Exclusive representation in public employment: A public choice perspective

Public sector unionization has grown rapidly in recent years, and research has suggested that among the reasons for such growth is legislation granting special privileges to public employee unions. This paper examines one form of legislative privilege, exclusive representation, from a public choice perspective. It is shown that exclusivity reduces employees’ freedom of choice, increases the welfare of union leaders at the expense of union members, limits employment opportunities to “outsiders,” entrenches the monopoly provision of public services, and generates conflict and instability in labor relations.     

Male-female differences in the potential for union growth outside traditionally unionized industries

Using recent NLS data on preferences for union representation, this paper examines whether differences by sex exist in the potential for union organizing outside of traditionally unionized industries. The methodology distinguishes between workers’ preferences for union representation and the relative supply of union jobs in explaining interindustry differences in the extent of unionization. Within the private sector, women employed in industries other than those traditionally unionized are found to have at least as strong a preference for unionization as do comparable men but a considerably lower opportunity for unionized employment given the desire for union representation. Comparing the public sector with traditionally organized industries, the greater extent of unionization in the public sector is largely explained by a stronger desire for union representation on the part of both male and female public sector employees. The helpful comments of Rodney Fort, Daniel Hamermesh, Robert Hutchens, and Jon Sonstelie on an earlier draft of the paper are gratefully acknowledged.     

Agency costs,property rights,and the evolution of labor unions

Collective bargaining requires that an agent represent workers. This paper examines the implications for the trade union movement of the resulting agency costs. Without transferable rights in the union, union members lack the means and incentive to bring forth the innovative agent controls common to the modern corporation. Considerations of the bargaining strengths of employers and employees, each represented by an agent, provide an explanation of the simultaneous decline of private sector union membership (corporate share holders have been more successful at lowering agency costs) and growth of public sector union representation (where the union official, a “double agent,” serves the interest of both employee and bureaucratic employer). The authors acknowledge the helpful remarks Donald L. Martin whose earlier research on property rights in unions inspired this effort. Don Bellante’s work was supported by a grant from the Research Committee of the College of Business Administration, University of South Florida.     

Paying dues to the union: A study of blue-collar workers in a right-to-work environment

Of the 39 states that permit some form of public sector collective bargaining, union security agreements are prohibited in 19. Employees may join and pay dues to the union representing them in these states but they are not required to do so. This study of 372 state government workers compares union dues-payers and non-dues-payers on a variety of personal, positional, economic, and noneconomic variables. Workers who were exposed to more physical danger and less noise were more likely to be dues-payers; higher seniority workers and skilled craftworkers were more likely to pay dues. Results suggest that union voting and union dues-paying have different antecedents. They also raise questions about the generalizability of previous dues-paying research to blue-collar settings. Holding a union card in a right-to-work environment seems to have little to do with the traditional collective pursuit of economic power.     

Challenging Misconceptions about Organizing Women into Unions

In many countries, women are the fastest growing group of unionized workers. As unions scramble to restore their flagging membership, women become central to the process of union membership renewal. Yet survey data collected from union organizers in Canada show that unions are only partially meeting women’s demand for union representation, in large part because of gender bias in union organizing practices. To develop this argument, this article offers data analysis that challenges four popular misconceptions about women and unions which contribute to gender bias in union organizing practices. These misconceptions are: women are less likely to support unions than men; high rates of unionization in the public sector rather than women themselves explain the high rates of union growth amongst women; small workplaces are a particular barrier to organizing women and women are more passive and avoid conflict, therefore reducing their likelihood of withstanding a hostile organizing drive. Having challenged these misconceptions, the article concludes with a discussion of the many ways in which union organizing practices are gender biased. Issues discussed range from the limited number of women hired as organizers to the tendency of unions to target small male‐dominated workplaces for organizing, over women‐dominated workplaces, in spite of the latter’s greater likelihood of success.     

Legal aspects of exclusive representation: Ruminations on the private-public sector analogy

From the perspective of a management labor lawyer, this article argues that any legitimate theory of employment rights must be founded on the premise that employment is a voluntary relationship governed by mutual consent. In contrast, the erosion of the doctrine of at-will employment and the substitution of its legal antithesis, the tort of wrongful discharge, depend on a conception of employment rights as something the employee possesses at the employer’s expense, that is, without the employer’s consent. The theme of this article is that an employment right does not exist apart from contract. The government cannot violate an employment right unless it prevents a willing employee and a willing employer from making a contract concerning a proper subject on terms satisfactory to both. In public sector employment, the state is one of the parties to the employment contract. In most cases, a public employer cannot be “willing” if the same sovereign or polity has enacted conditions on public employment, that is, has placed limitations on itself. This article analyzes the legal aspects of exclusive union representation and related union security arrangements within this conceptual framework. Member, State Bar of California. Associate, Latham & Watkins, Los Angeles and San Diego. I wish to thank my colleague, Mark W. Smith, for his helpful suggestions and comments during the preparation of this paper. The views expressed here are solely those of the author.     

