Kochan1971; McClennan & Moskow, Reference McClennan and Moskow1968). This led to the perspective that bargaining in the public sector might need to be understood as multiparty rather than bilateral negotiations. This, in turn, led to the application of a research method commonly used in I-O psychology—operationalizing a five-item measure of “multilateral bargaining,” along with a set of testable propositions regarding the factors that contributed to multilateral bargaining in public-sector contexts. The propositions were subsequently tested through a series of surveys conducted with union and management officials involved in these negotiations. From this work emerged a theory of multilateral bargaining that continues to endure (Kochan, Reference Kochan1974).
The lesson from that research is clear: Understand what’s important about the context and the debates among those involved in the practice of the phenomenon (in this case, public-sector collective bargaining). Then, employ behavioral-science methods to develop testable hypotheses using state-of-the-art measurement and modeling techniques.
By the 1980s unions were under attack following Ronald Reagan’s breaking the air traffic controllers’ strike (McCartin, Reference McCartin2011). Although the federal ATC union was in the public sector, Reagan’s actions changed the zeitgeist in labor relations more broadly. Private-sector employers were more openly engaging in anti-union (“union-free”) rhetoric and adopting much more aggressive approaches in collective bargaining. A debate arose over whether this was merely a temporary adjustment to the 1980–82 recession, or an indication of a more permanent change in union–management relations. To address this debate, IR researchers conducted case studies of leading companies, drew on Conference Board surveys of managerial behavior, and supervised PhD dissertations. Access to unions and companies by researchers often drew on contacts with professionals from these organizations who were fellow members of the leading professional association in the field, the Industrial Relations Research Association. The goal was to understand what was causing these changes in practice. Were they simply temporary adjustments to shifting economic and political conditions? Or did they signal more enduring structural changes in power, the outcomes of collective bargaining, and union–management relationships?
IR researchers developed measures to assess the extent to which “structural” shifts in bargaining processes, strikes, and outcomes were occurring in various industries. The results of this combination of methods and studies provided insights that led to the development of a new “strategic choice” theory of IR, demonstrating that the changes taking place were not temporary adjustments. Instead, they would endure for decades to come (Kochan et al., Reference Kochan, Katz and McKersie1986). The key lesson is this: Studying the major changes and controversies unfolding in union–management relations requires drawing on history, possibly challenging conventional wisdom, and analyzing qualitative and quantitative evidence obtained through multiple methods to adjudicate the debates.
What do these examples imply for I-O psychologists today? Once again, a significant debate is under way over recent developments in labor–management relations. Even before the current US administration’s attacks began, IR researchers were questioning and debating whether the upsurges in worker activism, union organizing, and strikes of the past few years were merely temporary or the early stages of a fundamental shift in union–management relations. An early review of these developments showed that (a) there was a significant increase in worker interest in joining a union compared to earlier decades, particularly among young workers; (b) workers and unions were more willing to engage in strikes to address their anger over stagnant wage growth and increases in income inequality experienced over the past several decades; and (c) collective bargaining was generating higher wage settlements than had been experienced in many years.Footnote 8 Yet, the question still remained: Would this upsurge in organizing and more militant bargaining be sustained in the face of a weakening economy, management resistance and government actions?
How might I-O researchers address this question? The first step would be to examine the extensive body of research that has already analyzed the surge in worker activism. Armed with an understanding of what scholars in other disciplines have documented to date about the surge in organizing and collective actions, I-O psychologists could begin to study the issue from the perspective of changing power dynamics in the labor–management relationship or the effects of changes in employment policies on stress, engagement, retention, and employee well-being. Research methods such as sentiment analysis (Sharma et al., Reference Sharma, Ali and Kabir2024) or text analysis (Bengfort et al., Reference Bengfort, Bilbro and Ojeda2018) can reveal possible generational differences and whether the surge is likely to be temporary or sustained over time. Research can also focus on the consequences of the upsurge in worker activism for employers and society.
