IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uma/periwp/wp93.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Social Attitudes, Labor Law, and Union Organizing: Toward A New Economics of Union Density

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas I. Palley

Abstract

Much has been written about union wage bargaining. Much less has been written about union density, which has been viewed as simply the employment outcome under the wage bargain. This paper presents a new dynamic model of union density that exhibits multiple equilibria and path-dependency. The model builds upon Freeman (1998) who identified the importance of union spending on organizing and business spending on opposing unions. It emphasizes the demand for union representation which depends on wage bargaining outcomes, the state of labor law, and socio-economic factors impacting public attitudes to unions. The model is used to provide a narrative account of the historical evolution of union density in the U.S. and to identify factors important for its future evolution.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas I. Palley, 2005. "Social Attitudes, Labor Law, and Union Organizing: Toward A New Economics of Union Density," Working Papers wp93, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
    • Handle: RePEc:uma:periwp:wp93
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://per.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/working_papers/working_papers_51-100/WP93.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard B. Freeman & James L. Medoff, 1979. "The Two Faces of Unionism," NBER Working Papers 0364, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. David G. Blanchflower & Andrew J. Oswald, 1995. "The Wage Curve," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 026202375x, December.
    3. Richard B. Freeman & Morris M. Kleiner, 1990. "Employer Behavior in the Face of Union Organizing Drives," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 43(4), pages 351-365, July.
    4. Ian M. McDonald & Robert M. Solow, 1985. "Wages and Employment in a Segmented Labor Market," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 100(4), pages 1115-1141.
    5. Richard B. Freeman, 1998. "Spurts in Union Growth: Defining Moments and Social Processes," NBER Chapters, in: The Defining Moment: The Great Depression and the American Economy in the Twentieth Century, pages 265-296, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Paul Krugman, 1995. "Growing World Trade: Causes and Consequences," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 26(1, 25th A), pages 327-377.
    7. McDonald, Ian M & Solow, Robert M, 1981. "Wage Bargaining and Employment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(5), pages 896-908, December.
    8. Bowles,Samuel & Gintis,Herbert & Gustafsson,Bo (ed.), 1993. "Markets and Democracy," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521432238, January.
    9. William R. Cline, 1997. "Trade and Income Distribution," Peterson Institute Press: All Books, Peterson Institute for International Economics, number 58, April.
    10. Shaked, Avner & Sutton, John, 1984. "Involuntary Unemployment as a Perfect Equilibrium in a Bargaining Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(6), pages 1351-1364, November.
    11. Gilbert L. Skillman, 1991. "Efficiency vs. Control: A Strategic Bargaining Analysis of Capitalist Production," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 23(1-2), pages 12-21, March.
    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. Lewkowicz Jacek & Lewczuk Anna, 2017. "An Institutional Approach to Trade Union Density. The Case of Legal Origins and Political Ideology," Central European Economic Journal, Sciendo, vol. 2(49), pages 35-49, December.

    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. Peter Huber & Helmut Hofer, 2001. "Teilprojekt 9: Auswirkungen der EU-Erweiterung auf den österreichischen Arbeitsmarkt," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 19839.
    2. repec:eee:labchp:v:2:y:1986:i:c:p:1039-1089 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Niven Winchester, 2008. "Trade and Rising Wage Inequality: What Can We Learn from a Decade of Computable General Equilibrium Analysis?," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: David Greenaway & Richard Upward & Peter Wright (ed.), Globalisation and Labour Market Adjustment, chapter 4, pages 54-72, Palgrave Macmillan.
    4. Hideaki Aoyama & Corrado Di Guilmi & Yoshi Fujiwara & Hiroshi Yoshikawa, 2021. "Dual Labor Market and the "Phillips Curve Puzzle"," Papers 2103.06482, arXiv.org.
    5. Loïc Cadiou & Stéphanie Guichard & Mathilde Maurel, 2000. "Disparités institutionnelles et flexibilité des marchés du travail dans l'UE," Économie et Statistique, Programme National Persée, vol. 332(1), pages 49-63.
    6. Dube Arindrajit & Reddy Sanjay G., 2014. "Threat Effects and Trade: Wage Discipline through Product Market Competition," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 4(2), pages 213-252, March.
    7. Richard Baldwin & Philippe Martin, 1999. "Two Waves of Globalisation: Superficial Similarities, Fundamental Differences," Working Papers hal-03417563, HAL.
    8. Henry S. Farber, 1984. "The Analysis of Union Behavior," NBER Working Papers 1502, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. De Palma, Francesco & Seegmuller, Thomas, 2004. "Unions, wage differential and indeterminacy," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 205-218, September.
    10. MacLeod, W. Bentley, 2011. "Great Expectations: Law, Employment Contracts, and Labor Market Performance," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 18, pages 1591-1696, Elsevier.
    11. Groenewold, Nicolaas, 1999. "Employment Protection and Aggregate Unemployment," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 619-630, July.
    12. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/711 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Alex Bryson & Richard Freeman & Rafael Gomez & Paul Willman, 2017. "The Twin Track Model of Employee Voice: An Anglo-American Perspective on Union Decline and the Rise of Alternative Forms of Voice," DoQSS Working Papers 17-13, Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London.
    14. L. Josh Bivens, 2006. "Wages, Profits, and Rent-Sharing in an Open Economy," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(1), pages 69-83.
    15. repec:wsr:wpaper:y:2010:i:047 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Niven Winchester, 2008. "Searching for the Smoking Gun: Did Trade Hurt Unskilled Workers?," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 84(265), pages 141-156, June.
    17. Michael Burda & Michael Funke, 1993. "German trade unions after unification — Third degree wage discriminating monopolists?," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 129(3), pages 537-560, September.
    18. Albert van der Horst, 2003. "Structural estimates of equilibrium unemployment in six OECD economies," CPB Discussion Paper 19, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    19. Roberts, Mark A. & Staehr, Karsten & Tranaes, Torben, 2000. "Two-stage bargaining with coverage extension in a dual labour market," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 181-200, January.
    20. Robert Z. Lawrence, 2013. "Association of Southeast Asian Nations, People's Republic of China, and India Growth and the Rest of the World : The Role of Trade," Development Economics Working Papers 23409, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    21. Toke Aidt & Zafiris Tzannatos, 2002. "Unions and Collective Bargaining : Economic Effects in a Global Environment," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 15241.
    22. Hans K. Hvide & Yanren Zhang, 2021. "Too big to succeed? Overstaffing in firms," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(4), pages 784-798, November.
    23. Sabien Dobbelaere & Mark Vancauteren, 2014. "Market imperfections, skills and total factor productivity : Firm-level evidence on Belgium and the Netherlands," Working Paper Research 267, National Bank of Belgium.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:uma:periwp:wp93. 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: Judy Fogg (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/permaus.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.