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Unions in Decline? What Has Changed and Why
Abstract
Key Words collective bargaining, industrial relations, wage setting s Abstract Between 1950 and 1980, labor markets grew increasingly organized in advanced industrial societies. Union membership in most countries expanded more rapidly than the labor force, centralized wage setting became more common, and union members became increasingly concentrated in a small number of large unions. Between 1980 and 1992, however, union density fell on average, and centralized wage setting grew increasingly rare. Only union concentration continued to increase in the 1980s. Existing theories of union organization and collective bargaining institutions are largely successful in explaining both the trends over time and much of the cross-national variation from 1950 to 1980, but they fail to account for the dramatic declines in union strength that some (but not all) countries have experienced since 1980.
... This decline began several decades ago, and came after a period of unprecedented union strength. In most countries, unions became more influential and grew massively after the Second World War, the unions 'golden age', during which they secured legal recognition, the welfare state was expanding, and economic policy in line with worker interests was achieved regularly (Ebbinghaus and Visser 1997;Streeck and Hassel 2003b;Wallerstein and Western 2000). Starting in the 1980s, however, union membership began to decline (Tepe and Vanhuysse 2013;Visser 2019;Wallerstein and Western 2000), thus diminishing one primary power resource of unions (Bryson, Ebbinghaus, and Visser 2011). ...
... In most countries, unions became more influential and grew massively after the Second World War, the unions 'golden age', during which they secured legal recognition, the welfare state was expanding, and economic policy in line with worker interests was achieved regularly (Ebbinghaus and Visser 1997;Streeck and Hassel 2003b;Wallerstein and Western 2000). Starting in the 1980s, however, union membership began to decline (Tepe and Vanhuysse 2013;Visser 2019;Wallerstein and Western 2000), thus diminishing one primary power resource of unions (Bryson, Ebbinghaus, and Visser 2011). ...
... In the Anglos-Saxon countries, on the other hand, it has decreased markedly (ibid.). Concerning levels of wage bargaining centralization, there is a broad tendency towards decentralization (Visser 2013;Wallerstein and Western 2000). In the Anglo-Saxon countries as well as the Nordic countries there has been a substantial decentralization of wage bargaining. ...
... Esta correlación se establecería por dos cuestiones centrales. Por un lado, porque el sector servicios genera, especialmente en países emergentes, la mayor cantidad de empleo entre trabajadores de baja y alta calificación y esto constituye un factor explicativo de la baja participación en la acción gremial (Wallerstein y Western, 2000;Miguelez y Prieto, 1995;Jodar et al., 2004). De acuerdo con esto, la curva descripta por las variables calificación y participación, tiene la forma de U invertida, donde el mayor índice de sindicalización se establece entre los trabajadores de mediana cualificación y a medida que nos aproximamos a los extremos, la tendencia a la participación sería cada vez menor. ...
... Esto es, buscan dar cuenta de los procesos de representatividad más allá de la representación inmediata que significa la afiliación. Así, se sostiene que la capacidad de movilización de un sindicato si bien puede está relacionada con la cantidad de afiliados, también se hace necesario explorar otros aspectos que puedan dar cuenta de la adhesión de los trabajadores y del proceso de diálogo que significa la representatividad (Wallerstein y Western, 2000). ...
... The use and accumulation of consumer debt are often considered indicators of a person's access to financial services and their integration into the economy (23-26). Consumer debt is increasingly required to subsidize the costs of participating in today's economy (27), which is characterized by reduced collective bargaining power (28)(29)(30)(31), low and stagnant wages (32,33), and widening inequality (34,35). People rely on debt to cope with these economic trends, as indicated by steadily rising debt burdens from medical expenses, student loans, credit cards, and payday and installment loans (6). ...
... Debt from higher-cost, lower quality or "alternative" financial services-such as payday and installment lenders, auto title lenders, and tax refund and anticipation lenders-is expanding, growing by about 6% each year and reaching $141 billion in 2016 (36). The alternative financial services industry has expanded with the advent of online lending, and payday loans in particular comprised $14 billion of all online lending in 2016 (26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38). State regulations that restrict or prohibit certain usurious financial services appear to effectively constrain online lenders from crossing physical geographic boundaries (39)(40)(41). ...
Relationships between debt and poor health are worrisome as access to expensive credit expands and population health worsens along certain metrics. We focus on payday lenders as one type of expensive credit and investigate the spatial relationships between lender storefronts and premature mortality rates. We combine causes of death data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and payday lender locations at the county-level in the United States between 2000 and 2017. After accounting for county socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, the local presence of payday lenders is associated with an increased incidence risk of all-cause and specific-cause premature mortality. State regulations may attenuate these relationships, which provides insights on policy strategies to mitigate health impacts.
... In contrast to associational strength and according to Wright (2000, p. 962), structural strength arises 'from the location of workers within the economic system' (see also Checchi & Visser, 2005;Silver, 2005;Wallerstein & Western, 2000). Western (1997, p. 7) also describes the structural logic of union growth as depending on the market power of workers, which faces similar impacts of capitalistic labour markets across times and places. ...
... At least in more industrialised countries. This finding, which has been analysed in this article, is in line with other evaluations of the future of class and trade unions in affluent democracies (Brady, 2007, p. 73;Ebbinghaus & Visser, 1999;Wallerstein & Western, 2000). Developing and transition countries, by contrast, are slowly catching up with the higher level that industrialised countries basically have. ...
Although trade union density is the most influential and most commonly used indicator to map trade union strength, comparing between countries and time, the author argues that trade union density is lacking both specificity and comparability. Additionally, many studies on industrial relations neglect developing countries. Therefore, the paper offers a new concept based on a combination of different theoretical approaches that identify determinants of trade union strength involving developing countries. On that basis, the author creates a novel, composite index that is better at capturing trade union strength than previous indices. First evaluations of this collective labour force index, which covers the years 2000 to 2016 in 72 countries, show that it is quite capable of doing so.
... To control for the impact of the decline of left labor parties on union density as suggested by previous research Howell, 2011, 2017;Brady, 2007;Western, 1995Western, , 1997, we use a measure drawn from the Comparative Politics Data Set, Cumulative left cabinet seats, to capture the percentage of cabinet posts held by "social democratic and other left parties weighted by the number of days in office in a given year" (Armingeon et al., 2020). We control for inflation as sociologists link business-cycle based explanations to increasing unionization (Western, 1997;Wallerstein and Western, 2000). For this, we use the commonly used indicator of inflation in the percent change of the harmonized consumer price index (CPI) collated by the Comparative Political Data Set (Armingeon et al., 2020) and originally sourced from OECD's Main Economic Indicators (2020) and European Commission AMECO (2020) for various countries. ...
Scholars of punishment have long been interested in secondary consequences of
criminal justice contact. Recent work in this vein demonstrates that higher levels of
incarceration puts negative pressure on labor unions and unionization rates more
broadly writ, yet much of this work focuses solely on the United States—underscoring important gaps in our knowledge of how the prison operates in broader context. This article extends this research to explore the extent to which incarceration rates across 36 OECD countries affect unionization from 1961 – 2017. Results from panel data analysis support that incarceration rates diminish union density across context and time. These findings contribute to literatures on neoliberal penality, union decline, and investigations into consequences of incarceration beyond the somewhat exceptional case of US penal practice.
... Who are these individuals, why do they participate in unions, how do they make sense of, and prepare for, their role? At a time when worker organizations are losing power in Western countries due to the global expansion of neoliberal policies and to increasing difficulties in organizing workers and engaging them in unpaid work for unions (Ebbinghaus and Visser, 1999;Gall and Fiorito, 2012;Wallerstein and Western, 2000), further research into these questions may be particularly instructive. By identifying the conditions for workers to increase their participation in unions and adopt positions of responsibility, scholars can help unions face these challenges. ...
Union leaders dedicate a significant amount of their time to unions, and in some cases, their entire life. Scholarly literature has made great progress in identifying the individual and mesolevel variables that explain how this type of union participation begins and continues. Yet it has paid little attention to the role played by the national industrial relations system in these processes. Drawing on the concept of "union career," this article shows that the national regulations and the union power shape the characteristics and development of union leaders' participation. Based on an in-depth interview program, a survey and a review of the press in Chile, it examines how neoliberal reforms implemented since 1979 changed the resources and opportunities available to workers to assume, manage, and maintain union positions.
