The Relationship Between Union Membership and Net Fiscal Impact

This paper develops the first evidence on how individuals’ union membership status affects their net fiscal impact, the difference between taxes they pay and cost of public benefits they receive, enriching our understanding of how labor relations interacts with public economics. Current Population Survey data between 1994 and 2015 in pooled cross‐sections and individual first‐difference models yield evidence that union membership has a positive net fiscal impact through the worker‐level channels studied.     

Metropolitan Wage Levels of Less‐Educated Workers: 1986 to 1999

This work investigates determinants of metropolitan wage levels for workers with a high school education or less. It estimates their wage levels as a function of four factors: labor demand, industry mix, unionization, and the minimum wage. Labor demand and union strength influence wage levels most. The minimum wage and industry mix play smaller roles, although the minimum wage is the second most influential factor for men and women who did not complete high school. From 1990 to 1999, metropolitan wage levels exhibit considerable persistence, though persistence declines over this period.     

Managerial Perceptions of Labor-Management Cooperation

Using data from a survey of executives in charge of the labor relatins or human resource management funciton ar large U.S. corporations, athe authors to test the hypothesis of some unionists that management's perception of a cooperative relationship with the union is one in which the unions are pasive, willing to make concessions. and Satisfied with little or no role in the decision-making process. We find, as have others, that those managers who are most likely to view their relationship with the union as cooperative are those who also peceive the smallest role for unions in the decision-making process.     

Corporate Characteristics and Union Organizing

This study examines the effect of several corporate characteristics on union organizing success, using NLRB representation election data matched to the Industrial Comp stat. The results show that, within a corporation's primary (two-digit) industry, union success is influenced positively by firm size, capital intensity, the ratio of labor costs to total cost, and by either very low or very high profits. Outside a corporation's primary industry, unions are most successful organizing large, unprofitable firms.     

Firm Investment Behavior and Collective Bargaining Strategy

Using survey data on labor union coverage at the firm level, this paper examines union-nonunion differences in investment activity among 706 U.S. companies during the 1970s. Consistent with a model of union rent seeking, firm-level collective bargaining is associated with significantly lower physical capital and R&D investment, even after controlling for firm and industry characteristics. Deleterious union effects on investment are considerable throughout the 1972–80 period, but they vary across industries. Without significant changes in collective bargaining power or strategies, diminished investment activity by unionized companies is likely to exacerbate the already considerable decline in U.S. union coverage     

Compensating Wage Differentials in the Union and Nonunion Sectors

This paper tests for the existence of structurally different compensating payments in the union and nonunion sectors of the economy. Significant differences may stem from the different mechanisms by which such payments are determined: markets are the primary mechanism in the nonunion sector, while Political processes play a major role in the union sector. The empirical results provide tentative support for the structural differences hypothesis; They also reveal an absence of positive and significant compensating payments in nonunion labor markets.     

Institutional and Market Determinants of Wage Spillovers: Evidence from UAW Pattern Bargaining

Empirical wage spillovers are often observed, but their theoretical explanation is controversial because they are consistent with institutional wage comparisons stemming from fairness or union politics, but also with neoclassical alternative wages or correlated labor demand shocks. The nature of wage spillovers is analyzed using a data set of United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW) wage settlements. The results support the hypothesis that institutional wage spillovers augment neoclassical economic forces in determining wages, albeit with some weakening after 1980.     

Unionization,Inequality and Redistribution

This article explores the implications of the OECD‐wide decline of union density for earnings inequality and income redistribution by looking at aggregate (country‐level) data. Over the period 1975–95, countries that experienced relatively large declines in union density also experienced relatively large increases in earnings inequality. In addition, governments apparently became less willing to engage in ‘compensatory redistribution’ in these countries. Since the early 1990s, however, union decline has become less closely associated with rising earnings inequality and redistributive policy changes. I argue that the declining relevance of unionization has to do with changes in the position of union members in the income distribution. In most OECD countries, the average union member has become relatively better off as union density has declined and union members have probably become less supportive of wage solidarity and redistributive government policies.     

工会组织对工资收入的影响：基于制度因素视角——来自英国的经验证据

经济规模、劳动者自身素质及制度等异质性因素,引致劳动力市场具有非完全竞争性的特征,在一定程度上解释了劳动者的工资差异现象。以英国1996和2001年数据为例,在考虑行业与劳动者素质异质性等控制变量情况下,从制度因素视角就工会组织对工人工资的影响进行考察。结果表明,工会成员身份对工人工资作用显著,能产生超过10%的溢价。因此,工会组织的社会生活中的地位与影响力,及其增强工人对雇主议价能力的作用应予重视。     

Testing the Monopoly Union Model: A Stochastic Frontier Approach

This study applies stochastic frontier analysis to test the monopoly union model. This approach allows the use of a wider data set than has been previously employed. We fit a stochastic cost frontier to data from the U.S. manufacturing sector that includes exogenous sources of potential inefficiency including unionization. Our findings suggest that over the 1972–1982 time period, more heavily unionized industries in the U.S. manufacturing sector were more likely to operate off their labor demand curve. This result is inconsistent with the monopoly union model predictions.     

