Alderman, Brianna L. and Roger D. Blair. Monopsony in Labor Markets: Theory, Evidence, and Public Policy

Unlike most previous work, this paper examines the effect of right- to-work laws on flows into unionism through organizing rather than onthe stock of unionism. Organizing offers a far more sensitive indicator of the situa tion of unionism and allows the use of both cross-sectional and time-series methods to explore the impact of the passage of a right-to-work law. The authors find that right-to-work laws have a sizable initial impact on organizing that decay s over time. The effect holds up even when one uses fixed weights and causality tests. Copyright 1987 by University of Chicago Press.

BENJAMIN SACHS INTERVIEWED BY MARTHA MINOW

'Great Expectations' Defeated?: The Trajectory of Collective Bargaining Regimes in Canada and the U.S. Post-NAFTA

In a case whereby the deliverymen’s labor union (“subcontractor”) demanded collective bargaining against the company (“contractor”), the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) cited “de facto governing” as a ground for judging the contractor an employer and thus a legitimate party in collective bargaining. This decision had significant repercussions because it raised a controversial issue: whether the legal principles behind the 2010 ruling of the Supreme Court, which expanded the notion of an employer for certain affairs (e.g., governing, intervention) among various forms of unfair labor practices, may be further expanded to judging the status of a contractor as an employer and a legitimate party in collective bargaining.<BR> According to the NLRC, in a case where a labor union consisting of subcontractors who lack either an explicit or an implicit labor contract with the contractor requests collective bargaining against the contractor, the contractor may be deemed an employer who is burdened with an obligation for collective bargaining, citing “de facto governing” as a legal ground.<BR> I argue that the contractor is not an employer or a legitimate party in collective bargaining against the subcontractors’ labor union, and this argument applies to the problems and criticisms surrounding the abovementioned NLRC case.<BR> First, identifying a legitimate party for collective bargaining means identifying a party that can collectively form or revise provisions of a labor contract through collective bargaining within a framework of collective autonomy. In comparison, identifying an “employer” in unfair labor practices―that is, a follower of a rule that bans unfair labor practices―means identifying a party that breached the rule of ensuring three basic labor rights or a fair labor–management relationship. An employer, according to the Trade Union And Labor Relations Adjustment Act, is a legitimate party in collective bargaining in principle, and they should be distinguished from an employer according to regulations on unfair labor practices. The abovementioned NLRC case fails to make this distinction, deeming an employer in collective bargaining and an employer in unfair labor practices the same.<BR> Another problem is that in identifying an employer as a legitimate party in collective bargaining, the NLRC expanded the notion of “de facto governing”―a legal ground for the H Heavy Industries case ruling―which saw the employers as inflictors of unfair labor practices, such as governing/intervention. Flawed logic is found in that the NLRC regarded the contractor as an employer and thus a legitimate party in collective bargaining despite the absence of a contractual relationship with the subcontractor, which is needed to be seen as an employer in collective bargaining.<BR> Furthermore, it is problematic that the NLRC only quoted a court ruling Supreme Court 2010. 3. 25. 2007du8881<BR> that admitted the status of a contractor as an employer regarding unfair labor practices of governing/intervention while overlooking court rulings Supreme Court 2008.9.11. 2006da40935 and others<BR> that denied the status of a contractor as a legitimate party in collective bargaining when it recognized the contractor as a legitimate party in collective bargaining without making a distinction between an employer as a legitimate party in collective bargaining and an employer as an inflictor of an unfair labor practice. To establish grounds for such a decision, it is necessary to introduce Supreme Court rulings that have denied the status of a contractor as a legitimate party in collective bargaining and analyze them critically. Lacking such effort, the NLRC decision is an a priori judgment that exposes a bias stemming from distorted information.<BR> Lastly, the NLRC decision was made on the basis of “de facto governing,” and as such, it suffers from all the legal problems of that theory.

