Information,disinformation, and union success in certification and decertification elections

In certification elections, workers consider the purchase of union services whose quality is, ex ante, unobservable. Voters must rely on available signals or indices in forming their expectations. Union members are able to reevaluate their initial purchase decision as more accurate information is obtained through experience. Therefore, participants in decertification elections rely less on sources of imperfect information. Using NLRB data over the period 1966 to 1990, we find evidence consistent with information-related distinctions between the certification and decertification decisions. Our study provides a useful framework for understanding the observed differences between these two types of elections. This research was funded through the Illinois State University Research Grant Program.     

Do union organizing activities affect decertification?

This paper tests the hypothesis that unions face a trade-off between retaining organized units and organizing new bargaining units. Using cost-benefit analysis, a model is developed which examines the impact of representation elections on the level of decertification activity for the period 1948 to 1979. The results indicate that as unions increase their efforts to organize more employees, they trade-off a loss of membership through decertification. The shift of resources from servicing existing units to organizing new units causes a sufficient change in the benefit/cost ratio for employees to result in loss of union certification.     

Determinants of the decertification process: Evidence from employer-initiated elections

There have been relatively few studies on why workers choose to decertify a union as their bargaining unit and virtually no empirical studies on the outcomes of employer-initiated representation elections. Using data from the NLRB monthly election reports (1977–1981), we attempt to analyze the factors that seem to influence the outcomes of employer-initiated representation elections with an incumbent union. Variables in our analysis include size of the election unit, region, industrial classification, type of incumbent union, and the state of the local economy. While the data show a concentration of elections on the West Coast, there is no significant difference in the ability of unions there to “win” decertification elections.     

Union decertification election outcomes: Bargaining unit characteristics and union resources

Previous analysis using aggregate data has concluded that union decertification activity is “exclusively a product of market conditions.” We employ data disaggregated by local (county) labor market which permits a preliminary investigation of the importance of potential nonmarket influences that are not measurable using aggregate data, namely, the type of bargaining unit, the type of union, the type of employer, and proxies for union resources. It also allows a more precise specification of the labor market characteristics previously found to influence decertification. Our results confirm the importance of market conditions in decertification activity and outcomes, but they also suggest that the likelihood of decertification is much greater in independent unions and in industry-county combinations in which the typical employee works part-time and has limited alternative income opportunities. Institutional characteristics of the union and employer, individual characteristics of bargaining unit members, and local economic conditions are important determinants of decertification.     

The influence of macroeconomic variables on the probability of union decertification

This study focuses on the role macroeconomic factors play in explaining the proportion of decertification elections lost by the union movement in the postwar period. Previous research has neglected the importance of such macroeconomic variables. Our results indicate that the union-nonunion wage differential, inflation, strikes, state of the labor market, and union density are related to the phenomenon of decertification. The authors would like to thank Greg Hundley, Mike Bognanno, Paul Schumann, Jim Scoville, the editor, and a reviewer for valuable comments and Michael Wachter and William Wascher for providing some unpublished data.     

Representation type and union success in certification elections

Many different variables have been used to predict union certification election success; however, none of the studies has explored the impact of representation type. Using NLRB election data for the period from April 1980 through September 1990, we found that affiliation of a local union with the AFL-CIO was detrimental to the success rate of unions in single union and contested certification elections. We offer preliminary interpretations based on fundamental economic themes often applied to collective choice and conclude with implications for union organizing policy. The authors thank Michael Nelson for helpful suggestions and Matthew Harris for research assistance.     

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.     

The effect of voting procedures on union representation elections: The multi-union case

Public choice theorists have shown that choice of voting procedures may affect the outcome when more than two alternatives are on a ballot. The run-off election and the two-part ballot are two alternatives used in representation elections involving more than one union. A comparison of these alternatives under various voting strategies shows that the run-off election used by the NLRB results in fewer union wins if workers vote sincerely or if they engage in strategic behavior. The run-off procedure results in more union wins if workers seek to avoid their least-favored option or if they follow a second-best strategy.     

