Public sector employees are highly engaged in civic and political life, from voting to volunteering. Scholars have theorized that this political activity stems from “public service motivation,” or the selection of publicly oriented individuals into public work. We build on this work by analyzing the role of public sector unions in shaping participation. Unions are central mobilizing organizations in political life, and one in three public sector workers are unionized. Special supplements of the Current Population Survey provide data on various forms of participation, sector, union membership, and union coverage. Logistic regressions find that unionized public sector workers have much higher odds of engaging in a range of activities compared to non‐union public workers, including protest, electoral politics, and political communication. Union membership impacts service work to a lesser extent, suggesting that unions are more central to political lives. These findings have implications for the consequences of union decline, including the class, race, and gender composition of who participates in democratic life.

中文翻译：

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公共部门工人的政治生活和公民生活：工会与“公共服务动机” *

从投票到志愿服务，公共部门员工都高度参与公民和政治生活。学者们认为，这种政治活动源于“公共服务动机”，或者是将面向公众的个人选拔到公共工作中。我们通过分析公共部门工会在形成参与中的作用来开展这项工作。工会是政治生活中的中央动员组织，而三分之一的公共部门工人则是工会。《当前人口调查》的特别补编提供了有关各种形式的参与，行业，工会会员资格和工会覆盖面的数据。Logistic回归发现，与包括抗议，选举政治和政治传播在内的非工会公共工作者相比，加入工会的公共部门工作者参加各种活动的几率要高得多。工会会员资格对服务工作的影响较小，这表明工会在政治生活中更为重要。这些发现对工会衰落的后果有影响，包括参加民主生活的人的阶级，种族和性别构成。