Journal article/book/chapter

Qualitative Business Surveys: Signal or Noise?

The paper identifies the information content at the firm level of qualitative business survey data by examining the consistency between these data and the quantitative data that are provided by the same respondents to the UK’s Office for National Statistics in official surveys. Since the qualitative data are published ahead of the quantitative data the paper then assesses the ability of the qualitative data to predict the firm level quantitative data.

The State of Collective Bargaining and Worker Representation in Germany: The Erosion Continues

This paper investigates trends in collective bargaining and worker representation in Germany from 2000 to 2008. It seeks to update and widen earlier analyses pointing to a decline in collective bargaining, while providing more information on the dual system as a whole. Using data from the IAB Employment Panel and the German Employment Register, we report evidence of a systematic and continuing erosion of the dual system. Not unnaturally the decline is led by developments in western Germany.

Union effects on wages

A primary goal of trade unions is to maintain and improve workers' terms and conditions, particularly workers who are members of the union, through collective bargaining with employers. Whether unions are successful depends, in large part, on their bargaining strength Ð which is based on their ability to restrict the supply of labour to the employer Ð and the ability of employers to concede above-market wages (Freeman and Medoff, 1984).

The Importance of Comparative Workplace Employment Relations Studies

Introduces a special issue of the BJIR on comparative employment relations explaining how it has developed in recent years and why it is important.

Slip Sliding Away:Further Union Decline in Germany and Britain

This paper presents the first comparative analysis of the decline in collective bargaining in two European countries where that decline has been most pronounced. Using workplace-level data and a common model, we present decompositions of changes in collective bargaining and worker representation in the private sector in Germany and Britain over the period 1998-2004. In both countries within-effects dominate compositional changes as the source of the recent decline in unionism. Overall, the decline in collective bargaining is more<br />

Online social networking and trade union membership: what the Facebook phenomenon truly means for labor organizers

Union membership has declined precipitously in a number of countries,including in the United States, over the past fifty years. Can anything be done to stem this decline? This article argues that union voice is a positive attribute (among others) of union membership that is experiential in nature 10 and that, unlike the costs of unionization, can be discerned only after exposure to a union. This makes the act of Ôselling' unionism to workers (and to some extent firms as well) difficult.

Voice in the Wilderness? The Shift from Union to Non-Union Voice in Britain

Explores the changing nature of worker voice in the workplace, examining the reasons for the switch from union to non-union forms of voice.

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