Employee voice in the workplace
There is a consensus that allowing workers to speak out helps identify relevant issues, thereby contributing to problem-solving, organizational growth, and performance improvement (Chamberlain et al., Reference Chamberlain, Newton and LePine2017; Mori et al., Reference Mori, Cavaliere, Sassetti and Caputo2024). Employee voice is any opportunity or means through which employees express ideas and opinions within an organization (Van Dyne & LePine, Reference Van Dyne and LePine1998; Wilkinson & Fay, Reference Wilkinson and Fay2011). It is often studied by disciplines such as IR, organizational behavior (OB), and human resource management (HRM), which typically do not interact much with each other (Barry & Wilkinson, Reference Barry and Wilkinson2022). Thus, in IR, voice is viewed from a collective perspective as a means of representing employees’ interests (Freeman & Medoff, Reference Freeman and Medoff1984). In OB, employee voice refers to discretionary behaviors that occur in face-to-face settings through direct, informal means (Mowbray et al., Reference Mowbray, Wilkinson and Tse2016). In HRM, scholars refer to voice as formal expressions that may be direct or indirect (Barry & Wilkinson, Reference Barry and Wilkinson2016; Mowbray et al., Reference Mowbray, Wilkinson and Tse2016). This results in a fragmented and compartmentalized body of literature (Mori et al., Reference Mori, Cavaliere, Sassetti and Caputo2024). To adopt a broader view, Mori et al. (Reference Mori, Cavaliere, Sassetti and Caputo2024) proposed three research questions: First, what are the contributions and limitations of different streams of literature (IR, OB, HRM) regarding the micro- and macrolevel aspects of employee voice? Second, how do various forms, channels and mechanisms of voice coexist in the workplace? Third, how are the micro- and macrolevels of employee voice connected within organizations?
Voice gaps
One aspect of this research that may be particularly interesting to I-O researchers is the examination of workers’ expectations regarding their voice at work on various issues versus their actual influence. The differences between expected and actual say and influence have been labeled the “voice gap” at work (Ahlquist et al., Reference Ahlquist, Grumbach and Kochan2024; Diaz-Linhart et al., Reference Diaz-Linhart, Kochan, Minster, Park and Yang2024; Freeman & Rogers, Reference Freeman and Rogers1999). Data from a 2017 national survey reveal that more than 50% of the workforce experiences a “voice gap” regarding wages, benefits, promotions, job security, respect, and protections against abuse and technology (Kochan et al., Reference Kochan, Yang, Kimball and Kelly2019b). A 2025 national survey of job quality produced similar estimates regarding compensation, technology, and working conditions (Jones, Reference Jones2025).
What is causing these persistent voice gaps, and what options might workers and employers consider to close them? Although union representation is one possibility, workers today are also using social media, employee ownership, petitions, protests, and other methods to express their voices (Kochan et al., Reference Kochan, Fine, Bronfenbrenner, Naidu, Barnes, Diaz-Linhaert, Kallas, Kim, Minster, Tong, Townsend and Twiss2023). I-O psychologists interested in studying worker voice will need to examine the full range of ways workers seek a strong voice at work. In addition, what might be the best way(s) to measure worker voice? What are the effects of a voice gap on employee concerns such as job satisfaction, well-being, interest in joining a union, or on employer interests in retention, productivity, and other measures of worker performance? There is some evidence at present (Diaz-Linhart et al., Reference Diaz-Linhart, Kochan, Minster, Park and Yang2024), but much more research is needed to fully understand the impact of worker voice on employees, employers, and society. These are among the issues that I-O psychologists are well equipped to study, and our work will add value.
A related phenomenon is “voice veneer,” in which an employer appears to address the concerns voiced by workers but fails to implement the intended changes (Holm et al., Reference Holm, Fong and Anteby2024). Voice veneer can be difficult to identify because workers often struggle to recognize that managers are not actually addressing the issues they have raised. It can easily occur when workers lack power, are physically and socially isolated, or are out of sight. Voice veneer represents a significant missed opportunity to improve organizations, as illustrated by the extensive literature in I-O psychology on subjects like performance management and procedural justice. Research in performance management demonstrates the strong positive effects of employee preparation and participation throughout the entire process (Aguinis, Reference Aguinis2023; Cascio & Aguinis, Reference Cascio and Aguinis2025). Likewise, procedural justice encompasses organizational policies and rules that enable individuals and groups to express their interests, providing a mechanism for communicating their concerns upward. Concern for procedural justice serves four essential functions: It ensures fair treatment of employees, offers a context for appealing unfair treatment, enhances organizational effectiveness and promotes psychological safety (Cascio, Reference Cascio2025; Hadley et al., Reference Hadley, Mortensen and Edmondson2023; Sheppard et al., Reference Sheppard, Lewicki and Minton1992).
