Union wage premiums by gender and race: Evidence from PSID 1980–1992

We find that the overall union wage premium is relatively stable (ranging from 22.3 to 28.4 percent), but there seems to be a convergence of union wage premiums across different demographic groups between 1980 and 1992. Nonwhite men (whose premium ranges from 23.5 to 36.2 percent) show the largest gain, followed by white women (17.1 to 30.5 percent), white men (19 to 26.4 percent), and nonwhite women (10 to 20 percent). One explanation for this convergence of union wage premiums might be the “equalization hypothesis” associated with unions. This converging trend could have important implications for the future of unions. If union membership can explain a portion of the gender/racial wage gap, and if women/nonwhites can obtain, through union membership significant wage premia, increased female/nonwhite union participation in highly unionized sectors that offer high union wage gains could, in time, greatly decrease the gender/racial wage differential. This study was supported in part by National Science Foundation funds [OSR-9350540]. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Southern Economic Association conference in New Orleans in 1995. We thank Emilia Lulcheva and Michael Lauze for their able research assistance and William Warren for his valuable editorial comments on an earlier draft of this paper. The usual caveat applies.     

Professional staff in American unions: Changes,trends, implications

The last twenty-five years has been a period of rapid change for the American labor movement. One way in which that change has been manifested has been the growth in the number of professional, technical, and administrative personnel employed by labor organizations. This article examines data on changes in the employment of union professional staff in 30 major unions between 1961 and 1985. The reasons for these changes are discussed, along with the implications of these trends for the institutional future of American unions.     

Bargaining for Success: Examining the Relationship Between Teacher Unions and Student Achievement

While many previous studies have identified a positive relationship between teachers unions and student achievement on standardized tests, little research to date has explored the channels through which unions might actually affect achievement. Utilizing multilevel random intercept models, we examine the effects of two categories of items commonly negotiated in teacher contracts—“industrial union” items and “professional union” items—on individual student math scores. Further, we assess the ability of these two clusters of variables to explain the positive union effect found in previous research. The results confirm that teachers unions are positively associated with student achievement and suggest that the industrial model explains moderately more of the union effect than the professional model; however, only the combination of both models is capable of reducing the union effect to nonsignificance. These findings are also confirmed in a supplemental analysis utilizing instrumental variables to account for the possibility of endogeneity. Finally, a decomposition of the union effect suggests that teachers unions are most beneficial to middle‐ and high‐achieving students. We conclude that through industrial and professional bargaining, teachers are able to secure higher salaries, credentialing, and greater autonomy which lead to improved student achievement.     

Majority voting rules and the union success rate in national labor relations board representation elections

This paper simulates how the union success rate in representation elections would be affected if the NLRB reverted from its current simple-majority voting rule to its original majority-in-unit voting rule. Such a rule change would have altered 21 percent of decertification and 16 percent of certification victories over the period 1977–81, resulting in the loss of 180,400 actual or potential bargaining unit members for the union movement. Abstentions play an important role in election outcomes. Under the present voting rule unions have no clear advantage to “get out the vote” in decertification elections, but a clear disadvantage in certification elections. Under a majority-in-unit rule unions hold an advantage when they “get out the vote” in all representation elections. I would like to thank Mike Bognanno, Jim Dworkin, Paul Schumann, two reviewers, and the editor for helpful comments and David Wilson for excellent research assistance. I would also like to thank the NLRB for providing the election data tape.     

External legitimacy of unions: Trends in New Zealand

Just 5 years ago, at the pinnacle of their success, New Zealand unions negotiated collective agreements covering over 720,000 employees and were successful in persuading some 603,000 of these employees to join. In May 1991, the Employment Contracts Act, which withdrew totally any state-endorsement or sponsorship of union activity, radically altered their position. Union membership fell by around 40 percent in the four years since the enactment of the Act — from 603,000 to 376,000 members in December 1994; the overall number of unions remaining has declined to around 80; a number of unions have become insolvent and have filed for liquidation; staff retrenchments within unions has been widely reported and, in some cases, this has led to a reduction in services and capacity. Data for 1993 suggest that union decline may have “bottomed out” with unions losing fewer than 20,000 members in that year. However, decline is again apparent in the 1994 data. The removal of external legitimacy has had a significant impact on unionization rates. We review the conditions under which the restoration of legitimacy would bring about a reversal of union decline.     

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.     

