Nonunion Jobs Research Articles

Labor relations and the overdose crisis in the United States

Background/Objective To assess the impact of noted long-term changes in US labor relations and labor market structures on the rapid rise of overdose death in the United States. Methods State-level overdose death rates obtained from the Centers for Disease Control were combined with Bureau of Labor Statistics data on manufacturing employment, unionization and self-employment, as well as Census data on key demographic variables to construct a longitudinal dataset (N = 51, including Washington D.C.). Linear regressions were conducted on a logged transformation of overdose death rate increases from 1999 to 2017. Results Deindustrialization and low self-employment significantly predict state-level increases in overdose death rates across all models; union decline approaches significance. Together, these three factors explain nearly 40% of variance in overdose death change between 1999 and 2017, maintaining predictive power in the presence of controls. Conclusion Labor relations emerge as important predictors of overdose death and addiction. Specifically, worker autonomy—which is typically higher in manufacturing over frontline service, self-employed over dependent wage and salary, and unionized over nonunion jobs—appears to contribute in its decline to deleterious substance use.

Revisiting Union Wage and Job Loss Effects Using the Displaced Worker Surveys

Estimates of union wage effects have been challenged by concerns regarding unobserved worker heterogeneity and endogenous job changes. Many economists believe that union wage premiums lead to business failures and other forms of worker displacement. In this article, the authors examine displacement rates and union wage gaps using the 1994–2018 biennial Displaced Worker Survey (DWS) supplements to the monthly Current Population Surveys. For more than two decades, displacement rates among union and non-union workers have been remarkably similar. The authors observe changes in earnings resulting from transitions between union and non-union jobs following exogenous job changes. Consistent with prior evidence from the 1994 and 1996 DWS, findings show longitudinal estimates of average union wage effects close to 15%, which are similar to standard cross-section estimates and suggestive of minimal ability bias. Wage losses moving from union to non-union jobs exceed gains from non-union to union transitions.

Revisiting Union Wage and Job Loss Effects Using the Displaced Worker Surveys

Estimates of union wage effects have been challenged due to concerns over unobserved worker heterogeneity and endogenous job changes. Many believe that union wage premiums lead to business failures and other forms of worker displacement. In this paper, displacement rates and union wage gaps are examined using the 1994-2018 biennial Displaced Worker Survey (DWS) supplements to the monthly Current Population Surveys. For more than two decades, displacement rates among union and nonunion workers have been remarkably similar. We observe changes in earnings resulting from transitions between union and nonunion jobs following exogenous job changes. Consistent with prior evidence from the 1994 and 1996 DWS, we obtain longitudinal estimates of average union wage effects close to 15 percent, similar to standard cross-section estimates and suggestive of minimal ability bias. Wage losses moving from union to nonunion jobs exceed gains from nonunion to union transitions.

Disability Accommodation in Nonstandard and Precarious Employment Arrangements

This study, based on data from a large nationally representative sample of Canadian workers with disabilities, examines the relationship between employment arrangements and the accommodation of disability in the workplace. We address whether workers with disabilities in nonstandard arrangements are more likely to have unmet accommodation needs and if other key dimensions of precarious employment mediate the relationship between nonstandard work and accommodation. Results from multivariate models suggest that despite disability legislation, practices of workplace disability accommodation parallel the unequal distribution of other labor market protections, with workers in more precarious arrangements (i.e. those in nonpermanent, low-wage, and nonunion jobs) at greater risk of having unmet needs.

Flexible Daily Work Schedules in U.S. Jobs: Formal Introductions Needed?

The incidence of flexible daily starting and ending times of work presumably reflects the various underlying motivations of employers to offer them either as a formal workplace program or on a more selective basis. Access to scheduling flexibility is greater for managerial and professional, long hours, private sector, salaried and nonunion jobs, and for parents and men. This advantage is gained primarily through means other than a formal flexi‐time plan. Implementation of more formal programs would likely promote more equity in access.

Flexible Daily Work Schedules in US Jobs: Formal Introductions?

The incidence of flexible daily work scheduling among workers presumably reflects employers' offering it formally as an organizational productivity-enhancing tool or less formally as a job amenity and/or discretionary employee benefit. Recent US CPS data distinguish whether a worker's flexible schedule is part of a formal workplace program. Probit regression estimation reveals that disparities among workers in their ability to influence their own starting and ending times of work derive largely from the allocation of informal flexibility arrangements according to demographic, hours of work and occupational characteristics. White-collar, long hours, private sector, salaried, nonunion jobs, parents and males have greater access to such scheduling flexibility. This advantage is gained primarily through means other than a formal flexitime plan. Policies promoting implementation of formal programs would enhance equity in access.

Seniority Profiles in Unionised Workplaces: Do Unions Still Have the Edge?