Interest in unions
As noted previously, compared to earlier decades, more workers would join a union today, and more of them are “union curious” than in the past. That is, they may be unsure whether they would join a union if given the chance, but they are interested in learning more about how to consider this question if it were posed to them on the job (Poydock et al., Reference Poydock, McNicholas, Sherer and Shierholz2025). Why is there increased interest? Why are young workers more interested in unions today than in the recent past? Why is there a persistent pattern showing that Blacks and Latinos are about twice as interested in joining a union as Whites (Ahlquist et al, Reference Ahlquist, Grumbach and Kochan2024; Diaz-Linhart, Reference Diaz-Linhart, Kochan, Minster, Park and Yang2024; Freeman & Rogers, Reference Freeman and Rogers1999; Kochan et al., Reference Kochan, Riordan, Kowalski, Kahn and Yang2019a)? Why are younger workers inquisitive about and supportive of joining unions compared to older workers (Ahlquist et al., Reference Ahlquist, Grumbach and Kochan2024)? Will this interest persist, weaken, or get stronger in light of the attacks on worker rights currently underway in the US? Again, these questions await the attention of I-O psychologists.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and workers
Perhaps the most pressing challenge and debate facing workers in both union and nonunion settings today is how automation and AI will affect their jobs (Levine, Reference Levine2024). For example, the 2023 strike by Hollywood screenwriters was driven by concerns that studios’ use of generative AI would infringe on screenwriters’ work (Halperin & Rosner, Reference Halperin and Rosner2025). According to Chui et al. (Reference Chui, Hazan, Roberts, Singla, Smaje, Sukarevsky, Yee and Zemmel2023), 80% of jobs could integrate generative AI technology and capabilities. This has significant implications for the workplace and will necessitate upskilling (deepening a skill set within a particular job—for example, a programmer learning a new software language) or reskilling (learning to use different skills, such as moving from auditing to cybersecurity; Doumi et al., Reference Doumi, Goel, Kovacs-Ondrejkovic and Sadun2023). I-O psychologists have much to contribute to the design of training programs to upskill or reskill workers, and to designing incentives to encourage them to participate.
One way that I-O psychologists can help organizations proactively manage this transition is by promoting a collaborative approach to technological change between management and workers. They can achieve this by gathering employee concerns through town hall meetings and Q&A sessions, and by using mixed-method organizational and job analysis—such as observation, interviews, and surveys—to identify skill gaps and roles at risk. The insights gained can serve as a basis for working with managers and employees (including those unionized) to develop reskilling and upskilling programs focused on transferable skills and emerging opportunities within the organization. Involving workers early in the development and design of AI tools helps clarify the problems these tools might pose and leverages workers’ knowledge of how current tasks are performed. The final step is maintaining transparent communication through open channels to discuss upcoming changes, their impacts, and opportunities for workers to benefit from technological advancements instead of being sidelined. Using qualitative or quasi-experimental research to deepen understanding of each of these steps will strengthen future efforts in fostering collaborative responses to technological change (Shadish et al., Reference Shadish, Cook and Campbell2002).
Some argue that workers will only share in the benefits of AI if they have a stronger voice than is presently the case in the development, design, and use of automation and AI (Acemoglu & Simon, Reference Acemoglu and Johnson2023; Kochan et al., Reference Kochan, Armstrong, Shah, Castilla, Likus and Mangelsdorf2024; National Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, 2025). As proposed above, I-O psychologists can contribute valuable insights to this endeavor in several ways.
Job quality. I-O psychologists can contribute to the work of sociologists, economists, and IR researchers aiming to develop new measures of job quality. Several years ago, the US Department of Labor collaborated with multiple foundations and numerous academics to create a broader definition of job quality (Families and Workers Fund, 2022). The group proposed a framework that encompasses five dimensions: (a) economic security, (b) the work environment, (c) working conditions, (d) workforce development, and (e) worker agency and voice. This framework has been used to design and conduct a national survey on job quality, with the first wave completed in January 2025 (Gallup, 2025). The plan includes using a panel research design to examine changes in job quality through two follow-up surveys. These data will shortly be accessible for I-O psychologists and others to analyze. I-O psychologists could evaluate the measures being used, assess whether the supporting evidence meets typical standards of reliability and validity, test them in new contexts, improve them, and participate in discussions on how to enhance job quality for both low- and high-wage employees and independent contractors.