The Covid-19 crisis has demonstrated that labour law in the UK has dismally failed in its ostensible primary purpose of protecting and empowering workers. It has not protected workers' jobs, incomes and their health and safety. In particular, it has failed to ensure that workers have the right to participate in the decisions about their jobs, incomes or safety. Workers in the UK now face the worst recession in Europe with the likelihood of the highest rate of job losses. Well before the pandemic, the delicate and unsteady 'post war consensus' of most of the twentieth century was destroyed by the advent of neo-liberalism that was given free reign by the Thatcher government. Rights were diminished, enforcement authorities defunded, managerial prerogative reinforced, trade unions excluded from any role in the State, and the collective power to bargain collectively and to strike subjected to systematic destruction. The process was not reversed in the 13 years of Labour government and, in the decade since 2010, the attack, under the flag of austerity, has been ruthlessly pursued. Collective bargaining coverage steadily declined from 82 percent in 1976 to less than 25 percent before the pandemic. Union membership numbers followed. The consequence of the removal of legal and collective protections for the vast majority of workers was that, before the crisis, their job security, pay, hours, terms and conditions of work were almost exclusively were in the hands of the employer on a take it or leave it basis. The pandemic illuminated the point. It revealed the remarkable and hidden irony that some 7 million 'key' workers, essential to maintain the fabric of society, are (doctors excepted) amongst the worst paid and least legally protected of the entire workforce. The contrast between their critical role and the terms and conditions under which they work reveals the irrational and unjustifiable nature of fixing terms and conditions of work through an artificial 'labour market' in which working people are no more than disposable commodities, mere 'human resources'. The economic crisis now unfolding shows the extent of workers' powerlessness. Workers are dumped and wages slashed even in workplaces such as British Airways with a strong trade union presence. The failure of labour law has never been so starkly visible. II A striking feature of UK labour law is the almost lack of industrial democracy. The law since 1980 has been stripped of the supports for collective bargaining as Conservative governments reversed what had been the policy of the State from (at least) 1909 to 1979. The many restrictions on the right to strike successively imposed since 1979 also undermined collective bargaining. A statutory recognition procedure has been singularly ineffective in reversing the slide. Even where collective bargaining continues, it has been widely undermined. In the public sector, where collective bargaining has most coverage, government has refused to bargain over pay, instead imposing pay caps or Pay Review Bodies to determine wages. In the private sector, firms that would follow national sectoral agreements now set their own terms and conditions; collective bargaining coverage in nonpublicly owned business is around 13 percent. As a result, collective bargaining has largely collapsed and young people have lost even the folk memory of it. There is no industrial democracy outside the few remaining islands of collective bargaining. There is no legislation requiring workers on boards. There are few co-operatives. The request of the TUC for the formation of a National Recovery Council with unions, employers and government working together has been ignored1. III The abject failure of the law to protect the health, safety and lives of workers in the pandemic is evident to all. Scores of essential workers have lost their lives to Covid-19 and thousands of others have become infected. Yet it remains the statutory duty of employers to ensure adequate protection for the life and health of workers in all occupations, and the duty of the State to ensure that this obligation is met. The obligations to provide adequate personal protective equipment, a safe place of work, risk assessments and to report illness and injury caused by work are not merely statutory duties but are backed by criminal liability. The problem is that, through the...

