Hi,
You can set a view to be a default view, so the contributors should be able to see that approve/reject view.
Also if you are using a standard out-of-the-box installation and no 3rd party webparts that handles this, then the users will have to set an alert by themselves for on the dcoument library or documents so that they will receive an alert, that is not something that is set by default.
I am running approve/reject view on one of my sites and we are not having any problems there. What needs to be done is that you have to set that approve/reject view as the defaulty view, which will mean that anyone goig to the site will see the approve/reject view.
Have you applied any 3rd party webparts for this or are you running "out-of-the-box"?
Regards,
Thomas