Public sector union democracy: A comparative analysis

A congressional subcommittee held “union democracy” hearings in 1998 and 1999 to debate the impact and effectiveness of the union-democracy protections provided by the Land rum-Griffin Act which provides union members in the private sector and U.S. Postal Service certain democratic rights and protections. What was not resolved at that hearing was whether state sector or public employee union members should also enjoy the same democracy protections. We survey the existing 28 state sector collective bargaining laws and find that the majority of state legislation falls considerably short of the protections provided by the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act. Moreover the consequences of limited state-enacted union-democracy protections are discussed and assessed to determine whether LMRDA jurisdiction should also cover public sector union members.     

Privatization of Refuse Removal and Labor Costs*

We examine the labor-cost savings associated with privatization by comparing earnings and employment trends of public and private sector refuse workers. Findings suggest that high union earnings for workers in the public sector are a source of labor-cost savings in the refuse industry. Evidence on job changers does not indicate that earnings for this group of workers are a compensating differential. Metropolitan area employment findings suggest that municipalities are less likely to use union refuse workers in the public sector when a relatively small percentage of area residents belong to a union.     

The Political and Civic Lives of Public Sector Workers: Unions and “Public Service Motivation”*

Public sector employees are highly engaged in civic and political life, from voting to volunteering. Scholars have theorized that this political activity stems from “public service motivation,” or the selection of publicly oriented individuals into public work. We build on this work by analyzing the role of public sector unions in shaping participation. Unions are central mobilizing organizations in political life, and one in three public sector workers are unionized. Special supplements of the Current Population Survey provide data on various forms of participation, sector, union membership, and union coverage. Logistic regressions find that unionized public sector workers have much higher odds of engaging in a range of activities compared to non‐union public workers, including protest, electoral politics, and political communication. Union membership impacts service work to a lesser extent, suggesting that unions are more central to political lives. These findings have implications for the consequences of union decline, including the class, race, and gender composition of who participates in democratic life.     

Privatization of refuse removal and labor costs

We examine the labor-cost savings associated with privatization by comparing earnings and employment trends of public and private sector refuse workers. Findings suggest that high union earnings for workers in the public sector are a source of labor-cost savings in the refuse industry. Evidence on job changers does not indicate that earnings for this group of workers are a compensating differential. Metropolitan area employment findings suggest that municipalities are less likely to use union refuse workers in the public sector when a relatively small percentage of area residents belong to a union. The authors thank Jacqueline Agesa, Keith Bender, Maria Crawford, and Richard Perlman for valuable suggestions. Research assistance from Eric Blackburn is greatly appreciated.     

An economic analysis of public sector collective bargaining and strike activity

This paper develops a theory of public sector collective bargaining and uses it to investigate the economic determinants of public sector strike activity. The model considers union leaders, union members, bureaucrats, politicians, and voters, with the intention of explicitly recognizing both the constraints placed on the bargaining parties by their constituents and the differences between public and private sector collective bargaining. The empirical results indicate that only in cases where both negotiating parties are motivated by self-interest can we expect frequent strikes and strikes of long duration. The results also suggest that public sector strikes are countercyclical and principally influenced by the business cycle and its impact on state and local revenues.     

Union Worker Wage Effect in the Public Sector

This study examines union wage premiums in the public sector for the 1998–2004 period. Unlike previous studies, our approach estimates union wage premiums considering differences in the rewards to education, experience, and other personal characteristics for union and non-union workers. The approach provides a larger estimated wage gap than the traditional approach, and allows for simulations of union–nonunion wage gaps for different types of workers. Moreover, we use an Oaxaca decomposition to explain the larger union–nonunion wage gap in the private sector in comparison to that in the public sector. We find that between 50% and 60% of the difference in union wage premiums between the private and public sectors is due to differences in the way unionized workers are rewarded in the private and public sectors, while the remaining portion is due to differences in personal characteristics of private and public sector workers.

Mediation outcomes and sources of impasse: An empirical investigation

This study examines two of the four determinants of mediation effectiveness identified in Kochan and Jick’s (1978) model of the public sector mediation process: source of impact and situational factors. Questionnaire data were directly obtained from 240 Bangladesh management and union officials. Discriminant analysis identified several sources of impasse for both union and management groups, but no situational factors were found to accurately predict case settlement. Results are discussed in terms of U.S. public sector mediation research.     

The future of public sector collective bargaining in Canada

Conclusion Looking to the future of Canadian public sector labor relations, the glass is half full. Despite regular intervals when government fiscal and economic policy “trump” public sector bargaining rights through legislation, public sector unions and collective bargaining will survive. Public sector compensation and job security will likely continue to be at least comparable to the unionized private sector, and public sector union density should remain stable, at or near its currently high levels.     

