The problems/need for representation and participation reported by workers vary across workplaces and by types of jobs. Workers with greater workplace needs are more desirous of unions but their preferences are fine-grained. Workers want unions to negotiate wages and work conditions and for...

Non-union direct voice has replaced union representative voice as the primary avenue for employee voice in the British private sector. This paper provides a framework for examining the relationship between employee voice and workplace outcomes that explains this development. As exit-voice theory...

Using nationally representative workplace data for Britain we show that over the last quarter century union voice - especially union-only voice - has been associated with poorer climate, more industrial action, poorer financial performance and poorer labour productivity than nonunion voice and,...

Collective bargaining in Germany takes place either at the industry level or at the firm level; collective bargaining coverage is much higher than union density; and not all employees in a covered firm are necessarily covered. This institutional setup suggests to distinguish explicitly union...

This paper presents evidence of both counter-cyclical and secular decline in the union membership wage premiu m inthe US and the UK over the last couple of decades. The premium has fallen for most groups of workers, the mainexception being public sector workers in the US. By the beginning of the...

Using linked employer-employee data from the German Structure of Earnings Survey 2001, this paper provides a comprehensive picture of the wage structure in three wage-setting regimes prevalent in the German system of industrial relations. We analyze wage distributions for various labor market...

Union membership and density in Britain has experienced substantial decline since 1979. The fall in private sector membership and density has been much greater than in the public sector. The size of the union sector, measured by employer recognition, has shrunk. Membership decline has been...

This paper uses matched employer-employee data from the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS98) to estimate influences on managerial and employee perceptions of the employee relations climate. Both the strength and direction of union effects differ according to the nature of the union...