The current context: Attacks on workers, unions, and others in the United States
There is a significant threat facing workers and society today that surpasses all the issues raised in this article. This sociopolitical context bears directly on any efforts by I-O psychologists to study workers and union–management relations. Workers, their rights, and the institutions of unions and collective bargaining—along with many other foundational aspects of our democratic civil society—are under attack. In its first few months the Trump Administration dismissed tens of thousands of federal workers without any semblance of just cause or performance review; incentivized resignations for approximately 2 million; eliminated collective bargaining rights for 20 federal agencies under the guise of national security (affecting two-thirds of all federal workers); set the stage for more massive layoffs by drastically reducing the budgets of many agencies or in some cases eliminating the agencies or subdivisions; rendered enforcement of the nation’s labor law impotent by firing a congressionally approved member of the NLRB, thus preventing a quorum needed to vote (an action later upheld by the Supreme Court; Bravis & Timirage, Reference Bravis and Timirage2025); decimated the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service; pressured and coerced universities, companies, law firms, and nonprofit institutions into abolishing any efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion; and intimidated, indicted, and even jailed perceived “enemies” while denying them constitutionally guaranteed due process (Yourish et al., Reference Yourish, Rabinowitz, Wu, Gamio, Kavi and Kim2025; Zheliabovskii, Reference Zheliabovskii2025).Footnote 9
Those actions are damaging the economic and psychological safety of large segments of the labor force, both those who have been direct targets of the attacks and those who wonder whether they might be the next group to be attacked or otherwise adversely affected. For example, a still-employed federal worker has observed “even if DOGE hasn’t come for them specifically many public servants are brushing off their resumés, updating their LinkedIn profiles and looking longingly to the private sector…. Even if some of their positions are restored in a future administration, why would people return to public service after the chaos and hostility they experienced over the past few months?” (Weinberger, Reference Weinberger2025, p. 8). Their situation is exacerbated by analogous funding cuts made to the contractors, consultants, universities, and others who depend on federal dollars, thus shrinking the number of alternative employment opportunities (Sullivan & DePillis, Reference Sullivan and DePillis2025). Moreover, under a May 29, 2025 Office of Personnel Management (OPM) policy, all heretofore nonpartisan civil service jobs at GS-5 and above (e.g., clerical workers and firefighters) will no longer be subject to job-related, merit-based selection standards. Instead, hiring, and avoiding dismissal, will be based on fealty to President Trump’s agenda, assessed by evaluations of four essays, such as “How would you help advance the president’s executive orders and policy priorities in this role?” (Chemerinsky & Fisk, Reference Chemerinsky and Fisk2025).
If, as many social commentators have argued over the years, unions and collective bargaining are among the “bulwarks of democracy,” these are attacks on democracy itself. However, it may be that individual states will become an important locus of contention. For example, Massachusetts and California have passed laws giving gig workers such as Uber and Lyft drivers the right to unionize (Scheiber, Reference Scheiber2025).Footnote 10 (We noted earlier that some states have prohibited collective bargaining by government employees.)
Efforts by I-O psychologists and other researchers to study cotemporary workplace issues need to be informed by and take these developments into account.
Suggestions for commentaries
We hope that this admittedly tendentious article will stimulate discussion regarding a relatively overlooked topic in I-O psychology and its implications. These are some potentially fruitful prompts for commentaries:
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1. Might the focal article be overstating the case—exaggerating the degree of I-O psychology’s benign neglect, disrespect, and antipathy toward labor unions? If so, what are the indicators of such?
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2. Perhaps the relationship between I-O psychology and labor was described accurately, but other (or additional) causes for the paucity of studies of what unions do at work were overlooked in the article?
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3. Have you personally encountered obstacles while conducting research involving labor unions? What would you recommend to overcome those obstacles?
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4. Have you ever been approached by, or attempted to provide consulting services to a labor union? Or been approached by a company to use I-O psychology to thwart unionization efforts? If so, how did you deal with the ethical issues involved and what did you learn from your experiences that could prove helpful to other I-O psychologists?
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5. Have you or family members ever been a member of a labor union? Has that affected your views as an I-O psychologist—one way or the other? To what extent do our personal histories and work experiences impact our work as I-O psychologists?
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6. What, if anything, can graduate programs in I-O psychology do to enhance the likelihood of I-O psychologists engaging with labor unions? Should they do so? What might be the pros and cons of such?
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7. What, if anything, can SIOP as a formal organization do to enhance the likelihood of I-O psychologists engaging with labor unions? Is that advisable? What might be the pros and cons?
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8. How do the experiences of I-O psychologists elsewhere (“work psychologists”) compare with the situation described here in the United States? For example, members of the European Association for Work and Organizational Psychology, or the Global Taskforce for Humanitarian Work Psychology?
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9. Have you ever conducted research or worked with [other] groups seldom considered by I-O psychologists, and/or with “marginalized employees” (cf. Ruggs et al., Reference Ruggs, Law, Cox, Roehling, Wiener, Hebl and Barron2013; also, Lefkowitz, Reference Lefkowitz2013)? If so, how were you able to gain access to this population, and what did you learn from your experiences that could prove helpful to other I-O psychologists interested in approaching labor unions?Footnote 11
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10. How should I-O psychologists address the unjustified attacks on workers and on legitimate organizational policies?
