It is widely agreed that unionization affects the rules and procedures governing the employment relation in organized establishments. The effect of these changes on establishment productivity, however, is unclear. Existing evidence is based on a comparison of union/non-union differences in value...

This study investigates the impact of union organization on the wages and labor practices of establishments newly organized in the 1980s using a research design in which establishments are 'paired' with their closest nonunion competitor. There are two major findings. First. unionism had only a...

The authors analyze establishment-level data from the three Workplace Industrial Relations Surveys of 1980, 1984 and 1990 to document and explain the sharp decline in unionization that occurred in Britain over the 1980s. Between 1980 and 1990 the proportion of British establishments which...

This paper argues that under current U.S. institutional arrangements, in which managements opposition to unions is as important as workers and unions,the magnitude of the union wage premium actually reduces organization rather than increasing it. It reduces organizing success by lowering...

The unionized share of the work force changed markedly in the United Kingdom between the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1970s density rose steadily, making the United Kingdom the most heavily organized large OECD country. In the 1980s, by contrast, density fell by 1.4 percentage points per annum -- a...

This paper presents a decomposition of the decline in union density into structural and within sector components using CPS data for private sector workers. We find that 58 to 68 percent of the decline in private sector unionization between 1973 and 1981 can be accounted for by structural changes...

This study analyzes the impact of major industrial relations variables on productivity within a plant that assembles large commercial aircraft. The analysis combines the deep firm- specific knowledge of management and labor typical of the best of traditional industrial relations with formal...

We estimate the effect of new unionization on firms' equity value over the 1961-1999 period using a newly assembled sample of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) representation elections matched to stock market data. Event-study estimates show an average union effect on the equity value of the...

Economic impacts of unionization on employers are difficult to estimate in the absence of large, representative data on establishments with union status information. Estimates are also confounded by selection bias, because unions could organize at highly profitable enterprises that are more...