This paper, using data from the British Household Panel; Survey, explores how institutional arrangements influence employees' wages. Particularly, it distinguishes the different paths seniority-earnings profiles follow depending on whether the individual is employed in a workplace where trade unions and collective bargaining are present, or not. Within this framework, two propositions are set. It is argued that in the union sector seniority should be an important determinant of wages, while in the less structured non-union sector true productivity, proxied by the more competitive accumulated skills and professional expertise, should have a key role on earnings profiles. Indeed the empirical analysis on male employees verifies both propositions. Seniority-earnings profiles appear to be steeper in the union-sector, while occupational expertise is estimated to have a more significant role in non-union jobs.

Victory at Home: Manpower and Race in the American South during World War II

Victory at Home: Manpower and Race in the American South during World War II. By Charles D. Chamberlain. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2002. Pp. ix, 288. Acknowledgments, introduction, illustrations, maps, epilogue, notes, bibliography, index. $49.95, cloth; $19.95, paper.) Responding angrily to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's federalization of the United States Employment Service in 1941, Congressman W. F. Norrell of Fort Smith, Arkansas, said: It matters not how great the financial needs of men and women and how much their need for employment, southern people in their indignation, will never bring themselves to permit such an outrage as to allow men, women and girls to be interviewed and supervised by Negroes (Arkansas Gazette, March 6, 1941). Norrell's view was representative of the responses of the majority of southern leaders to the effort of the federal government during World War II to better utilize surplus labor in the South. Southern politicians, planters, and business leaders sought to maintain white supremacy by restricting local black and migrant Latino labor to traditional domestic, agricultural, and other low-wage menial jobs. In Victory at Home, Charles D. Chamberlain explores the efforts of the government to meet the manpower needs of the nation between 1940 and 1945 and simultaneously diversify the economy of the South, freeing blacks and poor whites from poverty and dependence. This was no easy task, as Chamberlain clearly points out, because southern whites saw federal control over wartime employment as a threat to states and the traditional southern social order. Subsequently, the southern elite joined forces with organized labor, primarily the American Federation of Labor, to promote closed shop agreements which limited the employment of minorities to menial non-union jobs. The elite further sought to maintain the status quo, as labor shortages became more pronounced, by pressuring southern defense industries to hire local women because they believed the employment of women would only be temporary and everything would return to normal after the war. This strategy was also designed to keep the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which many southerners viewed as radical and communist-inspired, from gaining a foothold in the South. Chamberlain also explores the efforts of black labor leaders in the South in conjunction with the National Urban League (NUL), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), churches, and other groups to fight wartime employment discrimination by turning the war into a Double V campaign-victory in the war abroad and over racial discrimination at home. The battle for equal employment opportunities at home during the war, argues Chamberlain, became a civil rights issue. His argument reflects that of Thomas Mitchell, a black labor leader who was trying to secure the equal employment of blacks at the Todd-Johnson Dry Docks in New Orleans: feel as taxpayers, American citizens, and qualified workers, we are entitled to employment in our craft wherever work is available, regardless of our racial identity (p. …

Profit-Sharing, Employment Stability, and Wage Growth

The authors conjecture that profit-sharing reduces turnover and thus increases expected returns to firm-specific human capital investments, so that the optimal levels of skill acquisition and investment in firm-specific skills rise and ultimately increase productivity. Empirical evidence from NLSY data on white men in nonunion jobs between 1988 and 1994 supports this hypothesis. Employees participating in profit-sharing plans were less likely than non-participants to separate from their jobs. They also received training more frequently and for longer durations. Finally, the authors show that profit-sharing was related to higher wage growth, indicating a faster rate of skill accumulation.

Profit-Sharing, Employment Stability, and Wage Growth

The authors conjecture that profit-sharing reduces turnover and thus increases expected returns to firm-specific human capital investments, so that the optimal levels of skill acquisition and investment in firm-specific skills rise and ultimately increase productivity. Empirical evidence from NLSY data on white men in nonunion jobs between 1988 and 1994 supports this hypothesis. Employees participating in profit-sharing plans were less likely than non-participants to separate from their jobs. They also received training more frequently and for longer durations. Finally, the authors show that profit-sharing was related to higher wage growth, indicating a faster rate of skill accumulation.

