This paper argues that public sector labor relations is best understood in a framework that focuses on unions' ability to shift demand curves rather than to raise wages, as is the case in the private sector. It reviews the public sector labor relations literature and finds that: (i) public...

Unions play a significant role in the U.S. public sector. We use a difference-in-differences design and the exogenous shock induced by the Supreme Court’s Janus ruling to investigate how public sector unions affect government financing costs, as this ruling diminished the power of public...

Using data on 17 OECD countries for 1960-98, this paper studies the impact of unions on public employment incidence, using macrodata and microdata. Macrodata show that greater coverage by centralized collective bargaining institutions raises the public employment share, controlling for country...

This paper argues that public sector labor relations is best understood in a framework that focuses on unions' ability to shift demand curves rather than to raise wages, as is the case in the private sector. It reviews the public sector labor relations literature and finds that: (i) public...

Challenges from employers and governments and the limited success of public sector union responses suggest the need for renewal in Canadian public sector unions. This article engages with discussions of union renewal by way of theoretically conceptualizing the modes of union praxis relevant to...

This report presents Michigan local government leaders’ assessments of their jurisdictions’ employee unions. These findings are based on statewide surveys of local government leaders in the Spring 2011 wave of the Michigan Public Policy Survey (MPPS)