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 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 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...

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 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...

We revisit the well-known negative association between union coverage and individuals' job satisfaction in the United States, first identified over forty years ago. We find the association has flipped since the Great Recession such that union workers are now more satisfied than their non-union...

This paper analyzes the relation of pension coverage and key plan characteristics to measures of union membership and strength, and to related interactions. The large and significant relationships which are found cannot be explained by, and are often inconsistent with, predictions obtained by...

Studies of public/private sector wage differentials typically assume that the govenment and union status of a worker are exogenous variables. Recently, some studies have relaxed this assumption slightly by allowing the union status to be endogenous. In this paper, we consider a more general...

Studies of the earnings of union workers have consistently shown that they earn considerably more than nonunion workers. This paper considers whether part of this observed union/nonunion differential is due to unions organizing high paying primary sector jobs. We extend our earlier work on the...

The recent literature on the economic behavior of unions is dominated by a controversy over whether or not bargaining is Pareto optimal. If unions care about employment as well as wages, efficient bargains between unions and management "should" involve both these variables rather than only...