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.     

The Rise of Experimentalism in German Collective Bargaining

This paper addresses the debate on union strategies by analysing industrial relations change in three of Germany's most internationalized sectors: chemicals, metalworking and construction. It characterizes two logics of change in German industrial relations: a battlefield logic and an experimentalist logic. It demonstrates historical trends towards centralization of wage bargaining in each sector before looking at recent pressures for decentralization and flexibility. In chemi‐cals, the social partners control decentralization. In metalworking increasing flexibility is characterized by a mismatch between the national‐level union and the district‐level employers. Finally, the construction union seeks to replace the centralized bargaining system with a state minimum wage.     

Collective Bargaining Coverage under Trade Unionism: A Sociological Investigation

Does high union density lead to high collective bargaining coverage? Since collective bargaining is seen as the raison d'être of trade unions, this is often assumed to be the case; some observers think that union density is ‘a floor’ below which collective bargaining coverage is unlikely to fall. With its very high union density, Denmark is a case in point. This article investigates the collective bargaining coverage issue in the Danish case, based on an individual-level employee survey with 1720 respondents. Collective bargaining coverage is shown to be much lower than union density, and some methodological issues in this connection are considered. In order to find some possible explanations for this surprising finding, the question of variance of collective bargaining coverage between groups of employees is discussed in the light of theories of service society and recent research results and theories. The impact of central variables is investigated through multivariate analysis, and it turns out that by far the most important variable predicting an employee's collective bargaining coverage is a variable mostly neglected in comparative analyses: occupational status. Salaried employees have a much lower collective bargaining coverage than manual workers in Denmark, and some possible reasons for this are given.     

Coping Strategies in Call Centres: Work Intensity and the Role of Co-workers and Supervisors

It has been observed that customer service workers often develop mutually supportive coping strategies to protect themselves from the emotional strain of overwork. These strategies can receive tacit support from supervisors, who may accept them as a means of getting the work done. The study explores the impact of a number of different forms of support on emotional exhaustion among a group of 480 call centre workers focusing, in particular, on the role of supportive behaviours relating to absence taking. The research shows that a supportive co-worker absence culture and team leader absence permissiveness can lessen the effects of job demands on emotional exhaustion and improve worker well-being. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Salary Distribution and Collective Bargaining Agreements: A Case Study of the NBA

Traditional non‐sports unions attempt to institutionalize pay between workers by reducing productivity‐related differences in wages and increasing pay differences based on seniority and other non‐productivity‐related characteristics. Recent changes made to the collective bargaining agreements of the NBA have mirrored those of unions that are more traditional. The purpose of this article is to analyze how the changes made in the bargaining agreements of the NBA affect the salary distributions of players over time.     

Firm‐Level Collective Bargaining and Wages in Greece: A Quantile Decomposition Analysis

This article analyzes the effect of firm‐level contracting on the wage structure in the Greek private sector. Using a matched employer–employee dataset for 2006, unconditional quantile regressions and relevant decomposition methods, we identify a wage premium associated with firm‐level contracting, which follows a hump‐shaped profile across the wage distribution. Further, the wage differential between workers under firm‐level and broader‐level collective agreements can be primarily attributed to the differences in the regime‐specific wage setting structure, for those below the median of the unconditional wage distribution, and to differences in worker and firm‐specific characteristics for those in the upper tail.     

The Incompatibility of Decentralized Bargaining and Equal Employment Opportunity in Australia

Profound changes have occurred in the industrial relations system in Australia since the mid-1980s as the system of centralized regulation has been replaced by collective bargaining at the level of the enterprise. This has corresponded with the considerable expansion of women's employment, mainly in part-time and temporary jobs. At the same time, recognition of the disadvantaged position of women in the work-force has resulted in the enactment of laws to promote equal employment opportunity. This article examines the ability of these laws to achieve equal employment opportunity policies alongside bargaining decentralization and a growing non-standard women's work-force.     

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.     

Collective Bargaining and the Evolution of Wage Inequality in Italy

Italian male wage inequality has increased at a relatively fast pace from the mid‐1980s until the early 2000s, while it has been persistently flat since then. We analyse this trend, focusing on the period of most rapid growth in pay dispersion. By accounting for worker and firm fixed effects, it is shown that workers' heterogeneity has been a major determinant of increased wage inequalities, while variability in firm wage policies has declined over time. We also show that the growth in pay dispersion has entirely occurred between livelli di inquadramento, that is, job titles defined by national industry‐wide collective bargaining institutions, for which specific minimum wages apply. We conclude that the underlying market forces determining wage inequality have been largely channelled into the tight tracks set by the centralized system of industrial relations.     

Contesting Local Pay: The Decentralization of Collective Bargaining in the NHS

Local pay determination formed a key plank in the Conservative government's attempt to restructure industrial relations in the NHS, and to 'reassert managerial control' of the paybill at local (trust) level. This paper reports the findings of a national survey of Unison lead negotiators, complemented by case study interviews and documentary research, on the processes and outcomes of local pay determination, and its impact on industrial relations at both national and local levels. The paper strongly refutes recent suggestions that local pay leads to 'improved' industrial relations and greater pay equity. Moreover, and contrary to claims that Staff Side organizations are 'too weak' to challenge 'new managerial strategies', the study's findings show that the search for managerial control remains, as always, a contested terrain.     