The Covid-19 crisis has demonstrated that labour law in the UK has dismally failed in its ostensible primary purpose of protecting and empowering workers. It has not protected workers’ jobs, incomes and their health and safety. In particular, it has failed to ensure that workers have the right to participate in the decisions about their jobs, incomes or safety. Workers in the UK now face the worst recession in Europe with the likelihood of the highest rate of job losses. Well before the pandemic, the delicate and unsteady ‘post war consensus’ of most of the twentieth century was destroyed by the advent of neo-liberalism that was given free reign by the Thatcher government. Rights were diminished, enforcement authorities defunded, managerial prerogative reinforced, trade unions excluded from any role in the State, and the collective power to bargain collectively and to strike subjected to systematic destruction. The process was not reversed in the 13 years of Labour government and, in the decade since 2010, the attack, under the flag of austerity, has been ruthlessly pursued. Collective bargaining coverage steadily declined from 82 percent in 1976 to less than 25 percent before the pandemic. Union membership numbers followed. The consequence of the removal of legal and collective protections for the vast majority of workers was that, before the crisis, their job security, pay, hours, terms and conditions of work were almost exclusively were in the hands of the employer on a take it or leave it basis. The pandemic illuminated the point. It revealed the remarkable and hidden irony that some 7 million ‘key’ workers, essential to maintain the fabric of society, are (doctors excepted) amongst the worst paid and least legally protected of the entire workforce. The contrast between their critical role and the terms and conditions under which they work reveals the irrational and unjustifiable nature of fixing terms and conditions of work through an artificial ‘labour market’ in which working people are no more than disposable commodities, mere ‘human resources’. The economic crisis now unfolding shows the extent of workers’ powerlessness. Workers are dumped and wages slashed even in workplaces such as British Airways with a strong trade union presence. The failure of labour law has never been so starkly visible. II A striking feature of UK labour law is the almost lack of industrial democracy. The law since 1980 has been stripped of the supports for collective bargaining as Conservative governments reversed what had been the policy of the State from (at least) 1909 to 1979. The many restrictions on the right to strike successively imposed since 1979 also undermined collective bargaining. A statutory recognition procedure has been singularly ineffective in reversing the slide. Even where collective bargaining continues, it has been widely undermined. In the public sector, where collective bargaining has most coverage, government has refused to bargain over pay, instead imposing pay caps or Pay Review Bodies to determine wages. In the private sector, firms that would follow national sectoral agreements now set their own terms and conditions; collective bargaining coverage in nonpublicly owned business is around 13 percent. As a result, collective bargaining has largely collapsed and young people have lost even the folk memory of it. There is no industrial democracy outside the few remaining islands of collective bargaining. There is no legislation requiring workers on boards. There are few co-operatives. The request of the TUC for the formation of a National Recovery Council with unions, employers and government working together has been ignored1. III The abject failure of the law to protect the health, safety and lives of workers in the pandemic is evident to all. Scores of essential workers have lost their lives to Covid-19 and thousands of others have become infected. Yet it remains the statutory duty of employers to ensure adequate protection for the life and health of workers in all occupations, and the duty of the State to ensure that this obligation is met. The obligations to provide adequate personal protective equipment, a safe place of work, risk assessments and to report illness and injury caused by work are not merely statutory duties but are backed by criminal liability. The problem is that, through the...

