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The Impact of Anti-Temporary Replacement Legislation on Work Stoppages: Empirical Evidence from Canada
Abstract
Legislation that prevents the hiring of temporary replacement workers during a work stoppage is controversial. “Anti-temporary replacement worker” legislation (ATR) or “anti-scab” legislation is currently in effect in Quebec and British Columbia and existed for a short period of time in Ontario. This paper uses variation over time (1978–2003) and across provinces to provide empirical evidence concerning the impact of ATR on work stoppages. The results show that ATR increases strike incidence and decreases strike length—both effects are statistically significant and substantial in magnitude. Incidence and length have opposing effects on days lost to work stoppages. Empirical results provide weak evidence that anti-scab legislation may increase days lost to work stoppages in the first two years after the legislation takes effect but no evidence that such legislation has a statistically significant effect on days lost when it has been in effect for more than two years.
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This publication describes the evolution of the Canadian business environment in light of economic changes in Canada from 1991 to 2001. The publication shows business and employment dynamics in Canada during this period. It provides (1) statistics that show the direct impact of these changes on business creation (firm births) and business destruction (firm deaths); (2) the relative share and distribution of businesses and employment across various categories of firms (Size - small, medium and large size firms, Industry - low-knowledge, medium-knowledge and high-knowledge industries, as well as goods and services industries and by Geography-Province); and (3) it examines survival rates of newly created businesses (lifespan of new businesses).
Declining union density in many industrialized countries directs attention to alter- native ways of labor relations and worker representation as, e.g., works councils. German works councils belong to the most powerful worker representations in de- veloped countries but little is known of their causal effect on productivity. A large linked employer-employee panel is used to examine this issue. Comparing firms with and without a works council I find that firms with a works council are on average 6.5 percent more productive. I present evidence that this estimate is the lower bound to the causal productivity effect of works councils.
Using Canadian data on large, private-sector contract negotiations from January 1967 to March 1993, we find that wages and strikes are substantially influenced by labor policy. In particular, we find that prohibiting the use of replacement workers during strikes is associated with significantly higher wages, and more frequent and longer strikes. This is consistent with private information theories of bargaining. We estimate the welfare consequences of a ban on replacement workers, as well as other labor policies. Despite the higher dispute costs, union workers are better off with a ban on replacement workers. The higher wage more than compensates for the more frequent and longer strikes.
Some critics of proposed legislative labor policy changes contend that laws favoring labor would adversely affect business investment. Research on labor policy, however, often assumes that investment is fixed. The authors present a sequential bargaining model in which labor policies that increase labor's bargaining power and reduce management's options during strikes are predicted to reduce investment. The results of an analysis of provincial data on investment for 1967 to 1999 indicate that strike replacement bans and protections for workers who refuse to handle struck work did indeed reduce new investment, especially within the first few years after the policy change. Particularly sensitive was building construction investment, which declined by about as much when a labor policy benefiting labor was enacted as it would be expected to decline in a recession. (Author's abstract.)
Opponents of U.S. and Canadian strike replacement legislation contend that restricting the use of strike replacements significantly alters bargaining power and increases strike activity. This article uses data on Canadian manufacturing collective-bargaining agreements to investigate these hypotheses. Although a general ban on strike replacements is found to be associated with longer strikes, little evidence is found to suggest that banning permanent strike replacements significantly influences strike incidence, strike duration, or negotiated wages.
Hazard-function estimates are utilized to analyze the effect of numerous public policy variables on strike duration, based on 7,546 strikes in Canada between 1967 and 1985. The authors find that only the mandatory strike vote substantially reduced conditional duration. However, the policy variables generally had a more favorable effect on reducing strike incidence, so that on net they tended to reduce unconditional duration (incidence times conditional duration). Specifically, reduced unconditional duration was associated with the existence of conciliation and the requirement of a mandatory strike vote, but the prohibition on replacement workers had a perverse effect. Copyright 1990 by University of Chicago Press.
This study analyzes the effects of right-wing extremism on the well-being of immigrants based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the years 1984 to 2006 merged with state-level information on election outcomes. The results show that the life satisfaction of immigrants is significantly reduced if right-wing extremism in the native population increases. Moreover ; the life satisfaction of highly educated immigrants is affected more strongly than that of low-skilled immigrants. This supports the view that policies aimed at making immigration more attractive to the high-skilled have to include measures that reduce xenophobic attitudes in the native population. --
Cross-section time-series analysis of nine Canadian jurisdictions over nineteen years is used to identify the effect of mandatory votes/card check on certification success. The results indicate that mandatory votes reduce certification success rates by approximately 9 percentage points below what they would have been under card check. This result is robust across specifications and significant at above the 99% confidence level. Copyright 2002 Royal Economic Society
The impact on strike incidence of nine labor relations policy variables representing legislation in eleven Canadian jurisdictions is estimated using logit analysis of 3,347 individual collective agreements. Mandatory strike votes, compulsory dues check-off, and compulsory conciliation boards are associated with significantly lower strike probabilities. Prohibition of replacement workers and employer-initiated strike votes are associated with significantly higher strike probabilities. No significant association was found between strike incidence and the length of cooling-off period following conciliation and negotiated or automatic reopeners. Policy impacts are interpreted in a framework emphasizing the influence of asymmetric information and joint costs on strikes.
The Perverse Effects of Anti-Scab Measures
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Lemay, G. and N. Kozhaya. 2005. "The Perverse Effects
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In International Handbook of Trade Unions
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A Longitudinal Analysis of Strike Activity
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