In Germany, there is no trade union membership wage premium, while the membership fee amounts to 1% of the gross wage. Therefore, prima facie, there are strong incentives to free-ride on the benefits of trade unionism. We establish empirical evidence for a private gain from trade union...

This paper draws attention to an increase in the size of the union membership wage premium in the UK public sector relative to the private sector. We find the public sector membership wage premium is approximately double that in the private sector controlling for a full range of individual, job...

Spatial variance in union membership has been attributed to the favourable attitudes that persist in areas with an historical legacy of trade unionism. Within the UK, villages and towns located in areas once dominated coalmining remain among the strongest and durable bases for the trade union...

The employment of people with disabilities has received significant attention, but little is known about how unions affect their employment experiences. To address this, we analyze monthly U.S. Current Population Survey (CPS) data from 2009 through 2017 and find that the unionization rate...

This paper documents evidence that rejects the paradox of dissatisfied union members. Using eleven waves of the BHPS, it studies the past, contemporaneous, and future effects of union membership on job satisfaction. By separating union "free-riders" from other nonmembers in the fixed effects...

The number of people who have ever experienced a divorce, or a split up of a non-marital union, is rising every year. It is well known that union dissolution has a disruptive effect on the housing careers of those involved, often leading to downward moves on the housing ladder. Much less is...

The paper re-examines the question of why unions might have declined despite the 'influx' of women, their risk-averse constituents, into British workplaces. It argues that given unions' role in minimising risk, membership should have been boosted. The paper reviews different strands of the...

We hypothesize that incomplete integration into the workplace and society implies that immigrants are less likely to be union members than natives. Incomplete integration makes the usual mechanism for overcoming the collective action problem less effective. Using data from the Socio-Economic...

Industrial relations are in flux in many nations, perhaps most notably in Germany and the Britain. That said, comparatively little is known in any detail of the changing pattern of the institutions of collective bargaining and worker representation in Germany and still less in both countries...

This paper presents the first comparative analysis of the decline in collective bargaining in two European countries where that decline has been most pronounced. Using workplace-level data and a common model, we present decompositions of changes in collective bargaining and worker representation...