Sector Unions Research Articles

The Impact of Internal Control Systems on Financial Performance in the Ghanaian Community-based Credit Union Sector

The Impact of Internal Control Systems on Financial Performance in the Ghanaian Community-based Credit Union Sector

The impact of right‐to‐work laws on long hours and work schedules

AbstractUnions play a crucial role in determining wages and employment outcomes. However, union bargaining power may also have important effects on non‐pecuniary working conditions. We study the effects of right‐to‐work laws, which removed agency shop protection and weakened union powers on long hours and non‐standard work schedules that may adversely affect workers’ health and safety. We exploit variation in the timing of enactment across U.S. states and compare workers in bordering counties across adopting states and states that did not adopt the laws yet. Using the stacked approach to difference‐in‐differences estimates proposed by Cengiz et al. (2019), we find evidence that right‐to‐work laws increased the share of workers working long hours by 6%, while there is little evidence of an impact on hourly wages. The effects on long hours are larger in more unionized sectors (i.e., construction, manufacturing, and transportation). While the likelihood of working non‐standard hours increases for particular sectors (education and public administration), there is no evidence of a significant increase in the overall sample.

Monetary policy and inflation expectations: impact and causal analysis of heterogeneous economic agents’ expectations in South Africa

ABSTRACT This study employs a Vector Error Correction (VEC) model to investigate the dynamic relationship between changes in monetary policy and inflation expectations within various sectors. The analysis encompasses data from the financial, business, and trade union sectors, spanning the first quarter of 2000 to the fourth quarter of 2022. Results indicate that trade unions exhibit sensitivity to previous changes in the repo rate. In the long term, monetary policy influences inflation expectations within the financial sector. In contrast, elevated repo rates in the business sector correlate with diminished expectations, subsequently impacting wage dynamics. Granger causality tests establish a significant link between repo rate shifts and inflation expectations in the business and trade union sectors. The study advances the understanding of diverse sector responses to monetary policy’s impact on inflation expectations, and implement sector-specific policy adjustments that consider the unique dynamics of each sector, ensuring a more targeted and effective response.

Resilience of cooperatives during global pandemics – Short-term effects of Covid-19 on lending behaviour of British credit unions

Cooperative financial institutions are believed to be less vulnerable to business and economic fluctuations linked to recessions and crises. This paper examines the short-term effects of Covid-19 on the British credit union sector drawing on survey data for 58 credit unions and follow-up interviews with 21 credit union managers. Loan demand, and the volume and value of loans were significantly lower in March and April 2020 after the introduction of government restrictions than in March and April 2019. Bad debt provisioning was also significantly higher in April 2020 than in April 2019. There was no significant difference for loan interest income between April 2019 and April 2020. The findings suggest that credit unions were affected by the pandemic in the same way as other financial institutions. For the majority of the credit unions, the decline in lending may be explained by a drop in consumer demand rather than restrictions put on the supply of credit. It is too early to conclude if the adverse economic conditions caused by Covid-19 will negatively affect the sustainability and ability of the sector to generate surpluses or if the cooperative model will shield the sector from resulting economic fluctuations, as suggested by the literature.

Exclusion and inaction: Academic precariat experiences of union representation in Aotearoa New Zealand

During the last 40 years, neoliberal reforms to the tertiary sector have led to the casualisation of academic labour and the emergence of an academic precariat in Aotearoa New Zealand. Despite the increasing size of the academic precariat, it does not appear that their voices, concerns, or interests have been adequately represented by the national tertiary union. By drawing on open-text responses from the Precarious Academic Work Survey (PAWS) about what unions could do to improve precarious academic working conditions, we discuss the issues created by the under-representation of precarious academics by the sector union. We communicate the results via four key themes of exclusion, participation, voice, and organising. Most participants articulated frustration and disaffection with the union, suggesting the need for a shift in strategy. This study adds to the growing body of employment relations research recognising that employee voices are multiple, diverse, and fragmented; indicating that unions must attend to the differential experiences of people working in the tertiary sector attributable to employment practices.

