Union Power Research Articles

Heroes, villains, or something in between? How “Right to Work” policies affect teachers, students, and education policymaking

Although the Janus v. AFCSME (2018) decision fundamentally changed the institutional context for U.S. teachers’ unions by placing all public school teachers in a “Right to Work” (RTW) framework, little research exists to conceptualize the effects of such policies that hinder unionization. To fill this gap, I exploit the different timing across states in the passage of RTW policies in a differences-in-differences framework to identify how exposure to a RTW policy affects students, teachers, and education policymaking. I find that RTW policies lead to declines in teachers’ union power, but contrary to what many union critics have argued, I find that efforts to weaken unions did not result in political opportunities for education reforms nor did they improve student achievement outcomes.

Union wage premia and wage inequality in South Africa

Rising inequality in the developed world over the last 40 years has been accompanied by declining trade union power. Unions have been found to raise the wages of their members but also to reduce overall wage inequality through the standardisation of wages in the union sector. In this paper we examine the extent to which unions raise wages and affect the extremely high levels of wage inequality in South Africa, using comparable household surveys from 1993 to 2019. We find that union wage premia are extremely high, and that union membership has become increasingly concentrated at the top of the wage distribution and in the public sector. As a result, variance decompositions show that unions increased inequality slightly in more recent periods. We also find that earnings imputation from 2010 onwards makes estimating the true impact of unionisation on wages impossible without unimputed earnings data.

Do Unions Still Matter for Redistribution? Evidence from Canada’s Provinces

We examine the relationship between union power and redistribution in Canada’s ten provinces between 1986 and 2014. Subnational jurisdictions are thus the focus of research questions that have previously been addressed at the international level. Multilevel models with time-series cross-sectional data are used to estimate the long-term association between union density and redistribution through provincial transfer payments and income taxes. We found that higher union density correlates with considerably more redistribution over the long term but not over the short term. This finding is confirmed by three distinct measures of inequality and poverty reduction, an indication that it is quite robust. The association is significant for the entire study period and for its second half. This finding is consistent with power resource theory in its original form, but not with more recent work in that area or with comparative political economy scholarship, which generally now neglects or downplays the impact of organized labour on social and economic policy outcomes. Our findings suggest a need to re-assess the diminished interest of recent researchers in the political influence of organized labour. It will also interest scholars in other countries where tax and transfer systems are decentralized, and where the impact of organized labour on such measures has been understudied at the subnational level. Additionally, we show that unionized voters in Canada are more favourably disposed than their non-unionized counterparts toward redistribution and toward pro-redistribution political parties. Unions may consequently affect redistribution in part by socializing their members to favour it. This possibility is advanced with preliminary data in this paper. We argue that further scholarly attention is both required and deserved on this subject in Canada and elsewhere.

Union Power After the Election

Union Power After the Election

Social Status and Class Identity of the Organized Working Class in Serbia

This article explores the relationship between the European identity of the organized working class and its class power in Serbian society. We understand the collective European identity of the organized working class in Serbia to primarily mean adherence to the European social model embodied in collective bargaining, that is, in a social dialogue among social partners: the trade unions, employers, and the state. The European identity of the organized working class in Serbia is also reflected in its support for the values of human rights, private property, the market economy, and multi-party parliamentary democracy. We understand “trade union power” to mean the extent of its capacity to achieve set goals. That is, how much the commitment and the efforts of the representative trade unions in Serbia: The Confederation of Autonomous Trade Unions of Serbia (SSSS/CATUS) and The Trade Union Confederation (UGS/TUC) “Nezavisnost” („Independence”) to join the European trade union movement and become members of the European Trade Union Confederation, the only representative European trade union organization and the recognized social partner at the level of the European Union, contributed to the more prominent role and a more remarkable power of these trade unions in Serbia. Our research is based on the critical discourse analysis (CDA) – discourse-historical approach (DHA), and economic history context.