... 11 Importantly, the future of work is emerging from ongoing shifts within industrialized labor markets that include a transition from manufacturing to a service-based economy, increased offshoring of work, growth in nonstandard and precarious work arrangements (e.g., gig work), a decline in union representation and legislative protections for workers and widening income inequality. [12][13][14][15] Of concern, recent studies suggest that employers, policymakers, and workers report lacking the insights and tangible strategies to ensure preparation for large-scale shifts in the nature of work. 16 This knowledge gap may have significant implications for workers who have been exposed to circumstances that may contribute to vulnerability. ...
Introduction
The future of work is characterized by changes that could disrupt all aspects of the nature and availability of work. Our study aims to understand how the future of work could result in conditions, which contribute to vulnerability for different groups of workers.
Methods
A horizon scan was conducted to systematically identify and synthesize diverse sources of evidence, including academic and gray literature and resources shared over social media. Evidence was synthesized, and trend categories were developed through iterative discussions among the research team.
Results
Nine trend categories were uncovered, which included the digital transformation of the economy, artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning-enhanced automation, AI-enabled human resource management systems, skill requirements for the future of work; globalization 4.0, climate change and the green economy, Gen Zs and the work environment; populism and the future of work, and external shocks to accelerate the changing nature of work. The scan highlighted that some groups of workers may be more likely to experience conditions that contribute to vulnerability, including greater exposure to job displacement or wage depression. The future of work could also create opportunities for labor market engagement.
Conclusion
The future of work represents an emerging public health concern. Exclusion from the future of work has the potential to widen existing social and health inequities. Thus, tailored supports that are resilient to changes in the nature and availability of work are required for workers facing vulnerability.
... Likewise, Wallerstein and Western (2001) point out degradation of union organization and strength in relation with declining centralized wage setting practices especially after 1980 in advanced industrial societies. Wallerstein and Western (2000) put forward demolition of centralized systems of wage-setting and labor experiencing high unemployment in Europe and highlight labor market inflexibilities contra capital flight and global competition. Işın (2009) synthesizes that deindustrialization is discussed with reference to multi-dimensional and multiperspective criteria and is evident to have impacts at diverse levels that concern globalization of capital emphasizing free flow of capital and changing investment structures through accelerated foreign direct investment and multi-national investment in addition to the global change in organization of production and new technologies. ...
... Accordingly, any government would encounter public ire if it attempts to roll back popular universalist policies (Green-Pedersen, 2002;Zohlnhöfer, 2007). Alternatively, general strikes may have no effect on either left or right executives because unions are unable to focus the public's attention or assign blame to the government, or are too organizationally weak to wage an effective general strike, and sway public opinion echoing the wider literature documenting union decline (see Wallerstein and Western, 2000). ...
Political links between labor unions and leftist political parties have weakened over the last four decades in Western Europe, reducing the former's influence on the latter. Unions' prolonged organizational decline suggests that their capacity to pressure left parties should become more limited. We examine whether unions can use general strikes to influence public opinion when left parties in government pursue austerity policies. Executing a distributive lag time series analysis of quarterly public opinion data from 1986 to 2015 in Spain, we find that Socialist governments incurred significant public opinion penalties in the wake of a general strike. Not only did PSOE prime ministers lose confidence from the public, but they also witnessed a significant reduction in voting intentions. In contrast, Spain's conservative governments incurred no such public opinion penalties in response to general strikes. We conclude that general strikes carry significant political costs for left governments that stray from union ideals.
... Trade unions in general have been in decline in the last two decades (Wallerstein and Western 2000). But formal work arrangements at least allow workers in the industries access to the protective mantle of social legislations. ...
Does the size of a country's industrial sector constrain digital trade? Although there is growing recognition of the importance of data flows in enabling global value chains, little is known about digital trade and its implications on the domestic economy. It is widely assumed that digital trade, like investments, is determined by the extent by which economies are willing to liberalize markets and how institutions facilitate ease of transactions. However, incipient patterns based on new indicators seem to contradict this view. For instance, the digital trade restrictiveness index suggests that both China and India-despite having polarizing regime structures-are equally among the most restrictive. This paper argues that a country's openness or restrictiveness to digital trade is correlated with the size of its industrial sector, as does conventional determinants such as the overall size of its economy and its political system. Examining cross sectional fiscal, labor, and trade data in 64 economies, the study finds that countries with a relatively large industrial labor vis-à-vis its service sector also appear to impose strict regulations covering digital trade and network-based services. The findings nuance current understanding of the impact of digital trade, especially among emerging economies. Possibly, labor markets actually respond slower to globalization and restrictive policies are largely protracted measures intended to protect a vulnerable sector out to lose in the process (industrial sector). Consequently, policies purportedly seeking to promote digital trade must take into account its repercussions on workers and weigh whether a digital shift is worth the attendant economic dislocations.
... Research suggests that there is no single smoking gun that accounts for the ebb and flow of unionization. Neither prime suspect-economic globalization and deindustrialization-is associated with declining unions everywhere (Schnabel 2013;Wallerstein and Western 2000). However, the regulatory environment matters. ...
It has long been recognized that economic inequality may undermine the principle of equal responsiveness that lies at the core of democratic governance. A recent wave of scholarship has highlighted an acute degree of political inequality in contemporary democracies in North America and Europe. In contrast to the view that unequal responsiveness in favor of the affluent is nearly inevitable when income inequality is high, we argue that organized labor can be an effective source of political equality. Focusing on the paradigmatic case of the U.S. House of Representatives, our novel dataset combines income-specific estimates of constituency preferences based on 223,000 survey respondents matched to roll-call votes with a measure of district-level union strength drawn from administrative records. We find that local unions significantly dampen unequal responsiveness to high incomes: a standard deviation increase in union membership increases legislative responsiveness towards the poor by about six to eight percentage points. As a result, in districts with relatively strong unions legislators are about equally responsive to rich and poor Americans. We rule out alternative explanations using flexible controls for policies, institutions, and economic structure, as well as a novel instrumental variable for unionization based on history and geography. We also show that the impact of unions operates via campaign contributions and partisan selection.
... This is because labor unions would attract not only laborers in the entire industry, but also those in new industries (Ebbinghaus & Visser 1999;Visser 1994). The empirical analysis also found that union density was higher in countries such as Denmark, Finland, and Sweden, which have adopted the Ghent system, compared to non-Ghent system countries, and that union density was higher when the bargaining powers of labor unions were reflected across the whole industry or were centralized (Blaschke 2000;Scruggs 2002;Scruggs & Lange 2002;Waddoups 2005;Wallerstein & Western 2000). ...
For the last few decades, labor unions have been in decline in advanced industrial countries. This article examines the factors (past and present) contributing to the decline in union membership in 16 OECD member countries between 1981 and 2010. The study finds that the Ghent system, wage-bargaining coordination, and left parties have increased union density, while the transformation of their economies from manufacturing to services has dismantled labor unions. Economic globalization is another prominent force driving the decline of union membership. Trade with developing countries and the inflow of foreign workers have negatively affected union density in developed economies. This article also observes that the effects of domestic institutions and globalization on union density are not fixed but change over time.
... 6 http://stateofworkingamerica.org/chart/swa-wages-figure-4g-share-total-annual-wages/ 7 See Acemoglu (1998;2003), Acemoglu and Autor (2010), Aghion et al. (2001), Aghion and Howitt (2002), Autor et al. (2005;, Autor (2014), Burstein et al. (2016), Katz (1999), and Van Reenen (2011). 8 See Card (2001), Card and DiNardo (2002), Card et al. (2004), DiNardo et al. (1996), Freeman (19821993;, Herr et al. (2014), Kristal and Cohen (2016), Lemieux (2008), Sjöberg (2008), Wallerstein (1999), and Wallerstein and Western (2000. relationship between market structure and wage differentials. ...
I suggest that market concentration at aggregate level has a significant structural impact on the wage differential between white-collar and blue-collar workers. Both phenomena are increasing as larger firms are more inclined to employ and pay more white-collar workers, in order to increase and/or maintain their market share by way of innovative tasks carried out by white-collars such as R&D, design and product differentiation, financial/capital market operations, market research, advertising and sales operations, etc. The causality from market concentration to wage differential runs through an effective demand channel and one based on the diffusion of innovations. The innovative contribution of the paper is to reveal this relationship of structural causality, and to provide a new measurement of aggregate market concentration which is calculated as the reverse of the break-even point. The argument is tested for the case of the USA between 1964 and 2007 using Vector Error Correction Model. The findings confirm the existence of a long-run positive relationship from market concentration in the nonfinancial corporate sector to the wage differential.