A fragmented and heavily privatized dispute resolution system: The United States

AbstractThe United States possesses a highly fragmented and decentralized set of mechanisms addressing work‐related conflicts and disputes. There are consequential differences in how workplace conflicts are resolved across the following settings—union and nonunion or collective and individual, public and private sectors, traditional and nonstandard employment models, and public and private forums. An important trend is the growing influence in the nonunion sector of ‘private justice’ provided in employment arbitration and conflict management systems as a replacement for ‘public justice’, and in the union sector, private neutrals also play a key role.

Building Resilience: Towards a Heuristic Model of Collective Action in a Crisis

Co-operatives are frequently cited as out-performing other organisational forms in a crisis, though few studies have investigated why this is so. To explore this issue, this article uses an analytical lens of resilience and lessons from the Irish credit union sector’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, to design the Building Resilience Framework. This framework highlights the role of collective action, an important facet of relational resilience that is prevalent in the co-operative model, in ensuring an appropriate response to crisis. Discussion of the framework also extends the literature on resilience to include life-threatening events and the role of collective action in enabling dynamic, heuristic responses. Finally, the paper contributes empirically, by demonstrating how strong collective action capabilities enabled Irish credit unions to respond to social dilemmas. At first they adopted dynamic, agile, innovative ad hoc approaches that were sub-optimal but effective. As the crisis continued, they focused more on heuristic responses that prioritised sustainability and strategic business models to provide long-term solutions to the ‘new COVID normal’. We argue that the social relationships at the heart of the co-operative model offer useful lessons about collective responses to crisis.

Trade Unions, Bargaining Coverage and Low Pay: A Multilevel Test of Institutional Effects on Low-Pay Risk in Germany

Employment relations scholars argue that industrial relations institutions reduce low pay among the workforce, while the insider-outsider literature claims that unions contribute to increase the low-pay risk among non-union members. This article tests these expectations by distinguishing, respectively, between the individual effect of being a union member or covered by collective agreements and the sectoral effect of strong trade unions or encompassing collective agreements. Findings from multilevel logistic regression analyses of the German Socio-Economic Panel reveal that unions and bargaining coverage have distinct effects at individual and sectoral level. The analysis of their cross-level interactions provides partial support to both the insider-outsider approach, since non-union members are more exposed to the risk of low pay in highly unionized sectors, and to the power resource perspectives, since the probability of being in low pay in sectors with encompassing collective agreements decreases also for those workers who are not covered by them.

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.

Модель формирования системы сельскохозяйственной кооперации в России на принципах проектного управления

Purpose: to develop and substantiate a model for the formation of agricultural cooperation system in Russia on the principles of project management. Materials and methods: the methodological research tools are based on general scientific and specific methods, including comparative economic analysis. The results of the development and substantiation of a model of the agricultural cooperation system formation on the principles of project management are based on the best domestic practice of the regions – leaders in this direction. The object of the study was the sector of agricultural cooperation of Lipetsk and Rostov regions, as well as the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). The developed model is based on a rigidly built vertical of administrative resources at all levels of management: “settlement – district – region”. Results. The development of the small-scale sector of the economy of the EU countries and Russia is examined. Particular attention is paid to the domestic practice of agricultural cooperation to involve households in commercial agricultural production. It is substantiated that the development of agricultural cooperation is a priority direction of the state agrarian policy. Conclusions. It has been proved that the development of cooperation on the principles of project management not only ensures control and coordination of all levels of the system through the provision of grants and tax incentives, but also creates the infrastructure for the sale of cooperative products. The developed model includes an organizational and economic mechanism for the distribution of budgetary funds on the basis of project management, which will contribute to the development of a technological platform that makes it possible to link the areas of interaction not only of agricultural producers and public authorities at all levels, but also of credit and financial organizations, universities, scientific institutions, sectoral unions and associations, transforming the productive-economic relations of business entities with each other that have developed in the market.