The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Future Labor Markets

Historically, mechanization and the current artificial intelligence trend have been considered as threats to job stability despite the fact that statistics on production and employment have shown the opposite. The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-21 stimulated robotization in all types of industry with the substitution of labor, raising unemployment, however, there is evidence of its reduction. The purpose of this work is to show how despite the inevitable robotization and the destruction of jobs, new trades and professions will develop in the same way as happened in the three previous revolutions, including all sectors of goods, services and the military. Without falling into the repetition of the already known history, reference is made to recent publications confronting them with the technological trend inherited from the 20th century, business behaviors in the face of COVID-19 and its effect on the future labor market. Statistics show positive aspects such as fast and efficient adaptation by highly qualified companies and employees. There are negative effects such as the loss of competitiveness of low-skilled workers; loss of bargaining power of unions; increase in the gender pay gap; widening gap between high-tech industrialized countries and underdeveloped ones. It is concluded that immediate changes are required in the reorientation of educational programs towards technological careers, labor reforms, financial reforms. The gap between high-tech industrialized countries and underdeveloped ones will undoubtedly widen unless the latter implement radical and pragmatic changes in their economic policies.

When and How to Legally Challenge Economic Globalization: A Comment on the German Constitutional Court's False Promise

The German Constitutional Court’s recent challenge to European law supremacy, and European lawyers’ strident critique of it, misdirect the conversation we need to have. The German Constitutional Court wants us to focus on a surplus of European Union power, the European Court of Justice’s refusal to constrain it, the legal strategy of proportionality, and the goal of protecting national democracy. I defend national judicial pushback that is used to protect individual rights, democracy and the national constitutional order. But demanding a German right to proportionality review of ECB monetary policy does not further these goals. Judicial review of monetary policy, especially in a context of radical uncertainty, makes little sense. Nor is the German Court’s doctrinal focus helpful as a way to address globalization. We need a new and different conversation focused on when and how constitutional review can effectively and helpfully push back against the adverse impacts that economic globalization is creating.

The effect of labor unions on municipal bonds

We present three findings on the effects of local unions on the municipal bond market. First, public- and private-sector unions play differential roles in capital markets: municipal bond issuers in areas with higher public-sector union density incur higher issuance costs and lower credit ratings. Private-sector unions only affect municipal bond issuance costs if bonds are backed by tax revenues, if bonds are not insured, or if bond issuers are exposed to strong private-sector union power. Second, by employing a regression discontinuity design using local variation in the vote share of union elections, we find that closely won union elections lead to significantly higher yields on the secondary market. Third, the issuance costs of municipal bonds are further affected by state-level legislation that restricts the collective bargaining power and impedes the possibility of a strike. Overall, we conclude that union exposure is viewed as a risk factor by municipal bond market participants.

De maio 68 a abril de 1969 imaginários de revoluções no cinema.

Fifty years ago, a movement in Paris unleashed a profound change in customs and left deep marks on society, despite its restraint by elections, changes in the university and factories. The ‘events’ of May 1968, because of their breadth, their role in young people and foreigners, the new forms of action and participation that gave rise to them, and certain qualitatively new aspects of the claims presented, not only revealed the political power of the labor movement (paralyzing power and blocking institutions), but they also constituted a “subversive” experience of incalculable theoretical and practical significance in the process of developing social struggles both in France and in other European countries. It also inaugurated a new stage which has come to mean a real “historical change”: “trade union power” gave way to the “workers’ power” that spread throughout Europe - France, Italy, Germany and Sweden itself. The echoes of May 1968 arrived in Portugal immediately, but it is mainly in April 1969 that in Coimbra there is a university crisis that can not fail to be referenced. These events also provoked changes in the cinema that occupied the rooms with dozens of films made in the years that followed and to this day the most recent film that resumes this movement is the film by João Moreira Salles No intenso agora (2017). In Portugal so far no film has plunged deeply into these events. Because? Why is it that after 50 years cinema resumes this theme? Why did Portuguese cinema forget the Coimbra crisis of 1969?

Markups and income inequality: Causal links, 1975-2011

Using data for 20 countries during 1975–2011, this study provides new evidence on the association between the lack of competition, measured by an increase in markups, and income inequality. We find that an increase in markups is positively associated with rising income inequality. More interestingly, not only do extra profits from higher markups accrue to the top-income group, but also, within the top-income group (top 10%), the higher top-income earners (top 1%) tend to benefit disproportionately more than the lower top-income earners (top 5% or 10%). Finally, we highlight the role of labor market policies; the positive relationship between markups and income inequality is less pronounced in countries with better labor protection such as the statutory protection and power of labor unions, generous unemployment benefits, and mandatory minimum wages.

