Union Workers,Union Work: A Profile of Paid Union Officers in the United Kingdom

Twelve years ago, Working for the Union presented an analysis of paid trade union officers working for UK unions. This paper returns to the themes of this earlier study using a fresh survey of union officers carried out in 2002. It provides limited support for two of the principal findings of the earlier research: that union work is performed differently by officers with different demographic and attitudinal characteristics and that union management systems can be effective in encouraging officers to respond to a new bargaining and organizing agenda.     

Values,institutions and the rise of Eastern Europe

We study the convergence of output per capita in a sample of 37 European countries to the German real GDP per capita level during the period 1999–2014 with the aim of testing whether the speed of convergence is uniform or depends on institutions, such as membership of the European Union, the euro, or values. The results suggest that the post‐communist economies are converging more rapidly than other countries in the sample and more so the closer they are integrated into the European Union. Moreover, we find that certain values are conducive to the catching up process and that it has generated increased job satisfaction and male labour force participation.