Teachers’ collective bargaining outcomes and tradeoffs

This study uses data from Illinois and Iowa public school districts to examine the factors that influence the wage and nonwage bargaining outcomes negotiated by teachers’ unions. Tradeoffs between wage and nonwage outcomes and among nonwage contract provisions are also examined. The results provide some evidence that tradeoffs exist between wage and nonwage outcomes. The findings also reveal differences in outcome and tradeoff patterns across the states for issues unrelated to union security. I am grateful to the Illinois State Board of Education, the Iowa Department of Public Instruction, and the Iowa Public Employment Relations Board for providing the data analyzed in this study. I am also grateful to the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations at the University of Illinois and the Columbia University Graduate School of Business for research support, and to Jack Fiorito, David Lewin, Susan Schwochau, Donna Sockell, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

How employee involvement affects union commitment

I assess how employee involvement programs affect union commitment attitudes. Analysis of 229 survey responses indicates that participation attitudes have no effect on union commitment levels; previous participation has a positive effect; and organizational commitment has a negative effect. A similar pattern was observed on four subscales of union commitment: union loyalty, responsibility to the union, willingness to work for the union, and belief in unionism. I thank the employees, the unions, and the company at which this study was conducted. Also, I am grateful to suggestions and comments made by participants in the American University Department of Management Research Series. Finally, a word of thanks to Tom Case, Gordon Henry, David Jacobs, and Tom Vonk for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.     

Merger activity and wage levels in U.S. manufacturing

This study uses micro data from the 1981 March Current Population Survey and incorporates industry merger information from the 1979 FTC Large Mergers and Acquisitions Series to examine the relationship between merger activity and wage levels in U.S. manufacturing. These data sources provide the opportunity to control the wage effect of workers’ differing personal qualities and to allow the investigation of wage levels in five merger categories. The findings suggest that in 1980, employees that work in industries composed of firms formed by horizontal, vertical, and product extension mergers received significantly higher wages than other workers. These results indicate that workers should benefit financially from the recent increase in the number of mergers, other than pure conglomerates. The author thanks William Jones, Peter Loeb, and Leo Troy for their valuable suggestions. The author is also grateful to the Rutgers University Research Council for support of this project.     

Union dues and wage premiums

This study explores whether union wage premiums reflect compensating differences or noncompetitive rents. It is argued that if (1) there exists substantial dues variability, and (2) there is a positive wage-dues relation among union workers, at least part of the observed union premium is noncompetitive. Empirically, these two conditions are substantiated both within and across industries using the PSID microdata base. On average, 44 percent of the overall union premium is attributable to noncompetitive sources. Senior Economist, Office of Research and Evaluation, Bureau of Labor Statistics and Special Assistant for Policy, Evaluation and Research, U.S. Department of Labor. Comments are gratefully acknowledged from James Cunningham, H. Gregg Lewis, Wesley Mellow, William J. Moore, Jack E. Triplett and an anonymous referee. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily reflect the official position or policy of the U.S. Department of Labor.     

Female-headed households in nonmetropolitan areas: Housing and demographic characteristics

This article describes selected demographic and housing characteristics of nonmetropolitan female-headed households. It compares nonmetropolitan female householders with the average U.S. household, including regional differences. Female heads are older and more likely to have members in poor health than U.S. households on average. Female heads are also more likely to be in poverty and to experience housing poverty. Although the female householders do not suffer from space and quality problems, housing affordability is a problem. Most female heads live in owned, single-family dwellings and are more likely to live in mobile homes than the average U.S. household. This research was funded under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Cooperative State Research Service, and the experiment stations in Idaho, Indiana (Purdue University), Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and New York (Cornell University). Also supporting the research were East Carolina University, Illinois State University, Kansas State University, and Western Michigan University. The authors thank Mary Ann Horvath and Roxanne Miller for their assistance in preparing the figures and document. She received her Ph.D. from Oklahoma State University. Her work includes research in housing and the economic well-being of women. She received her Ph.D. from The Ohio State University. Her research interests include housing and neighborhood assessment and women and public policy issues.     

Trade unions and quits: Australian evidence

This study uses data from the recent Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey to test the union voice hypothesis that unions reduce quits. Unlike the U.S., however, it is argued that union voice may not be directly correlated with union membership as a result of the protections afforded trade unions by the unique Australian industrial relations system. It is found that, while unions are inversely associated with quit rates, this effect is strongest where union membership is supplemented with a more direct indicator of what unions actually do in the workplace. The authors thank the Australian Commonwealth Department of Industrial Relations for the data used herein, Robert Drago, Bruce Chapman, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments and advice, and attendees at the Australian Labour Market Research Workshop, February 1993, Perth, at which an earlier version of this paper was presented.     