Indicative and Updated Estimates of the Collective Bargaining Premium in Germany

This study provides updated evidence on the union contract differential in Germany using establishment‐wide wage data and two estimation strategies. It provides pairwise estimates of the union differential based on separate samples of collective bargaining leavers and joiners vis‐à‐vis the corresponding counterfactual groups. We report that average wages increase by 3 to 3.5 percent after entering into a collective agreement and decrease by 3 to 4 percent after abandoning a collective agreement. Excluding establishments that experience mass layoffs does not significantly influence these net findings, although such establishments record wage losses—statistically insignificant for joiners but up to 10 percent in the case of leavers, as compared with the counterfactuals. The backdrop to these new indicative estimates, which are properly conditioned on establishment size and industry affiliation, inter alia, is one of wage stagnation and continuing union decline.     

Collective Bargaining Coverage of Union Members and Nonmembers in the Public Sector

Arguably, models of union status and union wage effects in the public sector should' consider workers in three categories: not covered, covered nonmember, and covered member. Estimates show that stronger union security laws are associated with higher percentages of covered members and nonmembers, that right-to-work laws do not affect union coverage or membership relative to where no union security law exists, and that the wages of covered members are higher than those for covered non-members.     

Unions and Collective Bargaining in the Wake of the Great Recession: Evidence from Portugal

Against the backdrop of its industrial relations architecture, characteristic of the ‘southern European group’ and intimately linked to the recommendations of the Troika, this paper examines four key aspects of Portuguese collective bargaining. First, it provides definitive estimates of private sector union density for that nation. Second, it models the determinants of union density at firm level. Third, it yields estimates of the union wage gap for different ranges of union density. The final issue examined is contract coverage. The received notion that the pronounced reduction in the number of industry‐wide agreements and extension ordinances of late is to be equated with a fall in coverage is shown to be a chimera, the number of workers covered by new and existing agreements remaining largely unaffected by the economic crisis. The reduced frequency of new agreements and extensions is instead attributed to downward nominal wage rigidity in low‐inflation regimes.     

Instability and Change in Collective Bargaining: An Analysis of the Effects of Changing Institutional Structures

Previous studies on collective bargaining structures and macroeconomic performance have largely ignored the role of stable and instable institutional structures and the effects of institutional change itself. In this article we posit that institutional stability of collective bargaining is of major importance for the moderation of unit labour costs growth. This hypothesis is tested on the basis of data which cover the period 1965–2012 and includes 28 countries. The results show that institutional change impairs the capacity to moderate unit labour cost growth significantly in the subsequent years following the change. This effect also holds for changes in both decentralization and centralization of institutions.     

Interest Arbitration and the Narcotic Effect: Evidence from Three Decades of Collective Bargaining in Ontario

We study whether there is increased reliance on interest arbitration, that is, a narcotic or addictive effect or, alternatively, positive state dependence, in public sector contract settlements. We use contract data from three sectors (police, firefighters and hospitals) in the Canadian province of Ontario, which covers 1981 to 2012. The length of our study period yields much longer bargaining histories than previously used, which should provide more compelling evidence on whether there is increased reliance on interest arbitration to settle bargaining impasses over time. We obtain our estimates using a dynamic probit model with random effects that models the initial conditions. Our estimates indicate — across all the sectors we consider and some robustness checks — that there is a narcotic effect in interest arbitration usage despite very different average propensities to use arbitration across sectors.     

Advantages of assembly lines in Sheltered Work Centres for Disabled. A case study

Current practices for the treatment of the physically and/or mentally handicapped prescribe meaningful job activity as a means towards both a more fulfilling life and societal integration. In many countries, these practices have facilitated the development of many Sheltered Work Centres for Disabled.In the case study presented, a reengineering process is done starting from individual workplaces where only certain workers were capable of assembling the entire product, and finishing with an assembly line implementation. It is revealed how the traditional division of work in single tasks, typical in assembly lines, becomes a perfect tool for making certain worker disabilities invisible, providing new jobs for disabled people; always taking into account certain special constraints that are analysed.     

High Performance Work Practices and Employee Voice: A Comparison of Japanese and Korean Workers

Using a unique new cross‐national survey of Japanese and Korean workers, we report the first systematic evidence on the effects on employee voice of High Performance Work Practices (HPWPs) from the two economies that are noted for the wide use of HPWPs. We find for both nations that: (i) workers in firms with HPWPs aimed at creating opportunities for employees to get involved (such as shopfloor committees and small group activities) are indeed more likely to have stronger senses of influence and voice on shopfloor decision making than other workers; (ii) workers whose pay is tied to firm performance are more likely to have a stake in firm performance and hence demand such influence and voice; and (iii) consequently workers in firms with HPWPs are more likely to make frequent suggestions for productivity increase and quality improvement. As such, this paper contributes to a small yet growing new empirical literature that tries to understand the actual process and mechanism through which HPWPs lead to better enterprise performance.