This article reassesses the classic thesis linking the globalization of production to union decline. Our argument is three-fold. First, prior literature does not appreciate how the exchange conditions characterizing global value chain (GVC) relations between leading firms in rich democracies and supplier firms in less developed countries (LDCs) can undermine unionization through trade. Second, the worldwide entrenchment of GVCs as an organizational form over time, and cross-national variation in the strength and scope of two key labor market institutions (wage-coordination and Ghent systems), should moderate the effect of LDC trade on unionization. Third, trade with LDCs is endogenous in models of union decline, because high unionization often leads to offshoring. Empirically, we use an instrumental variable (IV) design and a panel dataset covering the longest historical period studied to date. IV estimates suggest that trade with LDCs reduces unionization in rich democracies; these estimates are nearly three times as large as results obtained by OLS, and they increase in size as GVCs entrench worldwide. Estimates also weaken in countries with highly coordinated wage-setting institutions and Ghent systems. Nevertheless, conditional effects and counterfactual histories suggest that GVCs cause union decline even in countries with the most union-friendly institutions, and were more important for union decline overall than either wage-coordination or Ghent systems.
Lietuvos profesinės sąjungos pasižymi menku mokslinio pažinimo lygiu: trūksta duomenų apie sąjungų narystę, veiklą, sektoriaus sandarą ir esmines problemas. Apibūdinant įvairių šalių sąjungas, dažnai analizuojami sektoriaus sandaros aspektai, atspindintys sąjungų pasiskirstymą, organizavimą. Sandara tyrinėjama įvertinant santykinius dydžius, skaičiuojant centralizacijos ir koncentracijos, fragmentacijos indeksus. Apskaičiuoti indeksai rodo gana ryškią Lietuvos profesinių sąjungų sektoriaus decentralizaciją, aukštą koncentraciją tarp nacionalinių centrų, todėl konkurencija nėra didelė. Tačiau įvertinus apytikslę nepriklausomų sąjungų santykinę dalį, koncentracijos indeksas rodo išaugusią konkurenciją. Absoliučia vidine konkurencija pasižymi daugiau nei du trečdalius profesinių sąjungų nacionalinių centrų narių vienijanti Lietuvos sąjunga. Tokia situacija, tikėtina, nėra palanki sąjungos, kaip centralizuotos jėgos, įvaizdžiui derybose su kitais industrinių santykių (IS) dalyviais.
In decentralized systems where unionization and bargaining occur at the establishment level, what explains the (speedy) transition from union registration to the first collective agreement? While prior evidence in some developed countries (i.e., the United States) estimates this transition to be approximately a year, on average, little to no evidence exists in other contexts where unions play a less central role, as is the case in many developing countries. Addressing this gap, we analyze the Philippines where national unionization and collective bargaining coverage rates are relatively low. Using methods from survival analysis on novel register data of all new union registrations from 2016 to 2021, we descriptively demonstrate that: (i) median union membership density is low at 40%; (ii) only 20% of all new union registrations successfully register a contract within the first 5 years; and (iii) unions with higher densities, that are independent, and in the manufacturing sector are associated with elevated transition rates to a collective agreement.
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the potential relationship between internal corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the decline of organised labour in countries of the global North. Given the opposing trends since the late 20th century and the widespread adherence of internationally recognised labour standards in CSR codes, standards, and reporting frameworks, questions arise about the disparity between CSR rhetoric and practice regarding the collective rights of in-house employees. The paper further explores the tendency in CSR scholarship to overlook violations of collective rights for in-house employees in the global North.
Design/methodology/approach
To examine whether there is an elective affinity between the rise of CSR and the decline of organised labour, the paper uses a discursive institutionalism approach, providing a meta-theoretical analysis of academic literature on internal CSR. A scoping review methodology was used to identify relevant literature and compile it into an empirical corpus for a metatheoretical analysis. The empirical corpus, consisting of 38 articles, was generated through a Google Scholar (GS) search guided by the following questions: (1) What are the dominant conceptual framings of internal CSR? (2) What are the dominant roles and practical aspects of internal CSR?
Findings
The paper identifies two key disparities in the literature: (1) between rhetoric and practice regarding the collective rights of in-house employees in the global North and (2) between the extensive CSR research on violations of collective rights of value chain workers and the limited attention to in-house employees’ collective rights. The analysis highlights two factors contributing to these disparities: the integration of internal CSR into the corporate managerial toolbox and the distinction in CSR discourse between core labour standards and workplace issues. The analysis shows that internal CSR has an elective affinity with the decline of organised labour.
Research limitations/implications
While scoping reviews are often standalone studies, this paper used the methodology for its stated purpose. Limitations include the broad span of internal CSR across various academic fields and reliance solely on GS. Measures taken to enhance inclusivity were unlimited review period, refined inclusion criteria and keywords during the selection process and cross-checks of cited articles.
Social implications
Considering the implications of the decline of organised labour on workers’ collective voice, poverty and the distribution gap in wealth and income, this paper suggests that for CSR to play a significant role in advancing sustainable social justice, scholars and practitioners should look at ways to reduce the disparity between rhetoric and practice regarding employees’ voice and collective rights.
Originality/value
The paper lays the foundation for a better understanding of the potential links between internal CSR and the decline of organised labour. It addresses a gap in the literature on the interrelations between CSR and organised labour in the global North and proposes root causes of this gap. This contribution enriches the scarce literature exploring the potential elective affinity between CSR and transformations in the global economy and labour markets since the late 1980s. Finally, the paper deepens the understanding of the implications of CSR for employees’ collective rights and voice as well as for organised labour.
This study examines a case of union revitalisation based on business unionism, contrasting with the prevailing notion that union revitalisation occurs primarily through social movement unionism. The Korean Federation of Teachers Union (KFTU) was formed in 2017 to challenge the established Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union (KTU), which we describe as an example of social movement unionism. Criticising the centralised organisational structure and radical political struggles of the KTU, the KFTU has rapidly expanded by absorbing a substantial number of teachers in their 20s and 30s. In 2022, the relatively new KFTU claimed that it surpassed the KTU in membership. This study investigates how the newly-formed union, based on business unionism, emerged and flourished quickly. To address this inquiry, this research analyses three critical factors that influence union revitalisation: context (social and political changes), agents (a new generation of teachers) and strategies (organisational strategies of the KFTU). We find that these three factors intricately interacted with one another, leading to the rapid success of business unionism, but at the same time, the union’s long-term sustainability remains in question.
As a research field, social movement and political project, degrowth is a multifaceted phenomenon. It brings together a range of practices including alternative forms of living and transformative initiatives in civil society, business and the state. Yet no comprehensive theory of degrowth transformations has so far been developed. Deep Transformations fills this gap. It develops a theory of degrowth transformations drawing on insights from multiple fields of knowledge, such as political economy, sociology and philosophy. The book offers a holistic perspective that brings into focus transformation processes on various scales and points to various mechanisms that can facilitate degrowth. These include, for instance, eco-social policies, transformative initiatives in business and civil society and alternative modes of being in and relating with the world.
Center-left parties in Western Europe and Japan have experienced a persistent decline in voter turnout. This study examines the factors contributing to this weakening support. Using data from the 2016 European Social Survey across 13 countries and the 2017–2018 Japanese General Social Surveys, we tested three hypotheses: labor market dualization between insiders and outsiders; divergence in policy preferences between social investment and social compensation; and a cultural divide between liberalism and authoritarianism. Our findings provide little support for the labor market dualization and policy preference divergence hypotheses in both Western Europe and Japan. The third hypothesis, concerning a cultural divide in attitudes toward immigration, is supported only in Western Europe. Conversely, Japan is an anomaly because of the absence of a substantial left-liberal constituency. The scarcity of liberal values among Japan's sociocultural professionals suggests that center-left parties have underdeveloped core constituencies.
A partir del estudio de diversas investigaciones, este artículo aborda los cambios en el mundo del trabajo desde la década de 1970, influenciados por el capitalismo industrial y marcados por la transformación laboral a través de una mayor flexibilidad laboral y la disminución de la seguridad en el empleo. Estos cambios fueron respuestas a las turbulencias económicas y a los avances tecnológicos que condujeron a un aumento del desempleo y a una disminución de la influencia sindical en la política laboral. Se subraya la importancia de adoptar una perspectiva sincrónica para comprender la historia del trabajo, donde diversas formas de relaciones laborales coexisten en el contexto del capitalismo en momentos específicos. Se destacan diversos modelos de trabajo, tanto a nivel internacional como nacional, lo que refleja la dimensión global de este fenómeno. La flexibilidad laboral y la precariedad afectaron a sectores de la fuerza laboral en condiciones inestables, mientras que otros disfrutaron de mejores condiciones laborales en sociedades capitalistas, tanto en el núcleo como en la periferia. La experiencia chilena desde el golpe de Estado de 1973 se integra en este contexto histórico de transformaciones en el mundo del trabajo, caracterizado por la aplicación de concepciones neoliberales críticas en cuanto a la expansión de los derechos laborales y la seguridad en el empleo.
