In Germany, trade unions and works councils are more often present in the public than in the private sector. Whereas in the public sector one out of four employees is a union member, in the private sector it is just one out of six. Works councils exist in 61 percent of public sector workplaces,...

Das durch branchenweite Tarifverträge dominierte deutsche System der Lohnfindung und der Regelung von Arbeitsbedingungen wird trotz unbestreitbarer Verdienste in der Vergangenheit immer mehr in Frage gestellt. Als Reaktion auf die zunehmenden Herausforderungen des internationalen Wettbewerbs...

Surveying some recent data and the empirical literature from various disciplines, this paper attempts to shed some light on what we know and don’t know about (trends in) unionization and its determinants in advanced countries. It shows that there are relatively few robust stylized facts, for...