This paper looks at the financial resources of trades unions in the UK, both updating previous work and attempting to understand the management of first and second order collective action problems. First order problems refer to the problems of initiating collective action and second order...

Across Europe, there are many differing opinions on whether workplace employee representation should be encouraged or discouraged. Yet there is very little evidence on the variations in workplace employee representation across Europe or the reasons for this. We use a workplace survey covering 27...

Why aren't workplaces better designed for women? We show that changing the priorities of those who set workplace policies can create female-friendly jobs. Starting in 2015, Brazil's largest trade union federation made women central to its bargaining agenda. Neither establishments nor workers...

Over the last two decades, trade union membership in Central and Eastern Europe has been in continuous decline and there is a common perception that trade unions in the region are weak. However, little is known about the actual relevance of trade unions for individual workers in the...

To what extent is labour mobility in the European Union a threat to the strength of unions? We argue that the combination of cheap labour, workforce heterogeneity, and low unionization among labour immigrants' is a potential challenge for unions. The challenge will be particularly severe if...

During the 1930s and 1940s, collective bargaining emerged as the workplace governance norm in much of the U.S. industrial sector. Following its peak in the 1950s, union density in the U.S. private sector fell steadily, to only 7.4 percent in 2006. Governance shifted from a formalized union norm...

We define worker representation, identify the factors that determine demand for it among workers and employers, discuss difficulties in supplying worker representation, and reflect on the implications of worker representation for worker welfare and the behavior and performance of employers.