IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/1006.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Determination of the Union Status of Workers

Author

Listed:
  • Henry S. Farber

Abstract

A model of the determination of the union status of workers is developed that incorporates the separate decisions of workers and potential union employers in a framework which recognizes the possibility of an excess supply of workers for existing union jobs.This theoretical framework results in an empirical problem of partial observability because information on union status is not sufficient to determine whether nonunion workers are nonunion because they do not desire union representation or because they were not hired by union employers despite a preference for union representation.The problem is solved by using data from the Quality of Employment Survey that have a unique piece of information on worker preferences which allows identification and estimation of the model.The empirical results yield some interesting insights into the process of union status determination that cannot be gained from a simple logit or probit analysis of unionization. Chief among these relate to the unioniza-tion of nonwhites and southerners.The well-known fact that nonwhites are more likely to be unionized than otherwise equivalent whites is found largelyto be due to a greater demand for union representation on the part of non-white workers. The equally well-known lower propensity to be unionized among southern workers is found to be due to a combination of a lower demand for union representation on the part of southern workers and a supply of union jobs which is more constrained relative to demand than in the North.

Suggested Citation

  • Henry S. Farber, 1982. "The Determination of the Union Status of Workers," NBER Working Papers 1006, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1006
    Note: LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w1006.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard B. Freeman, 1981. "The Effect of Unionism on Fringe Benefits," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 34(4), pages 489-509, July.
    2. Farber, Henry S & Saks, Daniel H, 1980. "Why Workers Want Unions: The Role of Relative Wages and Job Characteristics," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 88(2), pages 349-369, April.
    3. Farber, Henry S, 1978. "Individual Preferences and Union Wage Determination: The Case of the United Mine Workers," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 86(5), pages 923-942, October.
    4. John M. Abowd & Henry S. Farber, 1982. "Job Queues and the Union Status of Workers," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 35(3), pages 354-367, April.
    5. Heckman, James, 2013. "Sample selection bias as a specification error," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 31(3), pages 129-137.
    6. Schmidt, Peter & Strauss, Robert P, 1976. "The Effect of Unions on Earnings and Earnings on Unions: A Mixed Logit Approach," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 17(1), pages 204-212, February.
    7. Ashenfelter, Orley & Johnson, George E, 1972. "Unionism, Relative Wages, and Labor Quality in U.S. Manufacturing Industries," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 13(3), pages 488-508, October.
    8. Ernst R. Berndt & Bronwyn H. Hall & Robert E. Hall & Jerry A. Hausman, 1974. "Estimation and Inference in Nonlinear Structural Models," NBER Chapters, in: Annals of Economic and Social Measurement, Volume 3, number 4, pages 653-665, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Lee, Lung-Fei, 1978. "Unionism and Wage Rates: A Simultaneous Equations Model with Qualitative and Limited Dependent Variables," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 19(2), pages 415-433, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alex Bryson & Rafael Gomez & Morley Gunderson & Noah Meltz, 2005. "Youth-Adult Differences in the Demand for Unionization: Are American, British, and Canadian Workers All That Different?," Journal of Labor Research, Transaction Publishers, vol. 26(1), pages 155-167, January.
    2. Richard B. Freeman & Jonathan S. Leonard, 1985. "Union Maids: Unions and the Female Workforce," NBER Working Papers 1652, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:eee:labchp:v:2:y:1986:i:c:p:1039-1089 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Henry S. Farber, 1984. "The Analysis of Union Behavior," NBER Working Papers 1502, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. K.R.Shanmugam & S.Madheswaran, 2004. "Wage Differentials Between Union and Non-union Workers: An Econometric Analysis," Econometric Society 2004 Far Eastern Meetings 413, Econometric Society.
    4. Schnabel, Claus, 2002. "Determinants of trade union membership," Discussion Papers 15, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Chair of Labour and Regional Economics.
    5. Henry S. Farber, 2001. "Notes on the Economics of Labor Unions," Working Papers 831, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    6. repec:eee:labchp:v:2:y:1986:i:c:p:1139-1181 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Henry S. Farber, 2001. "Notes on the Economics of Labor Unions," Working Papers 2001-5, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    8. Henry S. Farber, 2001. "Notes on the Economics of Labor Unions," Working Papers 831, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    9. Kochan, Thomas A. & Helfman, David E., 1981. "The effects of collective bargaining on economic and behavioral job outcomes," Working papers 1181-81., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    10. Panos, Georgios & Theodossiou, Ioannis, 2009. "Union Mediation and Adaptation to Reciprocal Loyalty Arrangements," MPRA Paper 15471, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Julie L. Hotchkiss & David L. Sjoquist & Stephanie M. Zobay, 1999. "Employment Impact of Inner-city Development Projects: The Case of Underground Atlanta," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 36(7), pages 1079-1093, June.
    12. Johansson, Robert Charles, 1997. "Wage structure in the supermarket industry 1984-1993," Faculty and Alumni Dissertations 246441, University of Minnesota, Department of Applied Economics.
    13. Keith Bender, 1997. "Specification issues in the modelling of union status determination," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(8), pages 481-485.
    14. Héctor Gutiérrez Rufrancos, 2019. "Are There Gains to Joining a Union? Evidence from Mexico," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 57(3), pages 676-712, September.
    15. Georgios A. Panos & Ioannis Theodossiou, 2013. "Reciprocal Loyalty and Union Mediation," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(3), pages 645-676, July.
    16. Steven F. Venti, 1987. "Wages in the Federal and Private Sectors," NBER Chapters, in: Public Sector Payrolls, pages 147-182, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Gary Solon, 1986. "Bias in Longitudinal Estimation of Wage Gaps," NBER Technical Working Papers 0058, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Robert C. Johansson & Jay S. Coggins, 2002. "Union Density Effects in the Supermarket Industry," Journal of Labor Research, Transaction Publishers, vol. 23(4), pages 673-684, October.
    19. Panos, Georgios A. & Theodossiou, Ioannis, 2010. "Unionism and Peer-Referencing," SIRE Discussion Papers 2010-122, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    20. Bell, David N.F. & Hart, Robert A., 2010. "Retire Later or Work Harder?," IZA Discussion Papers 4720, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    21. McCausland, David & Pouliakas, Konstantinos & Theodossiou, Ioannis, 2005. "Some are Punished and Some are Rewarded: A Study of the Impact of Performance Pay on Job Satisfaction," MPRA Paper 14243, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    22. Yuen Leng Chow & Isa E. Hafalir & Abdullah Yavas, 2015. "Auction versus Negotiated Sale: Evidence from Real Estate Sales," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 43(2), pages 432-470, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1006. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.