What did Unions do? The Case of Illinois Coal Mining in the 1880s

This study asks what unions did for Illinois coal miners in the 1880s. It measures the outcomes provided by a traditional union and the Knights of Labor, primarily via difference-in-differences applied to a panel of coal mining counties in Illinois. Neither the traditional union nor the Knights of Labor was able to raise wages, provide benefits, or reduce hours per workday. The traditional union reduced days of work per year. Circumstantial evidence suggests the unions were able to ensure prompt payment of wages due.     

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.     

Needs and preferences for employer supported child care: A feasibility study

Employees of a large suburban health care center were asked to identify their needs and preferences for child care, and existing fringe benefits that they would be willing to give up in order to obtain employer supported child care services. Results indicate that a majority of the 41 employees in the sample with children under 12 years of age experience problems relating to child care and that those problems affect their work performance. There is no clear preference for type of child care, however, and employees are unwilling to give up existing fringe benefits to obtain child care services. Results are discussed with implications for provision of employer supported child care that is sensitive to the individual needs of employees.Terese Dressel is a clinician/consultant with the DuPage County Health Department, 111 North County Farm Road, Wheaton, Illinois 61087. The research reported was conducted as part of her Masters thesis in the Department of Human and Family Resources, Northern Illinois University.Michael Martin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Human and Family Resources, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois 60115. Research interests include child maltreatment and family violence.     

The “Helper” controversy in the construction industry

Helpers, whose role is to assist craftsmen, have been a subject of controversy in the construction industry for nearly a century. The AFL-CIO construction unions have attempted in various ways to control the work of helpers so that helpers cannot “pick up” the trade and then compete with craftsmen for jobs. With the help of the U.S. Department of Labor’s administration of the Davis-Bacon Act, these unions succeeded in almost eliminating the use of helpers on government-financed construction and most union jobs. This has meant that much unskilled and semiskilled work has been done by journeymen at skilled labor wages. The result has hurt union members and unionized contractors by aiding open-shop contractors, who use helpers extensively, to underbid their competitors and win increasing market share. This article examines the ramifications of the helper issue and related training problems from the turn of the century to the present, discusses various union policies, court decisions, and legislation affecting the issues, and concludes that the economies of utilizing helpers are sufficient to cast doubt on the efficacy or future success of current union attempts to limit narrowly the training and use of helpers. Professor Emeritus of Management; formerly, Director, Industrial Research Unit, and Chairman, Labor Relations Counsel.     

Unions and wage inequality

Summary and Conclusions The impact of unions on the structure of wages has recently attracted renewed interest as analysts have struggled to explain the rise in earnings inequality in several industrialized countries. Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States provide a potentially valuable set of countries for examining this question. All three countries now collect comparable data on wages and union status in their regular labor force surveys. Several features of the collective bargaining institutions of these countries make them suitable for studying the relationship between unions and wage inequality. Bargaining is highly decentralized; there are no general mechanisms for extending collective bargaining provisions beyond the “organized” sector; and the fraction of the work force covered by collective bargaining is relatively modest. Thus it is possible to compare the structure of wages for workers covered by union contracts to those who are not covered, and potentially infer the effect of unions on overall wage inequality.     

Work Roles, Management and Perceived Well-being for Married Women within Family Businesses

The study uses the National Family Business Survey and is grounded in the systemic Sustainable Family Business Model. It investigated the relationship between management activity of married women within family businesses and perceived well-being controlling for work roles, family context, personal and financial resources. Statistical analyses indicated that successfully achieving the most important family goal was positively related to management activity. Low-income women performed more management than did those with other income levels. Successfully achieving family goals, having lower education, less competition between family and business resources, no family cash flow problems, and higher management activity contributed to positive perceived well-being. Well-being increased at a decreasing rate as income increased.This study reports results from the Cooperative Regional Research Project, NE-167R, ‘Family Businesses: Interaction in Work and Family Spheres,’ partially supported by the Cooperative States Research, Education and Extension Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Experiment Stations at University of Hawaii at Manoa, University of Illinois, Purdue University (Indiana), Iowa State University, Michigan State University, University of Minnesota, Montana State University, University of Nebraska, Cornell University (New York), North Dakota State University, The Ohio State University, The Pennsylvania State University, Texas A & M University, Utah State University, The University of Vermont, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (for The University of Manitoba).     

Unions and fringe benefits: Additional evidence

Arguing that the fringe benefit demand function is probably discontinuous, a two-stage estimating procedure is used to estimate the continuous component of the function while correcting for selectivity bias. Results reveal an asymmetrical union impact on health and pension fringes. Although the union effect is positive for health insurance, it is nil for pension fringes. Nevertheless, unionism positively influences the likelihood that pension and health plans will be available to workers. I am grateful to the Oakland University Research Committee for grant support.     