Labor power, investor protection, and price synchronicity

ABSTRACT In this study, we examine the impact of labor union power on stock price synchronicity. We proxy labor union power by the collective relation law index and measure stock price synchronicity by the level of co-movement between a firm’s stock price and market index. Using a sample of 37 countries between 1995 and 2016, we find that labor union power is positively associated with stock price synchronicity, indicating that firms in countries where labor union power is relatively stronger tend to disclose less firm-specific information. Our evidence also shows that this phenomenon is more pronounced in countries where investors are better protected, and is less pronounced or even reversed in countries where investors are less protected.

After Citizens United: How outside spending shapes American democracy

We study the political consequences of lifting restrictions on the funding of groups engaging in outside spending (e.g., independent political advertising) in elections. Theoretically, we assume that outside spending changes the salience of candidate-specific attributes relative to their party labels. Empirically, we employ a difference-in-differences design that exploits the removal of state-level restrictions on the funding of outside spending mandated by the federal-level rulings in both Citizens United and SpeechNow.org v. FEC. We find strong evidence that these regulatory changes increase the electoral success of Republican candidates, thereby leading to more ideologically conservative legislatures. We find no effect on polarization. Consistent with our theory, the size of our estimated effects depends on the power of labor unions and the alignment of business interests with the Republican party.

The role of trade union collective voice in the access to training for workers in New Zealand

This paper explores trade union collective voice as a mechanism for worker participation in training decision making. New Zealand is an example of a liberal market economy (LME) with relatively weak regulatory pressure on employers to engage in training. Consequently, drivers such as trade union collective voice could fill an important role in workers securing support for training from their employers. The paper argues that given the reduced power of unions in many LMEs workers potentially face a twofold challenge: the first to secure an entitlement to training and the second to have any further participation in training decision making. Using the example of New Zealand, the paper examines whether collective bargaining secures entitlement to training. Then, employing the categorization of approaches to workforce development as either expansive or restrictive, it investigates the nature of that entitlement. Following this, the paper reports on dialogue with trade unions through which a more nuanced picture emerges of collective voice and the challenges to worker participation in training decision making. Finally, it reflects on the role collective voice could play in worker access to training.

Struggle over employees psychological well-being. The politization and depolitization of the debate on employee mental health in the Finnish insurance sector

ABSTRACT This article examines the emergence and evolution of the discourse on mental health problems as an occupational health risk in the professional debates among Finnish insurance workers from a historical perspective. Our findings indicate that the mental health discourse was influenced by organizational, cultural and political changes. We also found that the employee’s role and the power relations in the insurance sector influenced the way in which mental health problems were articulated in professional debates. The workplace democratization movement of the 1970s and the increasing power of trade unions paved the way for the recognition and manifestation of employees’ mental ill-health and vice versa, the increase of mental health problems legitimized the activity of the union. In the 1990s and 2000s, however, the individualization trend led to the view that employees themselves were responsible for maintaining and regulating their own mental health and competitiveness, once again limiting their opportunities to express their grievances at the workplace and undermining the solidarity between employees.

Fixing it for PFA Scotland: building union influence out of a transnational project to tackle match-fixing in football

ABSTRACT This article deploys frameworks from the fields of trade union theory and professional football governance theory to gain an understanding of the tactics deployed by the Professional Footballers’ Association, Scotland (PFAS) for collectively representing the interests of its members. The article explores how the union used the advantages gained through participation in a counter match-fixing project managed by FIFPro to establish itself as a member of an array of committees, task groups and panels so that it might become the collective ‘voice’ of players at the institutional level in football. The article commences with a review of the industrial relations landscape of professional football and the ‘peculiarities’ of the labour market that have produced equally unique trade union strategies that seek to individualise rather than collectivise wage bargaining. The implications of such a strategy are felt in the lack of appropriate contemporary theories of trade union power that might act as explanatory frameworks to aid an understanding of the tactics deployed by PFAS. The article proposes a return to a political institutional model of trade union power popularised by Sidney and Beatrice Webb in the late nineteenth-century. An analysis of interview data collected from a small cohort of expert informants shows that PFAS has taken advantage of a new body in Scottish professional football, the integrity forum, to establish itself as a credible and trustworthy voice of players within broader governing structures, while acknowledging that its sphere of influence remains constrained within a system dominated by more established institutions.

