How do ordinary citizens view labor unions? The importance of public opinion about unions has rarely been highlighted in the contemporary literature on labor politics. Using five waves of the World Value Surveys on South Korea, this article suggests that public confidence in labor unions is significantly affected by individuals’ interpersonal trust, conditional on their perception of the political representation of labor. Unlike those with high levels of trust, low-trust individuals view unions as an agent seeking their exclusionary interests at the expense of the rest of the society. The difference between high- and low-trust individuals’ confidence in labor unions is more pronounced when a liberal, rather than a conservative, government is in power because of the public perception that labor interests are already well-represented by the liberal government and union functions are redundant in such a circumstances. The empirical findings are found robust to alternative theoretical arguments and empirical techniques.

中文翻译：

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工会中的人际信任和信心：以韩国为例

普通市民如何看待工会？关于工会的公众舆论的重要性在当代劳工政治文献中很少被强调。本文利用对韩国的五波世界价值调查表明，公众对工会的信心受到个人人际信任的显着影响，这取决于他们对劳工政治代表的看法。与信任度高的人不同，信任度低的人将工会视为以牺牲社会其他成员为代价寻求排他性利益的代理人。当自由主义者而不是保守主义者，政府掌权是因为公众认为自由政府已经很好地代表了劳工利益，而工会职能在这种情况下是多余的。发现实证结果对替代的理论论点和实证技术是稳健的。