The retirement behavior of workers covered by union and nonunion pension plans

Previous authors have noted that there are significant differences between the provisions of union and nonunion pension plans. I present evidence that sheds light on two hypotheses. The first (Parsons, 1983) posits that union pensions should encourage earlier retirement because productivity falls as workers age, but union rules prohibit firms from lowering wages. The second (Freeman, 1985) argues that union pension plans reflect the preferences of older, more senior workers. I find some support for both hypotheses. I conducted some of the research for this paper as an economist with Unicon Research Corporation. I thank the National Institute on Aging for funding (grant number 5 RO1 AG06133-03). I also thank Fran Horvath, Mark Kennet, Mark Loewenstein, Bob McIntire, Tom Plewes, Bill Wiatrowski, and three anonymous referees for useful comments. All views and opinions expressed herein are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Institute on Aging, or Unicon Research Corporation.     

The long-run and short-run impacts of global competition on U.S. union wages

Union opposition to trade liberalizing agreements suggests that international trade harms organized labor. Using union contract data, we assess both long- and short-run impacts of international trade on U.S. collective bargaining outcomes. Results indicate that, in the short run, increases in either imports or exports reduce union wages. This is attributed to risk aversion on the part of both unions and management. In the long run, however, trade has little net impact on average union wage settlements. In forming their opposition to more open U.S. trade policies, unions appear more concerned with short-run impacts of trade and are willing to trade-off immediate wage gains in lieu of future employment possibilities. We thank Dan Rickman, Bill Levernier, and the anonymous referee for their useful comments.     

LABOR SUPPLY ESTIMATION BIASES FROM DISREGARDING NONWAGE BENEFITS

Labor supply models and research underpinned by labor supply decisions often assume that workers' choices are functions of wage and wage offers. However, the literature shows evidence that such decisions at least partly depend on nonwage benefits encompassed in jobs and occupations. In this paper, I develop and estimate a stochastic dynamic model of occupation and job choice, where nonwage benefits are directly incorporated into the decision alongside wages (a full model). Nested within the full model is a wage model, which represents the common practice in the literature of basing selection solely on wages and disregarding nonwage benefits. I separately estimate the full model and the nested wage model to compare the implications (biases) of omitting nonwage benefits. I compare the two models' estimates of elasticities and an inequality reduction intervention policy. I find that disregarding nonwage benefits generally causes biases. There are cases when the two models predict very similar outcomes and have close estimates, such as in occupation‐specific elasticities and job transition elasticities. But these special cases are products of canceling biases. In most cases, ignoring nonwage benefits will bias estimates by overestimating the importance of wage in the selection process and by disregarding changes in relative prices between wage and nonwage benefits. (JEL J20, J32, D91)     

Cities,unions, and the privatization of sanitation services

We analyzed 740 cities to determine whether they considered or adopted the contracting out of their sanitation collection service. The presence of a municipal sanitation union reduces the likelihood that a city considers the contracting-out option and the likelihood of adoption of the privatization alternative, but only in those cities which have cooperative relations with the union. The authors thank the Governmental Refuse Collection and Disposal Association and the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations and the Research Board at the University of Illinois for generously supporting this research; Penni Falkinburg for some excellent research assistance; and John Delaney and Wally Hendricks for some very helpful comments.     

The influence of technological opportunity on union membership in U.S. manufacturing industries

I examine influences of technological opportunity on a set of factors determining inter-industry variation in union membership density. A data set of 239 U.S. manufacturing industries is divided into subsets of “technologically progressive “ and “technologically unprogressive “ industries, and my unionization model is estimated for each subset. The study confirms recent findings indicating that innovation activity and industry concentration have significant negative effects on union membership density. However, these results are obtained only for the subset of “technologically progressive industries and not for the “technologically unprogressive “ industries. These findings suggest that estimation bias is imparted to interindustry studies of the extent of union membership through the influence of technological opportunity on the interrelationships between innovation output, industry concentration, and union membership density. I am grateful for the support of the Center for Technology Management Research at Stevens.     

Union density effects in the supermarket industry

Unions provide higher than competitive wages for members, but their effect on non-union wages is not clear. We investigate the effect of union density on supermarket wages from 1986 to 1993, a period of declining real wages and declining union membership. Full-information maximum likelihood techniques are used to estimate log wage equations for both the union and nonunion sectors. Decomposition techniques then separate the union wage premium into the relative effects of densities and union membership. We find a significant, positive effect of union density for both union and nonunion employees. This effect explains approximately one-third of the union-nonunion wage differential. This research was conducted while Johansson was a graduate research assistant at the University of Minnesota.