Collective Bargaining and Faculty Job Satisfaction

Estimates of the impact of union membership on job satisfaction suffer from nonrandom self‐selection of employees into unions. In this paper, we circumvent this problem by examining the impact on satisfaction of collective bargaining representation, rather than of union membership. We use a two‐stage technique that controls for nonrandom selection of faculty into institutions, and apply that to a panel of faculty at repeatedly observed four‐year universities. We find that bargaining agreements increase satisfaction with compensation but reduce satisfaction with faculty workload. Bargaining has no statistically measurable impact on overall job satisfaction or on faculty's satisfaction with their authority to make decisions regarding their instructional duties.     

Collective Bargaining and Within-firm Wage Dispersion in Spain

This paper analyses the effect of collective bargaining on within‐firm wage dispersion for the case of Spain. What is relevant in the Spanish case is to compare the effect of the two basic levels of bargaining (firm and sector) on wage dispersion. By using the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition, this paper concludes that collective agreements at firm level have a negative effect on wage dispersion. At the same time, firms that have signed these types of agreements show greater wage dispersion than those covered by agreements at the sector level, owing to the positive and compensating effect of firms’ and workers’ features.     

Collective Bargaining and Wage Dispersion in Europe

The level at which collective bargaining takes place is usually considered important in determining wage levels and wage inequalities. Two different situations are considered: a first in which bargaining is only ‘multi‐employer’, and a second in which it is ‘multi‐level’, in the sense that workers can be covered by both a ‘multi‐employer’ and a ‘single‐employer’ contract at the same time. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of these different institutional settings on pay dispersion. The study is carried out using the European Structure of Earnings Survey, which is a large dataset containing detailed matched employer–employee information for the year 1995. The countries analysed are Italy, Belgium and Spain. The empirical results generally show that wages of workers covered by only a ‘multi‐employer’ contract are no more compressed than those of workers covered by both ‘multi‐employer’ and ‘single‐employer’ contracts. This implies that where workers are not covered by single‐employer bargaining, they receive wage supplements paid unilaterally by their employers.     

Job Training, New Technology and Labour Turnover

Vocational training incidence for those at work is frequently financed partly or wholly by employers, who then lose part of their investment return if workers migrate to other firms. We investigate the incidence of training and the incidence of job-to-job mobility for a large sample of British workers in 1984 and 1989. We also analyse the role of sectoral technology characteristics in influencing patterns of both training and inter-firm mobility.
Our results demonstrate that job-to-job mobility is highest for the young and higher for those with formal educational qualifications than for the unskilled. These are also characteristics which engender a higher training propensity; so, unavoidably, private gains to training for employers are below social gains for these young people. Public-sector workers have high training rates but low mobility; this perhaps explains the lack of perception of the poaching problem by successive governments. Sectoral R&D activity is associated with more training and less mobility for men; in contrast, women are more likely to train and are less mobile if the rate of adoption of innovation is rapid.     

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     

The Economics of Unions and Collective Bargaining

This paper reviews recent research on the economics of unions and collective bargaining, emphasizing the implications for human resource management. Research findings on the impact of unions, strategic union avoidance behavior by management, strategic use of labor law by unions and employers, and conflict and conflict resolution in labor relations are discussed. The paper highlights unexploited connections between research on unioun impact and research on strategic behavior.     

Employment Protection Reform,Enforcement in Collective Agreements and Worker Flows

We analyze a reform of notice periods for employer‐initiated separations in Sweden, which reduced the notice periods for newly hired older workers substantially but implied minor or no changes in the advance notices for younger workers. The reform was initiated at different times depending on collective agreement. These circumstances provide ample opportunity for the identification of its effects. Our findings indicate heterogeneous effects on hirings and separations across collective agreements.     

Effectiveness of Mediation Strategies in Collective Bargaining

Effectiveness of mediation strategies is analyzed in two different types of collective labor conflicts: rights conflicts and conflicts of interests. The sample consists of 106 professional labor mediators who completed a questionnaire about the strategies they used and the outcomes they achieved in their most recent mediation intervention. Results from regression analysis indicate that while the use of substantive and contextual strategies is positively related to effectiveness in both types of conflict, the use of reflexive strategies is negatively related to effectiveness, particularly in rights conflicts.     

Employment Institutions under Liberalization Pressures: Analysing the Effects of Regulatory Change on Collective Bargaining in Spain

This article discusses the effects of regulatory change in employees’ working conditions and the dynamics of collective bargaining in Spain, a model affected by a drastic regulatory change, and draws a comparison with the UK, the more deregulated and single‐employer bargaining model in Europe. The comparison is carried out using EU‐SILC panel data to identify commonalities and differences in the patterns of change in salaries and working hours. Second, national data from Spain are used to analyse the impacts of reforms on the characteristics and outputs of collective bargaining. The findings show that regulatory changes provoked a drastic adjustment in wages in Spain, following patterns similar to the British model. However, the results lead us to highlight the need to enhance knowledge about the dynamics of bargaining processes as they crucially reveal that these trends are happening in mostly unchanged institutional characteristics.