Unions and compensating wage differentials for workplace accident risk: the English and Welsh railway industry, 1902–12†

Peter Anderson

doi:10.1111/ehr.13066

Abstract

AbstractThe effect of unions on workers’ wage premiums for accepting on‐the‐job accident risk is a prominent subset of compensating differentials research. This article contributes to the literature by using a newly‐constructed balanced panel of railwaymen working in the traffic departments of three prominent Edwardian railway companies with operations in England and Wales. It avoids previous issues of endogeneity by controlling for a number of variables correlated with the risk rates, notably individual fixed effects. The results show that the largest railway union of the time, the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, was able to transform growing union density into power that increased wage premiums for fatal accident risk, although railwaymen's wages did not compensate them for non‐fatal accident risk. This article also considers how this relationship differed by varying levels of company‐specific human capital as measured by tenure. It finds a non‐linear relationship for both risk rates across the tenure cohorts.

Highlights

This article contributes to the literature by using a newly-constructed balanced panel of railwaymen working in the traffic departments of three prominent Edwardian railway companies with operations in England and Wales
The results show that the largest railway union of the time, the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, was able to transform growing union density into power that increased wage premiums for fatal accident risk, railwaymen’s wages did not compensate them for non-fatal accident risk
The results show that the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS) was able to transform growing union density into power that increased the wage premiums that railway companies paid their men to accept on-the-job fatal accident risk, their wages did not compensate them for greater non-fatal accident risk

Summary

Engine drivers

Notes: ASRS: Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants. The 1904 union data by grade pertain to Sept. 1904. Gupta, ‘Railway trade unionism’, used 1904 accident returns to calculate the percentage of each grade that was unionized. He provided the number of members in a grade as a percentage of ASRS membership. Employment data from 1911 show that these companies employed about 95 per cent of UK railwaymen.[27] The Board’s figures on total railwaymen were adjusted and rounded to the nearest whole number to compute total non-salaried railway employment for a given year. The first is that salaried railwaymen were ineligible to join any of these four unions This method demonstrates the changes and growth in total union density within the railway industry. Railway Companies (Staff and Wages) (P.P. 1913, LVIII). Section III discusses of the low percentage of ASLEF, GRWU, and UPSS members elected to 1907 Scheme boards relative to ASRS members

ASRS ASLEF GRWU UPSS NUR

England and Wales

WORKPLACE ACCIDENT RISK

Findings

Supporting information