Are Unions Detrimental to Innovation? Theory and Evidence

In this paper we study the effect of unions on product and process innovation both theoretically and empirically. We propose a Cournot duopoly model where labor productivity is allowed to differ across unionized and non-unionized sectors due to collective voice mechanism. Our findings suggest that the traditional hold-up view whereby unions discourage innovation does not necessarily survive. When the voice effect is neither too strong nor too low, the unionized sector outperforms the market in terms of process innovation, while the effect on product innovation is strictly increasing in the voice power. Our empirical analysis of a large representative sample of Italian firms supports the model's predictions in both pooled OLS, fixed effects and IV.

Who Do Unions Protect From Job Losses? A Cross-national Comparison

What members do unions protect? This question is relevant to an ongoing debate about union wage distribution. This paper investigates how unionization affects the relationship between involuntary job loss and a worker’s unobservable ability. Taking advantage of detailed micro-level panel data from four countries--Britain, Germany, Korea and Switzerland—I construct an index of workers’ unobservable abilities by estimating workers’ individual fixed effects. I find that unionization at the work place plays an important role. In Britain, Korea, and Switzerland, unions increase the earnings of lower ability workers but provide more job security to higher ability workers. The negative relationship between involuntary job loss and worker’s ability appears only in unionized workers. An exception is Germany, where lower ability workers in both unionized and non-unionized sectors are disproportionally more likely to lose jobs. The German case may associate with strong institutional forces at the industrial and national level.

The Lithuanian Credit Union Reform Evaluation

Abstract Amendments to the Law on Credit Unions in Lithuania, as an essential element of the restructuring of the Credit Union Sector, entered into force in 2018, therefore it is getting relevant to assess the impact of these changes on the whole Sector from the perspective of Credit Union experts.

The endogenous decisions of unionization and international trade: A general oligopolistic equilibrium model analysis

AbstractThis paper presents a multi‐sectoral general oligopolistic equilibrium trade model in which unionized and non‐unionized sectors interact. In our model, the proportion of unionized sectors is endogenously determined. We show that this proportion depends on exogenous parameters such as productivity, population, number of firms, union costs and labor union formation. We also show that trade openness between symmetric countries raises the competitive wage and lowers the proportion of unionized sectors.

The Canadian Nurses Association: Reflections on the NCLEX-RN through the Lens of Nursing History and Evolution

Decades of work by professional associations, regulators and educators have produced an ethical, reliable, robustly educated and regulated nursing workforce that enjoys high levels of respect in Canada and around the world. The officers of the Canadian Nurses Association comment here on the organization's history and changing role in regulatory policy over the past decade during the introduction of the American NCLEX-RN examination as the assessment tool for entry-to-practice for Canadian registered nurses. Facing forward, to maintain a strong, trusted nursing workforce the association remains committed to meaningful collaboration among nursing's professional, regulatory, education and union sectors.

Understanding the Impact of Bullying in a Unionized U.S. Public Sector Workforce.

Background: Workplace Bullying (WPB) can have a tremendous, negative impact on the victims and the organization as a whole. The purpose of this study was to examine individual and organizational impact associated with exposure to bullying in a large U.S. unionized public sector workforce. Methods: A cross-sectional Web-based survey was conducted among 16,492 U.S. state government workers. Survey domains included demographics, negative acts (NAs) and bullying, supportiveness of the organizational climate, and individual and organizational impacts of bullying. Multinomial logistic regression was used to assess the impact among respondents who reported exposure to bullying. Findings: A total of 72% participants responded to the survey (n = 11,874), with 43.7% (n = 5,181) reporting exposure to NAs and bullying. A total of 40% (n = 4,711) participants who experienced WPB reported individual impact(s) while 42% (n = 4,969) reported organization impact(s). Regular NA was associated with high individual impact (negatively impacted them personally; odds ratio [OR] = 5.03) when controlling for other covariates including: female gender (OR =1.89) and job tenure of 6 to 10 years (OR = 1.95); working in a supportive organizational climate and membership in a supportive bargaining unit were protective of high impact (OR = 0.04 and OR = 0.59, respectively). High organizational impact (transferring to another position) was associated with regular NA and bullying (OR = 16.26), female gender (OR = 1.55), providing health care and field service (OR = 1.68), and protective effect of organizational climate (OR = 0.39). We found a dose-response relationship between bullying and both individual and organizational-level impact. Conclusion/Application to Practice: Understanding the impacts of WPB should serve to motivate more workplaces and unions to implement effective interventions to ameliorate the problem by enhancing the organizational climate, as well as management and employee training on the nature of WPB and guidance on reporting.