Nonfatal occupational fall injuries in the West Virginia construction industry

Descriptive analyses were conducted using the West Virginia workers' compensation and supplemental injury records to assess nonfatal occupational falls from elevated work surfaces in the construction industry. These analyses are based on the 182 fall injuries reported to the State workers' compensation during fiscal year 1991 for which there were complete supplemental injury data. County-specific injury rates were calculated for counties with six or more fall injuries. Most of these incidents occurred among young white males who were employed as either craftsmen and kindred workers (48%) or laborers (33%) on non-union jobs in the general construction category (SIC-15). The counties with the highest injury rates that exceed the State rate of 5.9 per 1000 construction workers were located around or near the major industrial areas of Kanawha and Monongalia counties. Of the 182 claimants in the study population, one-third had been employed in their occupation for 2 years or less. For 60% of the claimants, the length of employment with the company for which they were employed at the time of the fall injury was two years or less; 26% had been employed for six months or less. Approximately, 63% of the 182 claimants had received some type of fall protection training. Ladders and scaffolds were involved in 50% of all falls. Fall protection devices were not commonly used by the 182 construction workers who worked from elevated surfaces. Fifty percent of the claimants were using tools or handling materials when the fall occurred. Fifty-nine percent of the falls occurred from elevated work surfaces which were relatively low heights (⩽ 10 feet) where few safety regulations apply even though the potential for a serious injury still exists.

The Effect of Unions on the Structure of Wages: A Longitudinal Analysis

This paper studies the effects of unions on the structure of wages, using an estimation technique that explicitly accounts for misclassification errors in reported union status, and potential correlations between union status and unobserved productivity. The econometric model is estimated separately for five skill groups using a large panel data set formed from the U.S. Current Population Survey. The results suggest that unions raise wages more for workers with lower levels of observed skills. In addition, the patterns of selection bias differ by skill group. Among workers with lower levels of observed skill, unionized workers are positively selected, whereas union workers are negatively selected from among those with higher levels of observed skill. DESPITE A LARGE AND SOPHISTICATED LITERATURE there is still substantial disagreement over the extent to which differences in the structure of wages between union and nonunion workers represent an effect of trade unions, rather than a consequence of the nonrandom selection of unionized workers. Over the past decade several alternative approaches have been developed to control for unobserved heterogeneity between union and nonunion workers.2 One method that has been successfully applied in other areas of applied microeconometrics is the use of longitudinal data to measure the wage gains or losses of workers who change union status. Unfortunately, longitudinal estimators are highly sensitive to measurement error: even a small fraction of misclassified union status changes can lead to significant biases if the true rate of mobility between union and nonunion jobs is low. This sensitivity led Lewis (1986) to essentially dismiss the longitudinal evidence in his landmark survey of union wage effects. In this paper I present some new evidence on the union wage effect, based on a longitudinal estimator that explicitly accounts for misclassification errors in reported union status. The estimator uses external information on union status misclassification rates, along with the reduced-form coefficients from a multi- variate regression of wages on the observed sequence of union status indicators, to isolate the causal effect of unions from any selection biases introduced by a correlation between union status and the permanent component of unobserved wage heterogeneity. Recognizing that unions may raise wages more or less for

Union premiums in the federal and private sectors: Alternative evidence from job queues

Although traditional wage estimates indicate a larger union-nonunion differential in the private sector compared to that in the federal sector, the role of non-wage benefits is ignored in such comparisons. A job queue approach shows that premiums to unionized employment (in terms of both wage and non-wage benefits) are lower in the federal sector than in the private sector. This approach not only overcomes the limitations of wage studies in examining the relative superiority of union over nonunion jobs in both sectors, but also strengthens their conclusions through a more appropriate alternative method.

Returns to Seniority in Union and Nonunion Jobs: A New Look at the Evidence

One of the most prominent features of U.S. unionism is the key role played by seniority. However, in cross-sectional data, the positive association between seniority and earnings is typically much stronger for nonunion workers than for union workers. This finding has puzzled previous researchers, since it seems inconsistent with the generalization that seniority is more important in the union sector than in the nonunion sector. We show that standard estimates of the return to seniority are likely to be biased upward and argue that the bias is likely to be larger in the nonunion sector than in the union sector. Corrected estimates imply that the return to seniority is, in fact, larger in the union sector than in the nonunion sector.

Returns to Seniority in Union and Nonunion Jobs: A New Look at the Evidence

In cross-sectional data, the positive association between seniority and earnings is typically much stronger for nonunion workers than for union workers, a finding that seems inconsistent with the generalization that seniority is more important in the union sector than in the nonunion sector. The authors of this paper show that standard estimates of the return to seniority are likely to be biased upward due to unmeasured worker heterogeneity, job heterogeneity, or both, and they argue that this bias is likely to be larger in the nonunion sector than in the union sector. When they correct for this problem in analyzing data on male blue-collar workers for the years 1968–80, they find a larger return to seniority in the union sector than in the nonunion sector.

Health conditions and job hazards: Union and nonunion jobs

Blue-collar union members are more likely than nonunion blue-collar workers to report health conditions caused by job accidents and by bad working conditions caused by noise, smoke, heat, and dust. This is consistent with blue-collar union members’ evaluation of hazardous job conditions and with their indemnity claims filing behavior for industrial injury or occupational disease. Union members are also more likely to be found in industries with higher injury rates. Age and marital status are positively associated and being female and education are negatively associated with a self-reported job related health condition.