The power of (the) union: trade-unionism and workplace democracy in a French recovered factory

ABSTRACT What happens when a trade-union becomes the main actor of the workplace democracy? Underlining the strong bureaucratization of the trade union field, studies on trade unionism seem to predict low potentials. The case of a cooperative takeover of a French company by the CGT union in the early 2010s gives us the opportunity to verify it empirically. firstly, we will see that while trade union bureaucratization allows the takeover of the company – thanks to professionalized organizers – it also constitutes an obstacle when setting up the main cooperative schemes, as shown by the lack of participation in general meetings. In a second phase, however, by placing members from each sector on the board of directors – from the reception to the printing presses and the sales department – the union sets up a ‘sociological democratization’ and thus creates a continuum of interactions between grassroots and executive board which constitute ‘worker control’ over the new management.

Are highly unionised industries socially responsible to their employees?

Corporate social responsibility towards employees (CSR-E) is a vital aspect of modern business that can promote employee rights, justice and standards of employment, which in turn can generate benefits for companies. From the perspective of stakeholder theory, companies are expected to act and react to the demands of their most powerful stakeholders. Therefore, previous studies on CSR-E are skewed towards employees, whom they view as relevant and powerful stakeholders, and view CSR-E as a tool for promoting employee engagement. However, these studies have neglected the labour union power of stakeholders over the CSR-E activities of companies, particularly in Malaysia. The presence of labour unions can increase the tendency for a company to observe a state of democracy, and the negotiation and collective bargaining power of these labour unions can narrow the gap between the expectations of employees and their companies. Nonetheless, the relationship between labour unions and CSR-E is only based on gut feeling and has never been examined in the Malaysian context. Given the differences in unionisation rates across industries, this study predicts that highly unionised industries practise CSR-E to a greater extent compared with non-unionised ones. Therefore, this study examines the relationship between highly unionised industries and CSR-E practice. Banking and financial institutions and real estate and properties were selected as highly and poorly unionised industries in this paper, respectively, and their ratings were calculated based on available data from the Malaysian Trade Union Congress. A total of 100 annual reports for financial years ending in 2017 and 2018 were gathered from 50 companies and were analysed for their content to measure CSR-E. Control variables, including size, profit and leverage, were also used to examine the relationship between CSR-E and unionisation. Highly unionised industries demonstrated a positive relationship with CSR-E practice. Keywords : corporate social responsibility, employees, stakeholder theory, unionised industries

Class struggle and the spatial politics of violence: The picket line in 1970s Britain

The late 1960s to the mid‐1980s in Britain was a period of intense industrial struggle, with strike levels at their highest since the 1920s. Concerns surrounding trade union power became central to broader anxieties about British “decline” and “crisis.” These issues took a spatial form in conflicts around the nature of the picket line. This paper discusses the picket line in 1970s Britain in the context of recent debates on the geographies of violence, particularly in relation to questions of class and property, and the mutually constitutive temporalities of structural and direct violence. Rather than focusing on the diffuse processes of an abstract capitalism, I argue for greater attention to be paid to class conflict in shaping experiences and epistemologies of violence. This paper therefore places more emphasis on agency in the production of violence than has been prevalent in recent debates in geography. Drawing on extensive archival research, the paper focuses on three key disputes in this period. Building on work in labour geography, it explores how the assertive working‐class presence of mass pickets were portrayed as violent through an account of the miners' strike in 1972. It then considers a similar process in relation to flying pickets during the 1972 builders' dispute, emphasising the threat of a politicised working‐class mobility. Finally, the paper considers the coercive state response in the violent policing of the picket line during the 1976–8 Grunwick dispute. The radical right‐wing project of neoliberalism emerged in part as a solution to the perceived threat of the labour movement; critical to its success and consolidation was challenging the “enemy within” of militant trade unionism. These violent class struggles around picketing in the 1970s, I argue, are crucial for understanding the long‐term, structural violence of neoliberalism.