We study direct and indirect effects of Chinese import competition on union membership in the United States, 1990–2014. Import competition in manufacturing induced a modest decline in unionization within manufacturing industries. The magnitude is small because unionized manufacturers competed in higher-quality product segments. Manufacturers in right-to-work states experienced more direct competition with low-quality Chinese imports. Outside of manufacturing, however, import competition causes an important increase in union membership, as less educated women shift away from retail and toward jobs in health care and education where unions are stronger. We calculate that Chinese imports prevented 26 percent of the union density decline that would have otherwise occurred. (JEL F14, F16, J16, J51, L60, P33)
Work and learning lie at the center of fields such as workplace learning, vocational education, organizational learning, and labor education. This chapter reviews the changing context of work and the major approaches to the studies of work and learning: the conventional, the critical, and the practice-based approaches. The conventional approaches focus on individual acquisition of skills and competency. The critical approaches center on issues of social justice. The practice-based approaches treat learning as a derivative effect of work practices. For each approach, we attend to their theoretical premises, their unit of analysis, and the goals they ascribe to learning and education.
A core principle of the welfare state is that everyone pays taxes or contributions in exchange for universal insurance against social risks such as sickness, old age, unemployment, and plain bad luck. This solidarity principle assumes that everyone is a member of a single national insurance pool, and it is commonly explained by poor and asymmetric information, which undermines markets and creates the perception that we are all in the same boat. Living in the midst of an information revolution, this is no longer a satisfactory approach. This book explores, theoretically and empirically, the consequences of 'big data' for the politics of social protection. Torben Iversen and Philipp Rehm argue that more and better data polarize preferences over public insurance and often segment social insurance into smaller, more homogenous, and less redistributive pools, using cases studies of health and unemployment insurance and statistical analyses of life insurance, credit markets, and public opinion.
Psychology is a discipline with global influence, but continues to neglect disadvantaged minorities and continues to adopt an incorrect model of science. This volume explains what has gone wrong, and what steps should be taken for psychology to become a constructive international force. Historically, psychologists have focused only on causal explanations of behavior, neglecting normatively regulated behavior and intentionality. By giving greater importance to context and collective processes, moving from 'societies to cells,' psychologists can better understand and explain individual behavior. Poverty is an extremely powerful context that shapes cognitions and actions, with destructive consequences for disadvantaged individuals. The advocation of 'be happy psychology' and 'resilience' as solutions to problems faced by the disadvantaged leads to entrenched group-based inequalities, with the poor stuck at the bottom. Moving forwards, this volume proposes that psychologists should focus on normative systems to ultimately foster a more balanced field of study for the future.
The Politics of Major Policy Reform in Postwar America examines the politics of recent landmark policy in areas such as homeland security, civil rights, health care, immigration and trade, and it does so within a broad theoretical and historical context. By considering the politics of major programmatic reforms in the United States since the Second World War - specifically, courses of action aimed at dealing with perceived public problems - a group of distinguished scholars sheds light not only on significant efforts to ameliorate widely recognized ills in domestic and foreign affairs but also on systemic developments in American politics and government. In sum, this volume provides a comprehensive understanding of how major policy breakthroughs are achieved, stifled, or compromised in a political system conventionally understood as resistant to major change.
The Politics of Major Policy Reform in Postwar America examines the politics of recent landmark policy in areas such as homeland security, civil rights, health care, immigration and trade, and it does so within a broad theoretical and historical context. By considering the politics of major programmatic reforms in the United States since the Second World War - specifically, courses of action aimed at dealing with perceived public problems - a group of distinguished scholars sheds light not only on significant efforts to ameliorate widely recognized ills in domestic and foreign affairs but also on systemic developments in American politics and government. In sum, this volume provides a comprehensive understanding of how major policy breakthroughs are achieved, stifled, or compromised in a political system conventionally understood as resistant to major change.
The Politics of Major Policy Reform in Postwar America examines the politics of recent landmark policy in areas such as homeland security, civil rights, health care, immigration and trade, and it does so within a broad theoretical and historical context. By considering the politics of major programmatic reforms in the United States since the Second World War - specifically, courses of action aimed at dealing with perceived public problems - a group of distinguished scholars sheds light not only on significant efforts to ameliorate widely recognized ills in domestic and foreign affairs but also on systemic developments in American politics and government. In sum, this volume provides a comprehensive understanding of how major policy breakthroughs are achieved, stifled, or compromised in a political system conventionally understood as resistant to major change.
The Politics of Major Policy Reform in Postwar America examines the politics of recent landmark policy in areas such as homeland security, civil rights, health care, immigration and trade, and it does so within a broad theoretical and historical context. By considering the politics of major programmatic reforms in the United States since the Second World War - specifically, courses of action aimed at dealing with perceived public problems - a group of distinguished scholars sheds light not only on significant efforts to ameliorate widely recognized ills in domestic and foreign affairs but also on systemic developments in American politics and government. In sum, this volume provides a comprehensive understanding of how major policy breakthroughs are achieved, stifled, or compromised in a political system conventionally understood as resistant to major change.
The Politics of Major Policy Reform in Postwar America examines the politics of recent landmark policy in areas such as homeland security, civil rights, health care, immigration and trade, and it does so within a broad theoretical and historical context. By considering the politics of major programmatic reforms in the United States since the Second World War - specifically, courses of action aimed at dealing with perceived public problems - a group of distinguished scholars sheds light not only on significant efforts to ameliorate widely recognized ills in domestic and foreign affairs but also on systemic developments in American politics and government. In sum, this volume provides a comprehensive understanding of how major policy breakthroughs are achieved, stifled, or compromised in a political system conventionally understood as resistant to major change.
The Politics of Major Policy Reform in Postwar America examines the politics of recent landmark policy in areas such as homeland security, civil rights, health care, immigration and trade, and it does so within a broad theoretical and historical context. By considering the politics of major programmatic reforms in the United States since the Second World War - specifically, courses of action aimed at dealing with perceived public problems - a group of distinguished scholars sheds light not only on significant efforts to ameliorate widely recognized ills in domestic and foreign affairs but also on systemic developments in American politics and government. In sum, this volume provides a comprehensive understanding of how major policy breakthroughs are achieved, stifled, or compromised in a political system conventionally understood as resistant to major change.
The Politics of Major Policy Reform in Postwar America examines the politics of recent landmark policy in areas such as homeland security, civil rights, health care, immigration and trade, and it does so within a broad theoretical and historical context. By considering the politics of major programmatic reforms in the United States since the Second World War - specifically, courses of action aimed at dealing with perceived public problems - a group of distinguished scholars sheds light not only on significant efforts to ameliorate widely recognized ills in domestic and foreign affairs but also on systemic developments in American politics and government. In sum, this volume provides a comprehensive understanding of how major policy breakthroughs are achieved, stifled, or compromised in a political system conventionally understood as resistant to major change.
The Politics of Major Policy Reform in Postwar America examines the politics of recent landmark policy in areas such as homeland security, civil rights, health care, immigration and trade, and it does so within a broad theoretical and historical context. By considering the politics of major programmatic reforms in the United States since the Second World War - specifically, courses of action aimed at dealing with perceived public problems - a group of distinguished scholars sheds light not only on significant efforts to ameliorate widely recognized ills in domestic and foreign affairs but also on systemic developments in American politics and government. In sum, this volume provides a comprehensive understanding of how major policy breakthroughs are achieved, stifled, or compromised in a political system conventionally understood as resistant to major change.
The Politics of Major Policy Reform in Postwar America examines the politics of recent landmark policy in areas such as homeland security, civil rights, health care, immigration and trade, and it does so within a broad theoretical and historical context. By considering the politics of major programmatic reforms in the United States since the Second World War - specifically, courses of action aimed at dealing with perceived public problems - a group of distinguished scholars sheds light not only on significant efforts to ameliorate widely recognized ills in domestic and foreign affairs but also on systemic developments in American politics and government. In sum, this volume provides a comprehensive understanding of how major policy breakthroughs are achieved, stifled, or compromised in a political system conventionally understood as resistant to major change.