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.     

Induced inefficiency as a response to the union threat

Milkman and Mitchell (1995) extend Rosen’s (1969) threat-effect hypothesis to suggest that the threat of unionization can induce inefficient underutilization of labor by nonunion firms. If firms follow this strategy, the apparent paradox of competitive coexistence in the face of higher union wages reflects induced nonunion firm inefficiency rather than superior union firm efficiency. Furthermore, this strategy decreases demand for nonunion workers in a partially unionized industry. A generalized cost function analysis of data from sawmills in the Pacific Northwest yields evidence that nonunion firms use this strategy.     

Vertical spillovers,market concentration,union coverage,and wages

This paper outlines a model that tests for the presence of spillover effects of union coverage across industry boundaries on wages and union coverage in vertically related industries. There is some evidence of spillover effects from buying industries to the wages of nonunion workers and of such effects on the degree of union coverage from both buying and supplying industries. We are grateful to Dan Hamermesh and an anonymous referee for useful comments. Responsibility for errors is our own.     

International competition and the labor market prospects of union and nonunion workers

We investigate the relationship between international competition and the labor mar-ket prospects of a representative sample of British workers. Our analysis, which sets out the first explicit test of both the wage and employment implications of increased international competition, highlights an interesting asymmetry with competition neg-atively affecting the wage, but not the employment, prospects of unionized workers and the employment, but not the wage, prospects of nonunion workers. We have benefited from discussions with Monojit Chatterji, Michael Devereux, Lisa Grobar, Alan Man-ning, Chris Milner, and Ian Walker. Helpful comments were also received from seminar participants at the Universities of Aberdeen, City, Keele, and Loughborough. We are grateful to Daniel Kwok for excellent research assistance. The normal disclaimer applies.     

Using elections to represent preferences

This paper takes voting theory out of the realm of mechanism design and studies elections as tools for representing preferences: every preference relation on a set of n elements is the outcome of pairwise voting by approximately 2 log₂ n voters with transitive preferences. Results like this one provide representation for preference relations not representable by utility functions. They also motivate definitions of the levels of intransitivity, nonlinearity and nonrepresentability (by utility function) of a preference relation. Received: 25 March 1999/Accepted: 19 June 2000     

From union hegemony to union disintegration: Collective bargaining in cement and related industries

The cement industry provides an interesting example of the impact of collective bargaining where management determines that it cannot afford a strike, yields to extreme union demands, but deludes itself that it can withstand the economic impact of unionism under such circumstances because almost all competitors are similarly situated and labor costs can be partially offset by automation. The small Cement, Lime, and Gypsum Workers Union won not only high wages and benefits, but imposed restrictive rules as severe as those in any industry. Eventually, however, foreign competition and economic realities forced the companies to revolt, and the union found that it could not sustain strikes. An ill-conceived merger broke up, an independent union was formed, and today unionism, once so strong, is weak and divided as management imposes or forces acceptance of its conditions. The story, while unique in many ways, resembles what has occurred in other industries with high fixed costs, militant unions, and the reluctance of management to sacrifice current gains for longer run needs. Professor Emeritus of Management and former Director, Industrial Research Unit. Ms. Sue Torelli, Librarian, Industrial Research Unit, and Kevin Barry, Librarian, Industrial Relations Section, Princeton University, provided helpful information and numerous documents.     

Rumour and decertification in exile politics: evidence from the Egyptian case

ABSTRACT

Does exile affect activism and if so how? In this paper, the case of Egyptian activists exiled in England is taken as illustrative of processes typical of exiled activism. The case study draws on primary and secondary sources including a series of biographical interviews with exiled activists. The analysis compares activism in Egypt with exiled activism in England using the participants’ critical self-reflections to explain the mechanisms mediating the changes. Contrary to reasonable expectations that exile is a spontaneous response to a change in political context, the conditions for exile predate banishment and lie within the institutions of dictatorship which decertify activism. Decertification continues throughout the exile process as fear of repression becomes internalized within the movement. Within the sanctuary of the host country, a process of brokerage counteracts decertification expanding and modifying the exile repertoire.     