The impact of labor unions on corporate tax avoidance: evidence from Korea

This study examines the effect of labor unions on corporate tax avoidance activities. Labor union is an important stakeholder in terms of corporate governance; thus, managers may engage in certain accounting choices that reflect union members’ position to improve the relation with labor union. This paper empirically investigates whether managers engage in tax avoidance activities to secure financial resources for workers’ pay when the negotiation power of labor unions is higher. The empirical analysis is based on a sample of firms listed in the Korean stock market from 2001 to 2008. The authors find that companies, where labor unions are organized, have a significantly higher level of tax avoidance activities. Also, the authors attempt to examine the effect of labor unions’ bargaining power on tax avoidance. While the union membership ratio is not significantly related to tax avoidance, labor unions that belong to upper-level labor organizations significantly affect the increasing tax avoidance activity, on average. Moreover, companies that join an aggressive labor organization (‘Minju’ Federation) show a significantly higher level of tax avoidance activity, compared to those joining a moderate labor organization (‘Hanguk’ Federation). Furthermore, the authors show that such an effect of labor unions on tax avoidance is significant for companies, which are not affiliated with large business groups (‘chaebols’). This result suggests that chaebol group management is not under pressure to negotiate with union members due to higher reputation costs. The findings of this paper offer academic and practical implications that capital market participants need to understand labor unions’ effect on management’s accounting choices.

Polyoxometalate/Hydroquinone Hybrid Redox Electrolyte for Electrochemical Energy Storage

There has been progress and growing interest in the development of novel and efficient energy storage systems meeting high power and energy demands of modern devices and advanced technologies. Among important requirements for such charge storage devices are high volumetric and gravimetric energy and power, large number of charging/discharging cycles, improved safety and reasonable cost. At the current stage of technology, common charge storage systems, such as batteries and electrochemical capacitors, rarely meet those expectations. Indeed the present systems offer either high energy density (batteries) or high peak power (electrochemical capacitors) but barely both characteristics. Lately, there have been attempts to consider aqueous electrolytes containing dissolved redox species capable of undergoing fast electrode reactions at the interfaces formed with highly porous carbon electrodes. Consequently, the energy density significantly increases while keeping the power performance of a typical double-layer capacitor. Since most of redox-electrolyte-based systems utilize aqueous solutions, such advantages as enhanced safety, environment-friendliness and reasonable cost could be retained. Such redox-active species as iodide, quinone, phenelenediamine, ferrocyanide, methylene blue, thiocyanide and cerium sulphate have been successfully applied as positive or negative electrode-supporting electrolytes. The redox processes (battery-type characteristics) are typically observable in the potential range of a single electrode only and, therefore, the opposite electrode operating according to the electrical double-layer mechanism (capacitive behavior) limits the overall cell performance in terms of capacity and energy. To overcome this drawback, application of dual redox-type electrolytes comprising two independent redox couples separated in the positive and negative electrode compartments has been recently proposed. From the mechanistic point of view, such devices resemble conventional redox-flow batteries but operating in static conditions, i.e. more favourable from the practical and economical point of view.By taking into account the above deliberations, a dual redox-active (proton-conductive) electrolyte composed of the mixture of two different soluble redox species is considered here for application in energy storage devices with an enhanced specific energy [1]. The Keggin-type polyoxometalate (phosphotungstic acid), undergoing fast (electrochemically reversible) one-electron redox processes has been selected to support the negative electrode. In order to develop the potential difference in the cell, the hydroquinone, capable of oxidation/reduction according to the fast two-electron mechanism has been adopted and its electroactivity was predominantly confined to the positive electrode. It enabled us to design a hybrid charge storage cell with the operating voltage of 0.8 V and the specific energy of 20 Wh kg-1 (per total mass of both electrodes). In the constant power discharge mode, 13 Wh kg-1 of the energy has been preserved at the power of 1 kW kg-1 during discharging down to ½ of the maximum voltage which is consistent with the fast charging/discharging dynamics of the proposed hybrid system. A mixed hierarchical micro-porous (predominantly mesoporous) porous carbon of high (>2 cm3g-1) total pore volume and the BET surface area approaching 1000 m2 g-1 has been selected as the electrode material permitting electrical double layer charging and supporting electroactivity of redox species and unimpeded mass transport. Also, the normalization of electrical parameters against the total mass of electrodes and electrolyte resulted in a ca. five-fold increase of discharge capacity and specific energy in comparison to the performance of a simple electrical double-layer capacitor. Acknowledgement Financial support was provided by the National Centre for Research and Development (NCBR, Poland) under Techmatstrateg Grant no. 347431/14/NCBR/2018 as well as by the NCBR in the framework of European Union POWER 3.2 Project no. POWR.03.02.00-00-I007/16-00. 1. M. Skunik-Nuckowska, K. Węgrzyn, S. Dyjak, N. H. Wisińska, P. J. Kulesza, Energy Storage Mater., 21 (2019) 427-438