The purpose of this study was to determine the factors affecting the job satisfaction of teachers in secondary schools in Rwanda. The selected demographic factor, monetary incentives, and non-monetary incentives as independent variables were studied to if they influence the job satisfaction of secondary school teachers as the dependent variables. Statistical findings revealed a significant correlation at the level of 0.01of the relationship between the demographic factors and job satisfaction among secondary school teachers with various variables such as age, gender, and qualification fully involved in job satisfaction among secondary school teachers with a coefficient of 0.837. Monetary incentives were ranked as an important factor towards job satisfaction, the results indicated that there was a number of significance strong positive correlation between variables where factors like salary, taking up more responsibilities and boosting their social status, Bonuses, Contests, Profit Sharing, with coefficient 0.868, 0.854, 0.849, 0.835 respectively. Lastly, the study finds that non-monetary incentives play a significant role in the perception of the employee regarding the reward climate in the workplace and job satisfaction indicated by the nature of the job, interpersonal relationships, and additional life insurance with a coefficient of 0.868, 0.854, and 0.849 respectively. It is concluded that in the secondary school context of Rwanda; demographic factors, monetary incentives, and non-monetary incentives are much necessary for high employee engagement and have a positive impact on job satisfaction among secondary school teachers. The study recommended that School managers need to create a working environment with good interpersonal relationships and provide secondary school teachers with workshops, training, positive relationships with the principal, students and parents need to be nurtured and improved, and seminars on how to improve on their profession. Teachers’ salaries should be reviewed to enhance teachers’ job satisfaction.
This article recasts the debate over the employment status of gig economy workers as a question about the power of municipal governance. Gig employers are challenging urban regulatory regimes through their disavowal of an employment relationship and their refusal to obtain taxi licenses. As the recent literature argues, there has been a resurgence of municipal power driven by a labor-antipoverty coalition. One might view the gig economy’s independent contractor model as an attempt to circumvent this power. Analyzing the case of gig taxi companies like Uber, this article tracks the response of U.S. cities to a business model predicated on ignoring their regulations. Utilizing original data, this study investigates urban regulatory responses to Uber through descriptive statistics and multivariate modeling. The findings show that almost half of cities failed to regulate. Those that took action had historically greater levels of regulation and faced driver protests—a sign of a stronger labor-antipoverty coalition. Additional evidence indicates a learning effect in which cities became more likely to regulate over time. The article ends with a discussion of how workers and unions are responding to this challenge.
Coordination in collective wage setting can constrain potential monopoly gains to unions in non-traded-goods industries. Countries with national wage coordination can thus stabilize overall employment against fluctuations and shocks in the world economy. We investigate this argument by exploring within-country variation in exposure to competition from China in 13 European countries. Our estimates demonstrate that in countries with uncoordinated wage setting, regions with higher import exposure experienced a marked fall in employment, while countries with wage coordination experienced no such employment effects. We show that our findings are robust to alternative measures of wage coordination, industry classifications, and trade exposure.
This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Bilginin elde edilmesi, kullanılması ve dağıtılması yüzyıllar boyunca farklı şekillerde
oluşmuştur. Teknolojiyle birlikte artan internet kullanımı bilginin paylaşım şekillerini
de değiştirmiştir.
Ekonomik küreselleşmenin dünyaya yayılım etkileriyle çalışma ilişkilerinde ve
koşullarında belirli dönüşümler yaşanmıştır. Bunun sonucu olarak çalışan
örgütlenmesi farklı bir düzeyde sorunsallaşmıştır.
İnternet üzerinden çeşitlenen sosyal medya araçlarının artışı, sendika ve
konfederasyonlar için yeni bir umut kaynağı olarak tanımlanmıştır. Ayrıca gündemi
ve siyaseti takip edebilmek için sosyal medya araçları kullanılabilir hale gelmiştir.
Twitter ise bunların arasında en belirgin olanıdır.
Çalışmada kamu görevlileri sendikaları konfederasyonlarının Twitter paylaşımları
incelenmiştir. Twitter’i bulunan 7 konfederasyon bulunmaktadır. Konfederasyonların
sosyal medyayı kullanım durumlarını incelemek amaç edinilmiştir. Sosyal medya ve
özellikle Twitter, sendika ve konfederasyonların döneme ayak uydurabilmeleri
noktasında önemli hale gelmiştir. Gündem ve siyaset içerikli tweetler ile
konfederasyonların farklı konulardaki paylaşım oranları çalışmanın ana problemidir.
Paylaşımlar içerik analizi yöntemiyle incelenmiştir. Veriler toplanmış, kodlanıp
analiz edilmiştir. Sonucunda ise Twitter’in erişim sınırlaması sebebiyle toplam
tweetin %13,31’i incelenebilmiştir. İncelenen tweetlerin ise sadece %13,98’lik
kısmının gündem ve siyaset içerikli olduğu görülmüştür. Farklı konularda paylaşım
yapan konfederasyonlar tarafından; özel günler, taziye ve diğer kategorilerinde
toplamda 1.015 tweet paylaşılmıştır. Bu da toplam incelenen tweetin yaklaşık
%22’sini oluşturmaktadır.
Sonuç olarak bazı konfederasyonlar çok az sayıda paylaşım yapsa da bazıları göze
çarpacak derecede paylaşım yapmıştır. Ancak gündem ve siyaset içerikleri beklenen
düzeyin altında olmuştur.
The aim of this chapter is to examine the restructuring of the corporatist framework and state- labor relations generated by neoliberal reforms and the advent of democratization. The reactions of labor unions to neoliberal reforms are described and examined, and how these affected workers and labor organizations. The development of independent labor unionism in the neo-liberal period is analyzed in more detail. Finally, several actions against labor organizations during the Calderón and Peña Nieto governments are described, as well as the prospects for organized labor in the AMLO government.
This chapter examines the relevance of labor unions from various perspectives. First, the chapter explores the origins of labor unions as crucial organizations for defending labor rights for unionized workers and their role beyond the labor sphere. The concept of union density is defined to measure the relative power and influence of labor unions. Second, fluctuations of union density are observed in a group of 30 OECD countries between 1980 and 2018. A longitudinal analysis of unionization trends in these countries is conducted and the levels of both aggregated and disaggregated union density are examined. Third, the factors accounting for union density decline are classified into three categories: cyclical, structural, and political-institutional factors. This analytical structure helps not only to develop a coherent debate about the most relevant factors explaining union density variations but also to generate a comprehensive profile of the workforce most likely to be unionized.
We examine the factors explaining the increase in gross and net income inequality in advanced economies since the 1980s. Our results support the view that globalization, technological progress, financial deregulation and lower top marginal tax rates are associated with higher inequality, and we find that the relation between the decline in union density and the rise in top decile income shares—a phenomenon which labour economists have long been discussing—is widespread across advanced economies. The influence of union density on top income shares appears to be causal, as evidenced by our instrumental variable estimates and the inclusion of potentially omitted variables.
Scholars have recently shown renewed interest in the study of party‐interest group ties. According to previous studies, traditional ties between parties and organized interest are a matter of the past. Globalization, deindustrialization, and neoliberalism have posed serious challenges to their survival. Recent contributions suggest that, while these ties are indeed weaker than before, they have not disappeared. How do parties and groups protect their ties? This paper attempts to provide a partial, though often neglected, answer: their relationship survives when both actors work together to protect it. While previous literature identified regulatory policies, such as ethics and transparency regulations, as detrimental to party‐group ties, their introduction is erroneously treated as independent from these ties. Through a comparative case study of the introduction of lobbying laws in Austria, Australia, and Ireland, this paper suggests that parties and groups shape the content of lobbying regulations in such a way to protect their relationship.
Cambridge Core - Political Sociology - Resisting Redevelopment - by Eleonora Pasotti
Highly corporatist countries such as Denmark and Sweden have recently moved away from centralized wage bargaining. A general sectoral coalition model explains the decentralization of wage bargaining as the outcome of a cross-class realignment between employers and wage earners in response to changes in the political, economic, and technological environment of wage bargaining. This realignment is aimed at increasing wage flexibility while containing cost pressures and is associated with greater inequality and the reorientation of macroeconomic policies away from full employment. A contrast of Denmark and Sweden with Austria and Norway, where wage bargaining institutions have not been changed, supports the argument.