INTERNATIONAL union rights Page 10 Volume 23 Issue 2 2016 British laws on trade unions are the most restrictive in the Western World FOCUS ❐ BREXIT I n the same month as the Brexit referendum result, the UK’s Institute for Employment Rights (IER) has published its Manifesto for Labour Law: towards a comprehensive revision of workers’ rights. The IER’s proposals on reform of the UK’s labour laws could not be timelier. Fortythree years of EU membership may have contributed some gains for the rights of British workers , but current comparisons with Europe present a stark picture of working life in the UK: ‘On average, British workers work more hours per week, more days per year, more years before they retire, after which they receive lower levels of pension than most of their European counterparts. In comparison to other European workers they have generally received less education and training, and (because of lack of employer investment ) their productivity is lower. They get fewer paid holidays than almost all European comparators (the Working Time Directive notwithstanding). Their pay is so low that a great proportion of them are in poverty (and the State subsidises employers’ low wages in respect of a higher proportion of workers) than almost anywhere elsewhere in Europe. The gender pay gap is at a wholly unacceptable level’. As the manifesto’s authors explain in detail, the UK has ‘a framework of law born out of 19th century conditions, which has bypassed many advances of the 20th century, which ignores today’s economic and workplace realities, and which is not fit for purpose in 21st century Britain’. A debate on the future of British labour law is long overdue. The authors address head on the relationship between the dire state of workers’ rights in the UK and the current legal restrictions on the exercise of trade union rights, which have increasingly made collective actions such as striking so burdensome as to be almost impracticable. British laws on trade unions in 2016 remain ‘the most restrictive in the Western World. This is indisputable in relation to the right to trade union autonomy, right to strike, and the right to bargain collectively’. The Conservative government’s latest legislative attack on trade unions – the Trade Union Act 2016 – was roundly criticised for containing provisions which violate ILO Convention 87, and concerns were raised about its compatibility with the European Convention on Human Rights. Some of these aspects were watered down in response to pressure from trade unions. Nonetheless, many contested provisions – concerning ballot thresholds and the expanded role of the trade union Certification Officer – have now been enacted. The Manifesto calls for that Act to be repealed in its entirety, immediately. The restoration of collective bargaining The Manifesto’s principle recommendation for reform is to shift the balance of regulation from legislation to collective bargaining. The IER’s 25 comprehensive policy recommendations are founded on building ‘extensive sectoral collective bargaining structures underpinned by strong trade union rights’. The authors acknowledge that such a shift is ‘contingent on strong State support for [collective bargaining] and for trade unions (and employers’ associations), upon whose shoulders will lie a heavy responsibility for delivery’. Legislation therefore continues to play a key role. But the authors also amply demonstrate that legislation alone is an ambivalent and sometimes ineffective tool: the rampant levels of inequality in the UK at present are not an ‘unavoidable product of the operation of the ‘labour market’’. Rather, ‘the law has been moulded purposefully to achieve these outcomes’ – in particular since the Thatcher-era. One of the principle effects of this has been the cynical destruction of collective bargaining since 1980. Once the preferred method of regulation, collective bargaining has been largely displaced by legislation: ‘By 2011 Britain had fallen to the second lowest in Europe in terms of the level of collective bargaining coverage. Coverage is probably less than 20% today, lower than at any time since before the First World War’. The result is in ‘an unnecessarily legalistic, inefficient and immensely complex system of rules, contained in an ever-growing statute book too heavily dependent on lawyers, tribunals, judges and courts for their enforcement’. The weakness of this labour...

Unions &amp; the Great Recession: Is Transnationalism the Answer?

Chapter 70 - Labor Regulations, Unions, and Social Protection in Developing Countries: Market Distortions or Efficient Institutions?

У статті наведено результати дослідження впливу трудової міграції на соціально-економічний розвиток України. Мета дослідження полягає у визначенні можливостей та загроз, пов’язаних із трудовою міграцією, та формулюванні механізмів, що сприятимуть інтеграції вітчизняного ринку праці з ринком праці ЄС. Дослідження проводилося шляхом опрацювання законодавства України, міжнародних конвенцій інших нормативних актів, наукових публікацій з питань трудових відносин і міграції, даних державної статистики. Головні результати і висновки. У результаті дослідження визначені причини, що обумовлюють активізацію трудової міграції, основні сфери зайнятості українців за кордоном. Дослідження показало, що головною причиною трудової міграції є брак робочих місць, низький рівень оплати праці. Проаналізовані поширені ризики порушення трудових і соціальних прав трудових мігрантів, такі як неофіційне працевлаштування, дискримінація в оплаті праці тощо. Визначені можливості та загрози, що відкриває трудова міграція для мігрантів і суспільства. Для людини робота за кордоном дозволяє, крім покращення фінансового стану, отримати нові знання, професійні навички досвід і, таким чином, підвищити власну вартість на ринку праці. Запропоновано механізм захисту трудових і соціальних прав українців, що працюють за кордоном. Мінімізації можливих негативних наслідків трудової міграції для суспільства сприятиме подальше зростання рівня оплати праці, розвиток малого і середнього бізнесу, покращення якості професійної підготовки. Реалізація запропонованих у статті механізмів сприятиме інтеграції українського ринку праці з єдиним ринком праці ЄС, що дозволить громадянам України однаково успішно реалізовувати свої професійні і кар’єрні амбіції як у власній країні, так і за кордоном.