The choice between union membership and free-rider status

Free riders are employees who are covered by collective bargaining agreements but are not union members. This article examines the choice between free-rider status and union membership. A discriminant analysis of data from the 1988Current Population Survey identifies employee characteristics that distinguish free riders from union members. Factors influencing the decision to be a free rider, including the knowledge of available options, the preferential treatment of union members, the value of reputation, and union consciousness are discussed. A probit analysis determines the extent to which earnings and proxy measures for the value of reputation and union consciousness affect free-rider status. Suggestions are made for extending the study of the free riders and for the design of internal organizing campaigns. The authors thank an anonymous referee for helpful comments.     

Organizing Sexualities,Organized Inequalities: Lesbians and Gay Men in Public Service Occupations

This article examines the experiences of lesbians and gay men who are employed in a variety of public service occupations in the UK, drawing upon interview material gathered during a broader research project on lesbian and gay self-organization within the public sector trade union UNISON. It forges pathways through hitherto unexplored territories by concentrating upon career trajectories beyond the closet, arguing that those who dare to come out and proud in public sector workplaces will tread a precarious tightrope between being out and pursued for their specialist knowledges and out and persecuted for their presumed perversities. Although many public sector employers have endorsed equal opportunities policies which include lesbians and gay men, and although these have been vital in alleviating some forms of discrimination, it is argued that such measures have been incapable of resolving the more profound double-binds etched into our organizations, whereby sexualities are reproduced as inequalities, while sexuality itself is eclipsed from the organization's self-consciousness. It is claimed that in virtue of their unique positions and perspectives, lesbian and gay employees have become the carriers of the sexual consciousness of their organizations. However, it is also acknowledged that the political agenda on lesbian and gay rights will not remedy deeper ignorances and broader injustices, unless the heterosexual majority and other non-heterosexual minorities are also parties to these debates.     

Reconsidering union wage effects: Surveying new evidence on an old topic

I examine evidence on private sector union wage gaps in the United States. The consensus opinion among labor economists of an average union premium of roughly 15 percent is called into question. Two forms of measurement error bias downward standard wage gap estimates. Match bias results from Census earnings imputation procedures that do not include union status as a match criterion. Downward bias is roughly equal to the proportion of workers with imputed earnings, currently about 30 percent. Misclassification of union status causes additional attenuation in union gap measures. This bias has worsened as private sector density has declined, since an increasing proportion of workers designated as union are instead nonunion workers. Corrections for misclassification and match bias lead to estimated union gaps substantially higher than standard estimates, but with less of a downward trend since the mid 1980s. Private sector union gaps corrected for these biases are estimated from the CPS for 1973–2001. The uncorrected estimate for 2001 is .13 log points. Correction for match bias increases the gap to .18 log points; further correction for misclassification bias, based on an assumed 2 percent error rate, increases the gap to .24. Reexamination of the skill-upgrading hypothesis leads to the conclusion that higher union gap estimates are plausible. The conventional wisdom of a 15 percent union wage premium warrants reexamination.     

Unionism,peasant protest and the reform of French agriculture

Enormous tensions have been created in French rural society by the extent and rapidity of the economic and social changes which have taken place in agriculture since the Second World War; CAP reforms and the GATT agreement have further deepened the sense of crisis within the sector. The French Government has sought to implement change and control these tensions through the “corporatisation” of the dominant farm union and other agricultural interest groups. Rejection of this process by some groups of farmers and widening disparities within agriculture have resulted in shifting patterns of union allegiance and the growth of a variety of forms of protest which, combined with general public support for the preservation of rural areas and antipathy towards American economic and cultural dominance have ensured continued government concessions to the agricultural sector.     

Empirical evidence on the union free-rider problem: Do right-to-work laws matter?

This study provides detailed statistics by state, industry, occupation, and worker characteristics on private sector wage and salary workers covered by union collective bargaining agreements but who are not union members. A distinction is made between those workers who value the benefits of coverage more than the cost of membership, the true free riders, and those who do not, the induced riders. A probit union membership equation is estimated on a sample which excludes the covered nonmembers. Predicted probabilities are then calculated from the estimated model, yielding a quantifiable measure of the true free-rider problem. The author gratefully thanks Barry T. Hirsch, David A. Macpherson, and an anonymous referee for their constructive comments and insightful ideas. Any errors remain the sole responsibility of the author.     

A simultaneous-equations model of the relationship between public sector bargaining legislation and unionization

This paper estimates a simultaneous-equations model with public sector bargaining laws and union membership treated as jointly-determined variables. The extent of public sector unionization has a significant positive influence on the passage of prolabor bargaining legislation and bargaining legislation has strong, independent effects on the extent of public sector unionization. We gratefully acknowledge the research support provided by Minbo Kim and Parisun Chantonahom.