Centralization of wage bargaining
Lars Calmfors and John Driffill
The structure of labour markets is increasingly perceived as a determinant of the macroeconomic performance of a country. This article focuses on one aspect of labour markets, the degree of centralization of wage setting. The main conclusion is that extremes work best. Either highly centralized systems with national bargaining (such as in Austria and the Nordic countries), or highly decentralized systems with wage setting at the level of individual firms (such as in Japan, Switzerland and the US) seem to perform well. The worst outcomes with respect to employment may well be found in systems with an intermediate degree of centralization (such as in Belgium and the Netherlands). This conclusion is reasonably well supported by the available empirical evidence. It is also logical. Indeed, large and all-encompassing trade unions naturally recognize their market power and take into account both the inflationary and unemployment effects of wage increases. Conversely, unions operating at the individual firm or plant level have very limited market power. In intermediate cases, unions can exert some market power but are led to ignore the macroeconomic implications of their actions. These conclusions challenge the conventional wisdom which asserts that the more ‘corporatist’ is an economy, the better is its economic performance.
The political domination of Social Democrats in Denmark and Sweden beginning in the 1930s was stabilized by the absence of intense opposition by capital to reformist programs aggressively opposed by business and the Right elsewhere in the world. This quiescence was not a symptom of weakness or dependency; rather, it was a product of a class-intersecting, cross-class alliance behind institutions of centralized industrial relations that served mutual interests of sectoral groupings dominating both union and employer confederations. Well-organized and militant, and backed by Social Democrats, employers in the two countries used offensive multi-industry lockouts to force centralization on reluctant unions. Analysis of these cross-class alliances and their pay-distributional objectives is used to challenge a widely held view that centralization and Social Democratic electoral strength are sources of power against capital. It also occasions a reassessment of conventional understandings of farmer-labor coalitions and the decline of industrial conflict in Scandinavia in the 1930s. According to the alternative view presented here, capital was included rather than excluded from these cross-class alliances, and industrial conflict subsided dramatically in part because employers achieved politically what they had previously tried to achieve with the lockout.
Transformed patterns of labor market governance occupy a central place in the study of contemporary West European political economies. Here, detailed analysis of the dramatic decentralization of wage bargaining in Sweden identifies organized employers, especially engineering employers, as the decisive agents of institutional change. We argue that the employer offensive should be understood as a response to a shift in power within old wage-bargaining institutions, introducing invasive regulation of firm-level pay practices and, at the same time, as a consequence of new flexibility-centered production strategies, giving rise to demands for more firm-level autonomy in wage bargaining. The exceptional features of the old Swedish bargaining and the particular needs of different sectors come into play as we seek to explain the mixed pattern of wage-bargaining changes across Western Europe.
The political and economic couplings between wage bargaining institutions and macro-economic policy regimes are explored in this article. It is argued that in advanced industrialized democracies with well-organized unions and employers' associations, macro-economic performance (especially unemployment) is the outcome of an interaction between the centralization of the wage bargaining system and the monetary policy regime. Thus, a decentralized bargaining system in which the government in credibly committed to a non-accommodating monetary policy rule poses an institutional alternative to a centralized mode of wage regulation where the government enjoys macro-economic policy flexibility. Based on time-series data from ten highly organized market economies, I show that both of these institutional produce superior employment performance, but also that the two systems are associated with very different distributional outcomes, and that they are supported by different coalitions of organized interests. In addition to predicting economic outcomes, the proposed model provides a theoretical framework for analysing institutional change in wage bargaining systems and in macro-economic policy regimes.
Much contemporary research in political economy has stressed the importance of the political power of the Left and the organization of labor on economic performance among the advanced industrial democracies. This paper argues that the impact of each variable on performance, operationalized as proportionate change in economic growth rates, 1974–1980, is conditional upon the relative presence or absence of the other. Specifically, encompassing labor organization is only positively associated with growth when accompanied by Left control of government, and Left governments only have a positive impact on economic growth when labor is highly and centrally organized. Conversely, when either variable is only weakly present, the impact of the other on economic growth is negative.
Plans for the European Monetary Union (EMU) are based on the conventional postulate that increasing the independence of the central bank can reduce inflation without any real economic effects. However, the theoretical and empirical bases for this claim rest on models of the economy that make unrealistic information assumptions and omit institutional variables other than the central bank. When signaling problems between the central bank and other actors in the political economy are considered, we find that the character of wage bargaining conditions the impact of central bank independence by rendering the signals between the bank and the bargainers more or less effective. Greater central bank independence can reduce inflation without major employment effects where bargaining is coordinated, but it can bring higher levels of unemployment where bargaining is less coordinated. Thus, currency unions like the EMU may require higher levels of unemployment to control inflation than their proponents envisage. They will have costs as well as benefits, and these will be unevenly distributed among and within the member nations, depending on the changes they induce in the status of the bank and of wage coordination.
This paper studies the considerably higher level of wage inequality in the United States than in nine other OECD countries. The authors find that the greater overall U.S. wage dispersion primarily reflects substantially more compression at the bottom of the wage distribution in the other countries. While differences in the distribution of measured characteristics help to explain some aspects of the international differences, higher U.S. prices (i.e., rewards to skills and rents) are an important factor. Labor market institutions, chiefly the relatively decentralized wage-setting mechanisms in the United States, provide the most persuasive explanation for these patterns. Copyright 1996 by University of Chicago Press.
Monetary rules matter for the equilibrium rate of employment when the number of price-wage setters is small, even when assuming
rational expectations, complete information, central bank precommitment, and absence of nominal rigidities. If the central
bank is nonaccommodating, sufficiently large unions, bargaining independently, have an incentive to moderate sectoral money
wages, and thereby expected real wages. The result is an increase in the real money supply, and hence higher demand and employment.
This does not hold with accommodating monetary policy since unions' wage decisions cannot then affect the real money supply.
A similar argument holds for large monopolistically competitive price setters.
The Penn World Table displays a set of national accounts economic time series covering many countries. Its expenditure entries
are denominated in a common set of prices in a common currency so that real quantity comparisons can be made, both between countries and over time. It also provides information about relative prices
within and between countries, as well as demographic data and capital stock estimates. This updated, revised, and expanded
Mark 5 version of the table includes more countries, years, and variables of interest to economic researchers. The Table is
available on personal computer diskettes and through BITNET.
The discovery of corporatism and its successes in the 1980s fueled a “growth indus try” for comparative political economy. By the early 1990s, its decline and even collapse shifted the terms of debate. Whereas initially interest was sparked by the need to investigate corporatist success, the new focus centered on the causes and consequences of corporatism’s seeming demise. The analysis of Swedish political economy is paradigmatic of this shift. In the 1970s, Sweden embodied the model corporatist country. Its highly centralized bar gaining between densely representative organizations of labor and capital was encouraged by government, which used social and economic policies to underpin and facilitate such arrangements. The outcomes were apparently beneficial for all concerned: the economy was efficient, as indicated by Swedish competitive success internationally, but also relatively equitable, as evidenced by the country’s record of redistribution.
In the early 1980s, many observers, argued that powerful organized economic interests and social democratic parties created successful mixed economies promoting economic growth, full employment, and a modicum of social equality. The present book assembles scholars with formidable expertise in the study of advanced capitalist politics and political economy to reexamine this account from the vantage point of the second half of the 1990s. The authors find that the conventional wisdom no longer adequately reflects the political and economic realities. Advanced democracies have responded in path-dependent fashion to such novel challenges as technological change, intensifying international competition, new social conflict, and the erosion of established patterns of political mobilization. The book rejects, however, the currently widespread expectation that 'internationalization' makes all democracies converge on similar political and economic institutions and power relations. Diversity among capitalist democracies persists, though in a different fashion than in the 'Golden Age' of rapid economic growth after World War II.
There exists a wide-ranging literature on the peculiarities and distortions of post-war Italian economic development, and the reader is referred to this for a detailed account of the process. In the present context it will suffice to describe those aspects of the Italian economic system which help explain the course of industrial conflict and the nature of trade union policy. We shall, therefore, limit ourselves to only a few points. Some basic statistical data will be found in Appendix I.
The sad particulars about the “House of Labor” in the America of the 1980s are well known: Labor quiescence predominates, and the trade union movement, demoralized and disorganized, has rapidly lost momentum. The number of union members began to decline in 1979 and continued to do so for another decade, representing the greatest sustained loss of unionists since the 1920s. Unions have since lost between 4 1/2 and 5 1/2 million members. The rate of decline of “union density” (i.e., union membership as a percentage of the nonfarm labor force), already visible since 1954, began to steepen around 1979: It averaged about 0.4% per year for the period 1954–1978 but between 1% and 1.25% annually since 1979, more than double the previous rate.1 In the 1950s, unions won about two-thirds of the National Labor Relations Board certification elections held; in the 1960s, almost 60%. Since the late 1970s, however, unions have been winning only about 45% of NLRB certification elections, and during the Reagan years number of such elections declined by about 50% (Moody, 1987). Finally, labor’s strike activity, too, is much lower today than it was even two decades ago, with production time lost to strikes during the mid-1980s reaching an historic low.
