Union Wage Effects: Does Membership Matter?

We exploit rare information on the union status of both individual employees and of their workplaces to address two related issues. First, we find a positive effect of workplace trade union density on the level of the individual's pay. Second, we find that the individual's unions membership status loses its significance when we control for establishment-level density. The union wage effect is therefore a pure public good, with individual membership conveying a positive wage externality.