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 Effects of Unionism on Recruitment and Selection Methods

This study develops and tests a model of union effects on staffing practices. Unionism is found to be associated with fewer recruitment sources—suggesting that unionism reduces the need to increase applicant supply. Some data suggest that unionization increases the use of formal selection methods—consistent with arguments that higher costs make it important that the best applicants be selected. Other data support the idea that unions resist selection practices that break down the collective identity among workers.     

Partnering against Insecurity? A Comparison of Markets,Institutions and Worker Risk in Canadian and Swedish Retail

This article provides insights on how union power influences the outcomes of labour-management partnerships, with a focus on insecurity. It examines matched pairs of food retailers in Canada and Sweden. Trends in wages, scheduling and union coverage from 1980 to 2016 are compared. Actors in both contexts adopted partnering strategies in response to intensified price competition. However, the Swedish partnerships produced stable work arrangements, while working conditions eroded considerably in Canada. Bargaining structures, union security and identity are examined to explain the variations. As market competition intensified, the Swedish union gained leverage by using partnerships to fight unfair competition and promote sectoral well-being in the process. Meanwhile, the Canadian union lost leverage, instead using partnerships to align employment practices with those of low-cost market entrants and enhancing store-level performance at all costs. The argument is that markets can be a resource for unions, even in low-skilled service sectors, but only under inclusive institutions.     

Discipline, Dismissals and Complaints to Employment Tribunals

Using the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey, we investigate the rates of disciplinary sanctions and dismissals, and the incidence of unfair dismissal complaints to employment tribunals in the UK. Workplace rates of disciplinary sanctions and dismissals vary with age, gender, ethnic and occupational work‐force composition and workplace size, and, notably, are lower where trade union density is higher. Workplace practices reflecting a high-commitment management style have limited impact on all three of our dependent variables, while the existence of formal discipline and dismissal procedures exerts no influence on whether any unfair dismissal claims are brought at the workplace.     

Indian textile suppliers' sustainability evaluation using the grey approach

Textile supply chains consist of multinational garment retailers (customers), garment manufacturers (suppliers), and ancillary suppliers (suppliers to manufacturers). This paper evaluates suppliers' within the Indian textile and clothing industry (both garment manufacturers and ancillary suppliers) using sustainability criteria. Examining a sample of sixty-three suppliers and six sustainability criteria (i.e. discrimination, abuse of human right, child labor, long working hours, unfair competition, and pollution), we categorize suppliers into the three categories of ‘good performer’, moderate performer’, and ‘performance not up to expectation’. Since all the criteria are potentially subjective, we have employed the grey approach for analysis. The results indicate that the criterion of long working hours is a critical one for both categories of suppliers; in the case of garment manufacturers, we found that pollution and unfair competition were the most important criteria. In addition, employing child labor was found to be a critical criterion in the case of ancillary suppliers.     

Declining Union Strength and Labor Cost Inflation in the 1980s

This paper explores the hypothesis that the declining strength of labor unions underlies the moderation of labor cost inflation in the 1980s, which is not explained by standard Phillips curve equations. Data on union density, union certification and decertification election results, and work stoppages are used as proxies for union strength. No support is found for the declining union strength hypothesis at either the aggregate level (using economywide or union-sector labor cost series) or the industry level.     

Race Discrimination and Union Voice

This work reports patterns of complaints about racial discrimination that appear consistent with the social mechanism of "voice." Black union members are subject to less racial discrimination but are no less likely to identify themselves as victims of discrimination than black nonunion members. Indeed, black women members are more likely to claim discrimination than their nonunion counterparts. White union members are much more likely to identify themselves as victims of discrimination than non-members even controlling for the erosion of typical racial wage differentials. These findings remain robust across a variety of specifications and suggest that there is something unique about the union setting that encourages complaints.     

Contested Resources: Unions,Employers, and the Adoption of New Work Practices in US and UK Telecommunications

The pattern of adoption of high‐performance work practices has been explained in terms of strategic contingency and in terms of union presence. We compare the post‐deregulation/privatization changes in work practice at AT&T, Bell Atlantic and British Telecom. On the basis of these cases, we argue that the choice of new work practices should be understood as a consequence not only of the company's resources or changes in its environment, nor of a simple union presence, but also as a consequence of the practices' effects on union power, the nature of the union's engagement, and the union's strategic choices.     

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。     

Just Tell Me! Making Alternative Dispute Resolution Systems Fair

This study investigates fairness perceptions of alternative dispute systems utilizing a policy capturing design and a sample of four hundred and fifty non‐union, non‐management employees from seven organizations. The communication surrounding the decision, the level of employee input, and the composition of the grievance panel had larger effects on overall fairness perceptions than did outcome. Unfavorable outcomes that were reached by fair processes generate higher distributive justice ratings than favorable outcomes reached by unfair processes.     

Peering into the Black Hole: The Downside of the New Employment Relations in the UK

Using a national sample of 1,000 employees, this paper examines the proposition that those working in so-called 'black hole' organizations (i.e. where there is neither a set of progressive HRM practices nor a recognized trade union) will report more negative attitudes and work experiences than those in settings where there is either HRM, a trade union presence or both. The results lend some support to this hypothesis with respect to job satisfaction and organizational commitment and in judgements about experiences of fairness of treatment and trust in management. However, the most negative views about employment relations are reported by those who belong to a union in workplaces with little HRM. The findings indicate that it is HRM practices rather than trade union membership that have the major impact on attitudes and experiences. Even in black hole organizations some employees report satisfaction. This can be largely explained by a positive psychological contract between individual and organization. The implications for the role of trade unions in the promotion of fairness at work are discussed.     