There has been considerable debate as to whether powerful trade unions in European Union (EU) member states are compatible either with the internal market or with monetary union. As macroeconomic performance has deteriorated in many corporatist countries since the 1980s — Sweden providing the paradigmatic case — doubts about the compatibility of strong labor movements and EU membership have grown. Is corporatism a relic of a different age, a luxury of the long postwar boom? Are strong unions detrimental to and destabilizing for the internal market and monetary union in the EU? This article answers these questions in the negative. We contend, however, that existing arguments about the macroeconomic consequences of corporatism should be significantly modified to take into account the impact of the growth of public sector unions on the relationship between institutional structure of labor movements and economic outcomes. The deteriorating performance commonly attributed to corporatism in the 1980s was limited to countries where public sector unions increasingly dominated national labor movements. Encompassing trade union movements can still generate wage restraint, but only where the union movement is dominated by unions in the exposed sector that are subject to the constraints posed by international market competition. Hence, countries, such as Austria and Finland, with strong labor movements led by exposed sector unions are likely to enjoy the benefits of EU membership without suffering great costs, whereas the costs will be greater for countries with strong public sector unions such as Sweden and Norway.
In his article, ''Union Organization in Advanced Industrial Democracies@' in the June 1989 issue of the Review, Michael Wallerstein advocated a model to account for cross-national differences in trade union organization rates. He argued that the size of the labor force provided the most important determinant of variation in union density. In this controversy, John Stephens takes issue with the operationalization of a key variable in Wallerstein's model--industrial infrastructure. Stephens reanalyzes the data using an alternative measure of this variable. His reanalysis supports his claim that in fact, the two variables yield results that are statistically indistinguishable. Wallerstein responds.
Introduction During recent years extensive research has centered on corporatist patterns of interest representation and centralized systems of collective bargaining. This research has associated corporatism and centralized bargaining with “labor quiescence,” to use David Cameron’s (1984) label for the combination of low strike rates and wage restraint. Labor quiescence, in turn, is claimed to contribute to successful economic performance: lower rates of inflation and unemployment, higher rates of investment, and a less pronounced slowdown of growth following the oil crises of the 1970s. Union cooperation with government policies to curb the growth of wages has been a central theme in the research on corporatism in Western Europe. In one of the first contributions to a burgeoning literature, Gerhard Lehmbruch (1977) observed: “Incomes policies appear to constitute a core domain of liberal corporatism” (96). Similarly, Leo Panitch (1977) argued that in “virtually every” corporatist society, policies “designed to abate the wage pressure of trade unions was the frontpiece of corporatist development” (74). Cross-national studies by Bruce Headey (1970) and Gary Marks (1986) have verified the existence of a close empirical relationship between union centralization and the successful implementation of voluntary incomes policies. More recently, union centralization or corporatism has attracted the attention of economists seeking to account for the divergence in macroeconomic performance among advanced industrial societies since the mid-1970s.
This paper is primarily an attempt to isolate the determinants of trade union membership growth in Canada over the past six decades.
I test two theories of the political processes of trade unions. The first argues that wage moderation depends on a centralized labor movement. The second contends that, institutional conditions permitting, unions' coordination of bargaining strategies is sufficient. Coordination is most likely to he achieved when there are small number of unions that do not compete for members, that is, when union monopoly is high. Important empirical anomalies may be resolved by analyzing the effects of union centralization and monopoly separately, rather than combining them into a composite index of corporatism. Reanalyzing comparative data from Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development countries between 1963 and 1985 largely corroborates the hypothesis that monopoly is more important than either centralization or composite indices of corporatism for national economic performance. The conceptual rationale underlying indices of corporatism should be reexamined.
Many recent studies argue that labor organization and government partisanship were important determinants of the economic performance of the advanced industrial democracies during stagflation. They do not, however, take into account the potential impact on performance of position in the international economy; the relationships reported may therefore be largely spurious. Even when the strong effects of international position, most notably the extent of dependence on imported sources of oil, were controlled for, domestic political structures remained powerful determinants of economic performance during stagflation. “Corporatist” political economies dominated by leftist governments in which labor movements were densely and centrally organized, and “market” political economies in which labor was much weaker and rightist governments were predominant, performed significantly better than the less coherent cases in which the power of labor was distributed asymmetrically between politics and the market.
[Excerpt] During the past two decades there have been significant changes in employment systems across industrialized countries. Converging Divergences: Worldwide Changes in Employment Systems, by Harry C. Katz and Owen Darbishire, examines changes since 1980 in employment practices in seven industrialized countries—the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Japan, Sweden, and Italy—with a focus on the automotive and telecommunications industries. Katz and Darbishire find that variations in employment patterns within these countries have been increasing over the past two decades. The increase in variation is not simply a result of a decline in union strength in some sectors of the economy; variation has increased within both union and nonunion sectors. Despite this within-country divergence, Katz and Darbishire find that employment systems across countries are converging toward four common patterns of work practices: a low-wage employment pattern; the human resource management (HRM) employment pattern; a Japanese-oriented employment pattern; and a joint team-based employment pattern. Significant differences in national employment-related institutions have resulted in some variation across countries in how these work patterns are implemented. Still, Katz and Darbishire find that there are "many commonalities in the employment systems of the seven countries and in the processes through which these commonalities have developed."
During the last couple of decades the political landscape in Norway and Sweden has changed considerably and tensions between the social democratic parties and the trade unions have emerged In this article potential sources for these developments are discussed Particular attention is given to the role of the labor market. It is argued that increasing segmentation of the labor market has produced a more diverse organizational and institutional structure which in turn has fragmented the working class and introduced new lines of social cleavage into the political system.
Rational choice theory has typically used either noncooperative game theory or cooperative, social choice theory to model elections, coalition bargaining, the prisoner's dilemma, and so on. This essay concentrates on the ideas of William Riker and Douglass North, both of whom, in very different ways, studied events of the past in an attempt to understand constitutional or institutional transformations. The key notion presented here is the "belief cascade," a change in the understanding of the members of a society when they face a quandary. This idea is used to critique simple vote-maximizing models of elections, derived from Downs' earlier conception of party competition. Inferences are drawn on the possible applications of rational choice theory to the study of constitutional political economy in order to provide some insight into the differences between democratic polities.
The distribution of pay differs significantly across countries and over time among advanced industrial societies. In this paper, institutional and political determinants of pay inequality an studied in sixteen countries from 1980 to 1992. The most important factor in explaining pay dispersion is the level of wage-setting, i.e., whether wages are set at the level of the individual, the plant, the industry, or the entire private sector. The impact of centralization is the same whether centralization occurs via collective bargaining or via government involvement in private-sector wage-setting. The concentration of unions and the share of the labor force covered by collective bargaining agreements also matter. After controlling for wage-setting institutions, other variables such as the governing coalition, the size of government, international openness, and the supply of highly educated workers have little impact. Economic, political, and norm-based explanations for the association of centralization with egalitarian outcomes are discussed.
Few features of economic, social, or political life in industrialized democracies differ as much as the relative size of the trade union movement. The current density of union membership in the labor force ranges over almost the entire spectrum from above 90% in Sweden to under 20% in the United States (Goldfield 1987, 16). The level of unionization varies far more than such other characteristics of the labor force as the sectoral distribution of workers, the share of wages in GNP, rates of unemployment, or even the size of the public sector. Unionization rates vary more than such other forms of popular mobilization as electoral turnout or the share of the vote received by parties bearing communist, socialist, social democratic, or labor labels. The economic effects of high levels of unionization are ambiguous. Unions that are large relative to the economy may simultaneously have more power in the labor market and more of an incentive to moderate their wage demands. A union that covers only a small fraction of an industry’s work force, for example, can gain wage increases partly at the expense of employment among nonunion members, provided that union members have specialized skills not readily available elsewhere. In contrast, an industrial union covering the entire work force would be concerned with employment in all job categories. Bigger unions are not necessarily more militant unions (Cameron 1984; Olson 1982, chap. 4).