The stakeholder-empowering philanthropy of Edward Filene

AbstractCredit unions currently serve over 110 million members in the United States. This is surprising, given the challenges associated with forming cooperatives. This paper explains how grants were used to overcome these challenges and create the modern credit union sector. Edward Filene, a wealthy 20th-century department store owner, provided philanthropic funding and technical expertise to early credit unions, resulting directly in the creation of 26,000 American credit unions over a 45-year period. Filene's leadership helped overcome the various social dilemmas associated with creating cooperatives, reforming institutions, and establishing an institutional framework that enables and supports cooperatives.

The Microeconomic Impacts of Employee Representatives: Evidence from Membership Thresholds

Employee representatives in firms are a potentially key but not yet studied source of the impact of unions and works councils. Their actions can shape multiple drivers of firm performance, including collective bargaining, strikes, and training. This article examines the impact of union representative mandates by exploiting legal membership thresholds present in many countries. In the case of Portugal, which we examine here, while firms employing up to forty‐nine union members are required to have one union representative; this increases to two (three) union reps for firms with fifty to ninety‐nine (100–199) union members. Drawing on matched employer–employee data on the unionized sector and regression discontinuity methods, we find that a one percentage point increase in the legal union representative/members ratio leads to an increase in firm performance of at least 7 percent. This result generally holds across multiple dimensions of firm performance and appears to be driven by increased training. However, we find no effects of union representatives on firm‐level wages, given the predominance of sectoral collective bargaining.

Educational immigrants: evidence from Chinese young entrepreneurs in the UK

PurposeWhile the contribution of educational students to the economies of developed countries is critical, educational immigrants rarely find employment in the regulated unionized sectors of these countries and are found instead setting up their own business. The purpose of this paper is to understand how educational immigrants use their cultural and social heritage for entrepreneurial purposes.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative method was undertaken, comprising face-to-face in-depth interviews with 12 respondents, involved in the hospitality industry for various purposes such as inspiration, challenges, frustrations and attracting investments. A convenience sampling method coupled with snowball sampling was chosen because of the availability of the informants and their willingness to be a part of the study. A thematic analysis was conducted in the transcripts of interviews to understand the aim and motivation factors of each individual followed by content analysis process.FindingsThe findings reveal that, while the informants suffer of language barriers, lack or shortage of experience in understanding the laws and legislations, unfamiliarity with the host culture, as well as financial constraints, the entrepreneurial sprite drives them to establish their businesses.Research limitations/implicationsThis study has important consequences for understanding how educational immigrants transition from an educational to a business setting.Practical implicationsAs the increase in educational immigrants becomes more important to the economic and social performance of countries, it is important to understand how young entrepreneurs start their businesses.Originality/valueEducational immigrants are an important source of regional innovation and development. This paper focuses on the role of international higher education and the link to entrepreneurship by focusing on young Chinese entrepreneurs.

Mission attachment and job embeddedness in the trade union sector of South Africa

The job embeddedness construct is a totality of forces that act as a web of attachments to mitigate employee turnover. This view has gained support from research by Holtom, Mitchell and Lee (2006) but further research is needed to expand our understanding of the concept. In this article the applicability of mission attachment as a fourth dimension of job embeddedness is tested, thereby adding to our understanding of the construct.Data from 134 (trade union) and 30 (comparison group) respondents were analysed quantitatively and it was found that within a social organisation such as a trade union there is a strong, consistent and positive ranking between mission awareness and organisational job embeddedness. The results also show that the different dimensions of mission attachment had a significant impact on employees in the trade union sample. An additional finding was that employees in the trade union sector who are highly attached to the mission of the organisation tend to be those who have been employed in that sector for a relatively short period and that mission attachment declines over time.