The level and growth of union/nonunion relative wage effects, 1967–1977

This paper pools cross-section data to obtain an estimate of the overall effects of unions on relative wages for the period 1967 through 1977. We found the average union wage premium for all workers to be roughly 24 percent, but that this premium varies substantially between subgroups of workers. Our analysis showed that real wage rates increased faster in the union sector than in the nonunion sector between 1967 through 1977. However, we found that this relative growth pattern in wages was caused by economic conditions rather than in any fundamental shift in the power of unions. We wish to thank James S. Cunningham, H. Gregg Lewis, and John Pencavel for helpful comments.     

Judging unions’ future using a historical perspective: the public policy choice between competition and unionization

VII. Conclusion In discussing the future of private sector union membership one needs to evaluate the early period of union ascendancy (1930s through the early 1950s) as well as the past few decades when unions have been in decline. We know trends currently in place are unfavorable to unions. What conditions would be favorable? When the earlier period of union growth us studied, two factors become prominent — the competitiveness of the labor market and the ability of unions to fullfill their major goal of either extracting economic rents or remedying market failures that result in exploitive employment relationship.     

The State of the Unions in Mexico

Significant developments during a period of transition for the labor movement in Mexico are described, including general declines in union membership; expansion of the maquiladora system accompanied by determined opposition to union-ization; and the effects of global labor markets, as reflected in limited ability of unions to raise wages and improve working conditions. Effects of the end of the 70-year rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party in which party-aligned unions exploited their own members are examined. The development of independent unions and federations are described as significant forces which, along with reformed unions previously aligned with the PRI, now provide alternatives for legitimate representation of the interests of their members.     

Success in multiple union elections: Exclusive jurisdiction vs. competition

We consider union success in certification elections where more than one union appears on the election ballot. While union victory rates in single union elections have remained well below 50 percent over the past ten years, we find that unions have been much more successful in multiple union certification elections, with win rates of as high as 90 percent during certain years. We present two theories of union success in multiple union elections and offer relevant empirical results.     

UNIONS, PLANTS, JOBS, AND WORKERS

The relationship between unions and their members is an important, yet neglected, subject in recent studies of the sociology of work. This study develops and tests a theory of union satisfaction and participation that combines recent research in the sociology of work with previous explanations of union satisfaction and participation provided by industrial relations researchers, in an attempt to understand the relationship between unions, plants, jobs, and workers in U.S. manufacturing industries. This theory predicts that union members will be satisfied with their unions and participate more in them if there are extensive ties between workers, employers, and unions. These ties stem from the focus of labor/management relations in particular, and class struggles in general, on market outcomes and the historical linkage of union membership with employment in the United States. The theory also predicts that unions them-selves act as ties to specific work settings and that union participation is a forum for voicing dissatisfaction with specific characteristics of workers' jobs. Testing these predictions is complicated by contradictory nature of the structure and organization of work in advanced industrial societies. The analysis provides qualified support for this theory, with data drawn from more unions, plants, and union members than have been used to date. In addition to discussing modifications to the theory and analysis presented here, the study includes a discussion of its implications for the future of unionization and the organization of work, in light of declines in union membership, increased efforts to decertify unions and resist union organizing efforts, and deindustrialization in the United States.     

Equal access to income and union dissolution among mainland Puerto Ricans

This study investigates the implications for union stability of different methods for providing access to income in cohabiting and marital unions among mainland Puerto Ricans. Using the Puerto Rican Maternal and Infant Health Study (N = 836), we show that union dissolution is associated with both union type and type of method. The relatively high rate of union dissolution among cohabiters is explained partially by their lower likelihood of organizing access to income under an equality principle through income pooling. Cohabiting unions that follow the equality principle, however, are as stable as marital unions that follow the equality principle. These patterns are interpreted in terms of the role of economic equality in solidifying socioemotional bonds.     

Construction doublebreasted operations and pre-hire agreements: Assessing the issues

Labor relations in the construction industry are conducted under a legal framework that is both different and more favorable to unions than is that in industry generally. Thus, construction employers are more subject to challenge than those in other industries if they operate both union and nonunion subsidiaries; construction unions, but not those in most other industries, may enter into agreements before anyone is hired (“pre-hire agreements”), require employees to join unions after ten days of employment instead of thirty, and require the contractor to notify them of job openings. Despite these advantages, construction unions represented only 22.2 percent of all construction workers in 1987, down from 40.1 percent in 1973, while nonunion, or “open shop,” construction accounted for more than 70 percent of the construction dollar volume as early as 1984. Attempting to overcome these trends, the construction unions have sponsored legislation in the current and last two congresses which would outlaw “doublebreasting,” i.e., one company owning both unionized and open shop subsidiaries, eliminate any restrictions on pre-hire agreements, and have the effect of forcing thousands of construction workers into unions regardless of their wishes. This article examines the reasons for the decline of construction unionism, analyzes the proposed legislation, discusses its probable impact, and concludes that it is lacking in justification for the common good.     