A large-scale field experiment on occupational gender segregation and hiring discrimination

We analyze the relationship between occupational gender composition and gender discrimination in recruitment and investigate whether there is hiring discrimination against men in female-dominated occupations. We do this with a large-scale field experiment where we submitted more than 12,000 job applications for 12 occupations in Australia, varying the gender of the applicants. Men received around 50% more callbacks than women in male-dominated occupations, while they received over 40% fewer callbacks in female-dominated occupations.     

Overt Employment Discrimination by Multinational Firms: Cultural and Economic Influences in a Developing Country

An issue that has been explored only to a limited extent is the role that multinational firms might play in promoting or inhibiting employment discrimination based on gender in developing countries. This study focuses on this issue within the context of Thailand, a country that, until quite recently, had one of the world's fastest growing economies, driven to a large extent through investment by foreign multinational firms. The approach we take is to analyze the determinants of the inclusion of explicit gender restrictions in job announcements by both multinationals and Thai-owned firms. Some job announcements restrict jobs to male or to female applicants, and some are silent on the issue of gender. Others specifically invite both male and female applicants. There are no laws in Thailand restricting gender-based discrimination nor requiring "equal opportunity" language on the part of private employers.
The analysis examines the relationship of the cultural characteristics of the firm's home country, along with economic growth in the host country, with the likelihood of various gender-based restrictions being placed in job announcements. We employ widely used measures of national culture developed by Hofstede.Empirical results demonstrate relationships between discrimination and certain of Hofstede's cultural dimensions. Economic growth was not found to have an impact on discrimination. Control variables in the study include dummy variables to control for occupation and the industry of the employee firm.     

Economics of Supply of Canada's Military Manpower

Three key generalizations emerge from this study:

• 1 Economic factors can, in certain cases, be important in attracting applicants to other ranks of the Canadian armed forces. Sensitivity to the state of the civilian economy would appear to be greatest for the air force, where the average quality level of applicants in the labor force is highest. The impact of relative wages, as measured here, is substantially larger than that of unemployment.
• 2 Traditional and cultural considerations are also relevant. Previous historical and sociological research is supported regarding Quebec's negative attitudes towards the navy. Attitudes towards the army are less clear, as data shortcomings prevent precise interpretation of the regional dummy variables. There are also distinct seasonal patterns in application rates to each service.
• 3 Important differences in attitudes and quality of applicants were found among army, navy, and air force recruits. With the operational unification of Canada's three services into a single armed force in 1968, implications for recruitment remain an open question.

     

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.     

Changing Patterns of Industrial Relations in Taiwan

This article examines changing patterns of industrial relations (IR) in Taiwan. Although trade unions have become more autonomous since the lifting of martial law in the mid-1980s, trends such as the privatization of state-owned enterprises, industrial restructuring, flexible employment practices, and importation of foreign workers hinder union development. The millennium may represent a turning point for workers and their organizations because the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) replaced the Kuomintang (KMT) as the ruling party. This may further union independence and power because the DPP tends to be a more pro-labor party. However, balancing the interests of workers and employers will still be a challenge for the DPP, particularly given employer opposition to many of the DPP's labor policies.     

Decision Making in Employment and Labor Arbitration

This experimental study examined the labor and employment arbitration decisions of four groups of arbitrators: (1) employment arbitrators who resolve disputes involving nonunion employees, (2) labor arbitrators who arbitrate cases in which an employee is represented by a union, (3) arbitrators in the National Academy of Arbitrators (NAA), and (4) students as a comparison of nonarbitrator decision makers with experienced arbitrators. A 2 ×2 ×4 factorial design was used, crossing arbitrator group with discipline standard and sex of the grievant. Results indicate that employment artibrators reinstate the grievant significantly less frequently than other arbitrators; however, the findings also reveal that all arbitrators make more favorable decisions under a just‐cause standard than under the newer META standard of discipline.     

Collective Bargaining and High‐Involvement Management in Comparative Perspective: Evidence from U.S. and German Call Centers

This article assesses the relationship between national and collective bargaining institutions, management practices, and employee turnover, based on case study and survey evidence from U.S. and German call center workplaces. German call centers were more likely to adopt high‐involvement management practices than those in the United States, even across workplaces with no collective bargaining institutions. Within Germany, union and works council presence was positively associated with high‐involvement practices, while works council presence alone had no effect. In contrast, union presence in U.S. call centers showed either a negative association or no association with these practices. National and collective bargaining institutions and high‐involvement management practices were associated with lower quit rates in both countries, with only partial mediation.     

Race, Ethnicity, Union Attitudes, and Voting Predilections

The research reported here investigates, in a sample of approximately 500 persons, the relationship between individuals' race and/or ethnicity and their union-related attitudes and union vote propensity. As measured by scores on union instrumentality, big labor image, and union governance questions, blacks have the most favorable attitudes toward unions, Hispanics the least favorable. Logistic multiple regression results indicate no difference in union-joining propensity attributable to ethnicity, although several other variables are found to be significantly related to joining predilections.     

New Measures of Union Organizing Effectiveness

This study compares union organizing activity and success in the United States and Canada. Based largely on certification data for the period 1976–1985, he results indicate there was a substantial decline in union organizing effectiveness in the United States and the Canadian unions were more active and successful in recruiting new members than their American counterparts. The evidence suggests that labor policy in Canada is more supportive of union organizing and the achievement of first collective agreements.