This book sets forth both a theory and a comparative empirical analysis of stagflation, that peculiar combination of high unemployment, slow growth, and spurts of high inflation bedeviling the advanced industrial nations during the past fifteen years. The authors first construct a small macroeconomic model that takes full account of aggregate demand and supply forces in the determination of output, employment, and the price level, in both a single-economy and a multi-economy setting. They then apply the model to provide an understanding of comparative performance of industrial countries in the areas of unemployment, inflation, productivity, and investment growth. They argue convincingly that the decay of the major economies during this period resulted from the supply shocks of the 1970s, such as the two major OPEC oil-price increases, and from the consequent policy-induced decrease in demand in response to inflationary pressures. Their analysis differs markedly from similar studies in that it takes specific account of institutional differences in the labor markets of the various economies. This helps to explain in particular the divergent adjustment profiles of the United States and Europe. Bruno and Sachs make several key recommendations for the mix of demand management and incomes policies necessary to combat stagflation in individual countries as well as for the coordination of macroeconomic policies among the major industrial nations.
Geoffrey Garrett challenges the conventional wisdom about the domestic effects of the globalization of markets in the industrial democracies: the erosion of national autonomy and the demise of leftist alternatives to the free market. He demonstrates that globalization has strengthened the relationship between the political power of the left and organized labour and economic policies that reduce market-generated inequalities of risk and wealth. Moreover, macroeconomic outcomes in the era of global markets have been as good or better in strong left-labour regimes ('social democratic corporatism') as in other industrial countries. Pessimistic visions of the inexorable dominance of capital over labour or radical autarkic and nationalist backlashes against markets are significantly overstated. Electoral politics have not been dwarfed by market dynamics as social forces. Globalized markets have not rendered immutable the efficiency-equality trade-off.
La Grande-Bretagne connait un declin du pouvoir des syndicats. L'A. presente les affirmations theoriques soulignant les explications pluralistes sur les relations industrielles et les critiques que rencontrent cette ideologie. Les ressources du marche du travail, politiques et strategiques, sont respectivement etudiees dans les periodes de pouvoir et de declin des syndicats. L'impact de l'Etat sur la strategie du mouvement travailliste, sa structure et sa pratique est incontournable
It is commonly believed that corporatist bargaining institutions have been in general decline in the 1980s and 1990s. The leading explanations of the purported universal trend toward greater decentralization of collective bargaining are the impact of technological change, changes in the occupational structure, and growing international economic integration. Decentralization should be particularly visible in the Nordic countries, because collective bargaining was more centralized in these countries in the 1960s and 1970s than in any others in Western Europe. In this article, the authors present data on the changes in the centralization of wage bargaining in the four Nordic countries since 1950. They document that a significant decentralization of collective bargaining has occurred in Sweden, as is well known, but not in the other three. The article concludes with a review of possible explanations of Swedish exceptionalism.
Using data relating to 13 Western democracies, this paper deals with the relation between working-class political and industrial power and the feasibility of a national wages policy. A wages policy is only feasible in a democracy if it is accepted by tradeunion leaders on behalf of the workers whom it directly affects. For this acceptance to be forthcoming we hypothesize that two conditions must be fulfilled. First, the working class must be sufficiently united politically to elect a Socialist government that will administer the wages policy in such a way that workers, or at least their leaders in the trade unions, are convinced that the policy is not simply a way of depressing their incomes relative to those of the rest of the population. Second, the workers must be sufficiently united to form a strong centralized union movement that can help administer the policy without imposing excessive strain on the cohesion and loyalty of its own organization.
Drawing on three fields of economics (international, labour, and development), this study shows that expansion of North-South trade in manufactures has had a far greater impact on labour markets than earlier work suggested. In the South, unskilled workers have benefited most from this trade, but in the North, the gains have been concentrated on skilled labour, while unskilled workers have suffered falling wages and rising unemployment. This decline in the economic position of unskilled workers has increased inequality, and aggravated crime and other forms of social erosion, on both sides of the Atlantic. The failure of Northern governments to recognize that trade with the South has these adverse side-effects, and to take appropriate counter-measures, has fuelled the rise of protectionism - the worst possible response, which slows economic progress in both regions. The best solution for the longer term in the North is more investment in education, to raise the supply of skilled labour. However, the benefits of this investment will emerge slowly. During the next one or two decades, Professor Wood argues, other measures are also urgently needed to boost the demand for, and incomes of, unskilled workers. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/economicsfinance/0198290152/toc.html
The U.S. is not unique in the decline of private sector unionism. Contrary to assertions of the “unique school,” unionism
in the private sectors of Canada and Western Europe has also declined and for the same reason, structural changes in the labor
market.
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.”
Sherlock Holmes.
Wage growth slowed significantly in OECD countries in the 1980s and 1990s. Market explanations trace the wage slowdown to
a recession characterized by inflationary shocks, high unemployment, and slow productivity growth. Institutional accounts
focus on the effects of union density, collective bargaining centralization, and labour government. Analysis of time series
from 18 countries for 1966 to 1992 yields some evidence for both theories between 1966 and 1974. Bayesian methods indicate
a structural break in the wage growth process, linking the wage slowdown of the 1980s to the declining power of labour movements.
I. Some determinants of union growth, 435. — II. Empirical results, 439. — III. Consideration of some subperiods, 445. — IV
Conclusion, 447.
The increase of tourist activity for many destinations and their increased mobility within host countries has implied a rise in tourism associated externalities with vehicle crashes being the most common cause of injury for tourists. Within the transport literature, the number and variations in the amount of accidents has been related to a large set of determining variables, including weather conditions, socio-economic characteristics, exposure, physical characteristics of the road and a variety of dummies which try to capture effects such as safety laws and seasonal variations. However, the presence of tourism has been neglected. Using the case study of the Balearic Islands, the present study estimates the role of tourism in determining the number of accidents on a daily context, using the set of variables suggested by the literature and incorporating a daily measure for the stock of tourists at a host destination. Results show how tourism can be associated to a significant amount of the accidents that take place in the Balearics.
Starting from the theoretical argument underlying the “hump shape” hypothesis, the paper investigates the various dimensions of centralisation in the wage formation process. The diversity of effects discussed in the paper makes it harder to arrive at unambiguous policy conclusions. Careful analysis of the various features and economy-wide direct as well as indirect effect of the degree of centralisation in the wage formation process suggests that there exists various trade-offs, the most important of which appears to be that between real wage restraint and relative wage flexibility: centralisation favours the former but reduces the latter. This suggests that its effect on macroeconomic performance depends on the type of shocks affecting the economy ...
Souplesse de la production et inflation : Étude globale
Cette étude porte sur la "ventilation" des variations de la croissance du revenu nominal entre la croissance réelle et l'inflation. Elle présente une analyse descriptive des données de la période d'après-guerre ainsi qu'une analyse par régression qui postule l'existence d'une ventilation dynamique stable. Cette analyse a été effectuée pour tous les pays Membres de l'OCDE. On admet en général que les pouvoirs publics ont la possibilité de maîtriser l'évolution du revenu nominal encore que l'étude présente également quelques données relatives aux rapports entre l'inflation et la croissance du revenu nominal et de la masse monétaire. On examine aussi le rôle des anticipations et de l'incertitude et leurs rapports avec l'action des pouvoirs publics ...
In this paper I explore the evolution of unionism in the 1970n and 1980s, when the post-oil shock world economy created a "crisis of unionism" throughout the western world. I try to explain why union representation of work forces fell in some countries but not in others and contrast union responses to the challenge of the period. I find that: -- Rates of unionization diverged greatly among developed countries -- The composition of union members shifted from private sector blue collar workers to public sector end white collar workers in all countries, producing increased divisions within union movements by category of worker -- Changes in the industrial composition of employment, changes in public attitudes toward unionism, and the growth of governmental protection of labor do not explain the divergence in density -- Differing rates of inflation contributed to the divergence, with unions doing better in countries with high inflation. In addition, unemployment raised density in settings where unions disperse unemployment benefits -- The primary reason for the divergence are differences in the incentives and opportunities different industrial relations systems give employers to oppose unions. Unions fared best in neo-corporatist settings and worst in settings where decentralized bargaining creates a strong profit incentive for managers to oppose unions and where management is relatively free to act on that incentive -- Union organizations and modes of operating changed significantly in some countries with declining or endangered unionism but not in others Most strikingly, my analysis indicates that if 1980s trends continue the west will be divided between countries with strong trade union movements operating in a neo-corporatist system, as in Scandinavia, and countries with 'ghetto unionism' limited to special segments of the work force, as in the United States.