Outsourcing and union power

The outsourcing of union work and jobs either diffuses or diminishes union membership, depending on perspective and situation. The correlation of trends in union membership to trends in union power, while less than perfect, has until recently been relatively strong over the past sixteen years. The fact that as diverse a sample of unions as AFSCME, SEIU, and UAW have chosen to make outsourcing a prominent labor/public relations issue suggests that the correlation continues to be perceived by the union movement to be significant, notwithstanding the efforts of the “new” leadership of the AFL-CIO to break that link with respect to union political power by “taxing” member unions and their members to contribute both money and militancy to the 1996 election cycle. Although outsourcing may lead only to the diffusion of union membership either within or between unions, as opposed to the diminution of union membership, this fact has not received a great deal of attention. The net effect on total union membership of outsourcing from one union employer to another union employer is unclear, although the effect on the membership of the union at the outsourcing employer is not. The redistribution of membership within a union as a result of outsourcing is likely to have little immediate impact on union power. However, as even the best case scenario presented above suggests, it may have significant long-run deleterious effects on union bargaining power by taking labor out of a sheltered market and putting it into potentially competitive market. This is particularly likely to be the case when outsourcing (1) places the outsourced work into a different industry or wage contour and (2) creates the possibility of moving from sole-source to multiplesource supplier arrangements. The redistribution of membership between unions as a result of outsourcing is unlikely to have a major impact on union power broadly defined. It can have, however, serious deleterious effects in terms of the power of an individual union, as suggested in my “competitive case” scenario. The fact that one union’s losses due to outsourcing may be another union’s gain is of little consolation to the losing union. That act, in and of itself, may make the threat of outsourcing a potential union “Achilles heel” at the bargaining table by placing it into competition with some other, perhaps unknown, union as well as possibly nonunion competition. The most obvious threat to union power comes from outsourcing that diminishes union membership overall by transferring jobs from union to nonunion employers. The willingness and ability of employers to move work/jobs entirely out of the orbit of union control constitutes, in terms of power and particularly union bargaining power, a revisitation of the phenomenon of the “runaway shop.” It may also be viewed as a proactive form of hiring permanent replacements for (potentially) striking workers. The union options in dealing with such a challenge are to endeavor to preclude outsourcing through legislation or collective bargaining or to chase the work by organizing the unorganized, hopefully with the help of the unionized outsourcing employer. Neither option may be easy, but as the 1996 auto industry negotiations suggest, the former may be less difficult than the latter. The possibility that outsourcing from union to nonunion employer may provide unions with the power to organize from the top (outsourcer) down (outsourcee) cannot be entirely ignored as the issue of supplier “neutrality” reportedly was raised in the 1996 auto negotiations. The adverse effects of outsourcing on union political and financial power, by virtue of its impact on the level or distribution of union membership, can and may well be offset by an increase in union activism—as measured by dues levels, merger activity, organizing commitment, and political action. The adverse effects of outsourcing on union bargaining power are more problematical from the union standpoint. The effect of outsourcing, whatever its rationale or scenario, appears to be to put union labor back into competition. Thus, outsourcing constitutes yet another challenge to the labor movement in its ongoing and seemingly increasingly unsuccessful battle to take and keep U.S. union labor out of competition by proving itself able and willing to organize to the extent of the market and standardizing wages in that market.     

Attitudinal and behavioral variables related to participation in union activities

A questionnaire was administered to 500 union members. A multiple regression equation was developed using a multi-faceted index of union participation as the criterion with 25 predictor variables: 14 factor scores developed through factor analysis, 9 demographic variables, and 2 measures of perceived control within local unions. There was little shrinkage in the multiple R after double cross-validation. Community-political activities, liberal political beliefs, pro-unionism philosophies, high standards of involvement with unions, and high general job satisfaction-involvement were the five best predictors of union participation. Active union members may view unions as part of a socio-political movement above and beyond their economic and protective functions.