Labor Organization in Ride Sharing – Unionization or Cartelization?

The aim of this chapter is to interrogate what, if anything, is gained by reformulating labour law as a field of reflexive law and governance. The tradition of Oxford labour law scholarship stretching back to Kahn-Freund has not of course typically deployed the terminology of ‘reflexive law’, though it has been preoccupied—as reflexive law scholarship is—with labour law’s regulatory techniques. At its simplest, the reflexive turn in labour law is an attempt to speak to concerns about the effectiveness of the traditional regulatory techniques of labour legislation and administrative regulation in the context of changes in the institutional landscape, and changes to regulatory objectives in the areas of industrial relations and social policy. What has changed since the heyday of, respectively, collective laissez-faire and statutory intervention, as the dominant techniques of labour market regulation, and how convincing is ‘reflexive law’ in its attempt to explain or rationalise the new forms of governance or law-making within the UK labour market, and more generally with reference to the social and employment policy of the European Union (EU)? This requires a three-fold investigation: first is reflexive law descriptively an appropriate means by which to understand the range of regulatory techniques being adopted across the field of employment and industrial relations: how accurate a description of regulatory change are theories of reflexive law, or related discourses of ‘responsive’, ‘new’ or ‘experimentalist’ governance? Second, is it right, normatively, to adopt or advocate a reflexive approach to regulation, to the extent that such an approach may well eschew a substantive content for labour law? Can a reflexive approach be inherently ‘neutral’ as to (regulatory or labour market) outcomes? What of those criticisms of reflexive regulation which contend that the rise of reflexive (labour) law runs in parallel to and indeed reinforces the neoliberal turn in economic policy making? Third, is there empirical evidence to show that a reflexive approach to regulation works in practice? Is it true to claim—as theorists of reflexive law, responsive regulation or new governance do—that regulatory interventions in the labour market are more likely to be successful in achieving their objectives if they avoid direct prescription of substantive social or distributive outcomes, and instead engage in what one might call ‘second-order’ regulation by creating frameworks within which social actors such as employers can negotiate?

The evolution of labour markets globally reflects a shift from agrarian-based economies to diversified industrial and service-oriented structures. In this context, labour market dynamics are deeply interwoven with broader socio-political and institutional frameworks. The current era of hyper-globalization further underscores the need to examine these markets not just through an economic lens, but also from sociological and political perspectives. Since gaining independence, India’s labour market has undergone considerable transformation. Despite lagging behind developed economies in setting global benchmarks for labour standards—such as wage parity, working conditions, employment contracts, collective bargaining rights, and inclusivity—the country has made consistent efforts to reform its labour regulations in line with evolving socio-economic needs. A landmark development in this direction was the introduction of the Four Labour Codes in 2020, which aim to consolidate and simplify 44 existing labour laws. The changing approach to labour in India reflects a broader attempt to balance economic flexibility with social protection. The current reforms strive to foster a more inclusive and dynamic labour market that supports both economic growth and worker welfare. This paper seeks to analyse the structural foundations of India’s labour market, examine the evolution of labour institutions post-independence, and evaluate the key challenges and developments that have shaped its current form. It intends to understand the new Labour Codes—their proposed structures, implementation frameworks, and limitations. Finally, the paper attempts to explore the future trajectory of India’s labour market in light of these transformative reforms, with a focus on building inclusive labour institutions that respond effectively to India’s diverse socio-economic realities.

The Evolving Antitrust Treatment of Labor-Market Restraints: From Theory to Practice

Are Unions a Constitutional Anomaly?