The Duration of Union Membership in Italy: A Research Note

Thanks to direct access to union databases, this note can answer two new questions in industrial relations: how long union membership lasts and what are the determinants of its duration within an open‐shop context. This also allows for conceptualizing union membership as a much more dynamic phenomenon than in previous studies, where it was considered a static condition whose causes or effects were to be investigated. Regression analysis applied to a sample of 29,035 Italian workers highlights that union membership duration is a positive but declining function of age. Furthermore, women, flexible workers, foreign ones, and those working in cities tend to show less attachment to union membership than the other workers.     

Discrimination Against Prounion Job Applicants

This study analyzes 95 unfair labor practices involving pre-employment discrimination against union adherents. The cases were heard either by the National Labor Relations Board or U.S. Court of Appeals between 1976 and 1986. Nonsupervisory, unskilled applicants who suffer preemployment discrimination by employers that display antiunion sentiments during union organizing campaigns have a lower probability of winning their cases than to skilled applicants. Pre-employment screening of job applications with prounion backgrounds or attitudes is often part of a larger pattern of unfair labor practices by management. The Dotson administration also supported management's rejection of prounion applicants at a significantly higher rate than did other NLRB administrations.     

Ronald Reagan and the Politics of Declining Union Organization

New union members in the United States are typically gained through workplace elections. We find that the annual number of union elections fell by 50 per cent in the early 1980s. A formal model indicates that declining union election activity may be due to an unfavourable political climate which raises the costs of unionization, even though the union win–rate remains unaffected. We relate the timing of declining election activity to the air–traffic controllers' strike of 1981, and the appointment of the Reagan Labor Board in 1983. Empirical analysis shows that the fall in election activity preceded these developments.     

Executive Compensation in American Unions

We explore compensation of labor union leaders using U.S. panel data on more than 75,000 organization‐years from 2000 to 2007. We find that membership, estimated average wages, and dues are strongly related to the compensation of the leaders of American labor unions, even after controlling for organization size and organization fixed effects. That is, within the same union over time, higher levels of these measures are associated with higher levels of pay for union leaders.     

Bargaining over employment as a firm strategic choice

This paper develops a simple model as to why unionized Cournot firms acting non-cooperatively in the product market may find it optimal to commit to bargaining outcomes with their specific union, which are off the labor demand curve, hence restricting their behavior to non-profit maximizing practices in their product markets. The prediction that power over labor conceded strategically to the union by the firm is negatively linked to union wage power is not rejected on a panel of Belgian firms as well as the prediction that the union bargaining power can be affected by product market structure and other variables affecting union wages.     

The Impact of Union Corruption on Union Membership

This paper examines the relationship between union corruption actions and union membership. State‐level data from the Office of Labor‐Management Standards, and other sources, are utilized over two study periods (1974–2000 and 2001–2008) to test three hypotheses, including the union corruption hypothesis, as possible explanations for the decline in union membership in the United States over time. Although our initial findings suggest a negative relationship exists between union corruption and membership, after removing the possibility of simultaneous equations bias, we find that changes in corruption do not influence changes in union membership in our sample.     

Do Labor Laws Matter? The Density Decline and Convergence Thesis Revisited

Under the density decline and convergence thesis, market forces are gradually eroding union density levels, leading to convergence with the U.S. level throughout the developed world. A key implication is that the U.S. decline has been unavoidable and that little, including labor law reforms, can be done to reverse it. Canada appears to refute this thesis, for it has stronger laws, and density is double that of the United States. Yet (1) Canada's higher public-sector density may mask private-sector declines, (2) any private-sector differences simply may reflect a tendency for Canada to lag the United States, and (3) labor law may not explain U.S.–Canada differences. This article explores these possibilities, finding little support for them. It concludes that a strong case can be made for Canadian-style labor law reforms but that such reforms may not be sufficient by themselves to revitalize the U.S. labor movement.     

Where Do Unions Add Value? Predominant Organizing Principle,Union Strength and Manufacturing Productivity Growth in the OECD

This article deploys comparative historical data on 14 OECD countries to examine the significance of predominant union structure for the impact of union strength on the (medium‐term) growth in hourly labour productivity in manufacturing. The analysis shows that where craft and general unionism predominates, union strength has a deleterious impact on productivity growth. Where enterprise unionism predominates, union strength is irrelevant. However, where industrial unionism predominates, union strength promotes productivity growth. These effects exist independently of established economic influences on aggregate productivity growth. The findings are interpreted as displaying the importance of the character of the governance that unions provide for their productivity impact.     

Further Evidence on Union Efficiency in Construction

This study examines the impact of unions on efficiency in retail construction in the late seventies. Square footage put in place per hour is 51 per cent greater for union than nonunion contractors. The study finds no difference in mean cost per square foot and offers mixed econometric evidence on Tran slog cost functions. There is also no difference in profit rates or prices between union and nonunion contractors.