Employer-initiated elections, 1968–1992

In 1968, employers filed 1,091 petitions resulting in 377 elections, 42.4 percent of which unions won. In 1992, the most recent year for which data are available, employers filed 247 petitions, 66 elections were held, and the union victory rate was less than 25 percent. This research examines both the legal environment and the activity levels of employer-initiated (RM) elections over the past 25 years.     

General Feelings Toward Unions and Employers as Predictors of Union Voting Intent

The union voting intention literature shows that many nonunion employees who indicate that they think unions are instrumental in increasing wages, benefits, and working conditions would vote against forming a union. Although American workers have often been characterized as pragmatic with regard to their support for unions, the “disconnect” between union beliefs and union voting intentions just described suggests that more subtle forces are at work. In this paper, it is shown empirically that union instrumentality is a limited predictor of union voting intentions for a recent national cross-section of workers. Rather, more general feelings toward unions and employers are primary. These accounted for a large portion of the variance in union voting intentions, with general feelings towards unions by far the most critical predictor. A concluding section discusses whether the results may reflect changes in union power and changes in employee views of unions. Areas for future research are discussed.     

A theory of union collective action

The relationship between government behaviors and union collective action has been a neglected research area. Where unions are not heavily involved in policymaking, as long as governments respect the status quo and do not undermine unions’ vested interests in organizational and job security, unions are not likely to break with their past institutionalized behaviors. But what happens when a government promulgates policies that threaten the unions’ vested interests and simultaneously excludes them from the political decisionmaking system? The politically excluded unions’ arsenal of responses ranges from a passive, waitandsee behavior to collective protests. Understanding the process of the latter response is my focus herein.     

Union decline: A view from Canada

Important changes are occurring in the Canadian unions’ political and economic environments. This paper argues that such changes may be detrimental to Canadian trade unions, given their structural and institutional situation. To support this argument, private-sector union and nonunion firms in Alberta are compared. This comparison uncovers some structural (union members’ employment patterns and union firm characteristics) and institutional (union services) attributes of unions. Combined with the politico-economic environments that Alberta unions have faced since the early 1980s, these attributes have led to a decline in union membership. Because these attributes are shared by many other Canadian unions, those unions may increasingly confront some of the same hardships currently plaguing their Alberta counterparts. I am indebted to Brian Bemmels, Alan Murray, and John G. Fricke for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper, and to Mike Jones for his research assistance.     

Financial and political resources of nine major public sector unions in the 1980s

Current research offers two potentially competing perspectives on union strength: membership and financial/political resources. We update and broaden the research on the financial and political resources of nine major public sector unions in the U.S. by reporting these unions’ financial assets, net worth, revenues, and political action committee (PAC) receipts during the 1980s and the early 1990s. We find that unions may expand their financial and political resources even though membership levels stagnate or decline. Overall, the unions have amassed larger asset bases, even though some have actually lost members. On a per member basis, federal executive branch unions do not appear as financially weak as the level of their financial resources suggests. Postal unions as a group are clearly the strongest in terms of per member financial and political resources. Federal executive branch unions have experienced a striking reduction in their PAC activity, while the postal and the state and local union PACs have grown substantially. Our analysis indicates that union membership may not adequately measure union strength.     

Union effects on productivity,personnel practices,and survival in the automotive parts industry

We estimate the effects of unions on productivity and compensation in the automotive engine and non-ornamental body parts manufacturing industry using data obtained from a detailed questionnaire and a series of personal interviews. We find no significant union productivity effect but a significant 30 percent compensation premium in firms organized by the United Auto Workers. Individual personnel policies were shown to differ significantly in the expected manner between the union and nonunion sectors. Finally, we use data on bankrupt firms to show how the failure to correct for sample selection bias might yield upwardly biased estimates of the union productivity effect. We would like to thank Elizabeth Savoca and an anonymous referee for their helpful suggestions.