IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/1582.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Labor Relations, Wages and Nonwage Compensation in Municipal Employment

Author

Listed:
  • Jeffrey S. Zax

Abstract

In the private sector, "unionization" typically refers to employees who are organized, recognized, and covered by contracts, according to the procedures established by the National Labor Relations Board. The municipal sector provides an instructive contrast. There, "unionization" encompasses five mutually exclusive combinations of organizational structure and labor relations practice. These "modes" form a hierarchy of employee power, from strongest to weakest: recognized bargaining units, unrecognized unions in cities which contain other recognized unions, unorganized employees in cities which contain recognized unions,unrecognized unions in cities which contain no recognized unions, and unorganized employees in cities which contain no recognized unions. Differences in the effects of each mode on compensation for municipal employees demonstrate differences in the intrinsic strength of different union institutions. Municipal compensation levels are dramatically higher for employees represented by more powerful modes of unionization, regardless of other conditions in factor and output markets. Union effects on total compensation, in comparison to its mean, range from 3.8% for unrecognized unions in cities which contain no recognized bargaining units, to 11.8% for recognized bargaining units, themselves. In addition, union effects on total compensation are reater than union effects an wages in all modes. Relative union effects on expenditures for paid time not worked and pension benefits are usually more than twice wage effects. Union effects on medical benefits are nearly twice wage effects.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeffrey S. Zax, 1985. "Labor Relations, Wages and Nonwage Compensation in Municipal Employment," NBER Working Papers 1582, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1582
    Note: LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w1582.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Edwards, Linda N & Edwards, Franklin R, 1982. "Public Unions, Local Government Structure and the Compensation of Municipal Sanitation Workers," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 20(3), pages 405-425, July.
    2. Freeman, Richard B, 1986. "Unionism Comes to the Public Sector," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 24(1), pages 41-86, March.
    3. Ronald G. Ehrenberg, 1973. "Municipal Government Structure, Unionization, and the Wages of Fire Fighters," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 27(1), pages 36-48, October.
    4. Orley Ashenfelter, 1971. "The Effect of Unionization on Wages in the Public Sector: The Case of Fire Fighters," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 24(2), pages 191-202, January.
    5. Ehrenberg, Ronald G. & Schwarz, Joshua L., 1987. "Public-sector labor markets," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & R. Layard (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 22, pages 1219-1260, Elsevier.
    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. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pc:p:3573-3630 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Jeffrey S. Zax, 1985. "Municipal Employment, Municipal Unions, and Demand for Municipal Services," NBER Working Papers 1728, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Jan Brueckner & Kevin O'Brien, 1989. "Modeling government behavior in collective bargaining: A test for self-interested bureaucrats," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 63(1), pages 15-41, October.
    4. Gyourko, Joseph & Tracy, Joseph, 1989. "On the political economy of land value capitalization and local public sector rent seeking in a Tiebout model," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 152-173, September.
    5. Richard B. Freeman & Robert G. Valletta, 1987. "The Effect of Public Sector Labor laws on Collective Bargaining, Wages, and Employment," NBER Working Papers 2284, 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. Jeffrey Zax & Casey Ichniowski, 1988. "The Effects of Public Sector Unionism on Pay, Employment, Department Budgets, and Municipal Expenditures," NBER Chapters, in: When Public Sector Workers Unionize, pages 323-364, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Gregory, Robert G. & Borland, Jeff, 1999. "Recent developments in public sector labor markets," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 53, pages 3573-3630, Elsevier.
    3. Andreas Peichl & Nico Pestel & Sebastian Siegloch, 2013. "The politicians’ wage gap: insights from German members of parliament," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 156(3), pages 653-676, September.
    4. Jeffrey S. Zax, 1985. "Municipal Employment, Municipal Unions, and Demand for Municipal Services," NBER Working Papers 1728, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Freeman, Richard B, 1986. "Unionism Comes to the Public Sector," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 24(1), pages 41-86, March.
    6. Richard B. Freeman & Robert G. Valletta, 1987. "The Effect of Public Sector Labor laws on Collective Bargaining, Wages, and Employment," NBER Working Papers 2284, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Richard B. Freeman & Robert Valletta, 1988. "The Effects of Public Sector Labor Laws on Labor Market Institutions and Outcomes," NBER Chapters, in: When Public Sector Workers Unionize, pages 81-106, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Samuel B. Bonsall & Joseph Comprix & Karl A. Muller, 2019. "State Pension Accounting Estimates and Strong Public Unions†," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 36(3), pages 1299-1336, September.
    9. Jeffrey S. Zax, 1985. "Economic Effects of Municipal Government Institutions," NBER Working Papers 1657, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. John V. Winters, 2011. "Teacher Salaries and Teacher Unions: A Spatial Econometric Approach," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 64(4), pages 747-764, July.
    11. Dolado, Juan J & de la Rica, Sara & Anghel, Brindusa, 2011. "The Effect of Public Sector Employment on Women's Labour Market Outcomes," CEPR Discussion Papers 8468, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Torberg Falch, 2004. "Wage Bargaining and Employer Objectives," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 72(4), pages 515-534, July.
    13. Enikolopov, Ruben, 2014. "Politicians, bureaucrats and targeted redistribution," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 74-83.
    14. Cousineau, Jean-Michel, 1984. "La détermination des salaires des policiers municipaux au Québec," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 60(2), pages 186-199, juin.
    15. Michael Marlow, 1997. "Public education supply and student performance," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(5), pages 617-626.
    16. Baker, Michael & Halberstam, Yosh & Kroft, Kory & Mas, Alexandre & Messacar, Derek, 2024. "The impact of unions on wages in the public sector: Evidence from higher education," CLEF Working Paper Series 67, Canadian Labour Economics Forum (CLEF), University of Waterloo.
    17. Terry M. Moe, 2009. "Collective Bargaining and The Performance of the Public Schools," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(1), pages 156-174, January.
    18. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pc:p:3573-3630 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Mark Partridge & Tim Sass, 2011. "The productivity of elected and appointed officials: the case of school superintendents," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 149(1), pages 133-149, October.
    20. Rebecca Diamond, 2017. "Housing Supply Elasticity and Rent Extraction by State and Local Governments," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 74-111, February.
    21. Henry S. Farber & Bruce Western, 2000. "Round Up The Usual Suspects: The Decline of Unions in The Private Sector, 1973-1998," Working Papers 816, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..

    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:1582. 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.