bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Negotiating the Italian Pension Reform with the Unions: Lessons for Corporatist Theory
Authors: Baccaro Lucio
Published: June 2015

Using field research at both the national and the local levels, the author reconstructs the process that led to pension reform in Italy. This reconstruction becomes the basis for a critical re-examination of corporatist theory, which has recently been challenged by the emergence of social pacts in a host of “unlikely” countries, including Italy. The author argues that the theory's traditional emphasis on hierarchical and internally undemocratic interest groups is fundamentally at odds with the particular organizational mechanisms through which consensus was mobilized among both middle-level union structures and rank-and-file workers in Italy. In contrast with standard neo-corporatist theory, the Italian pension reform shows that organizational democracy, far from weakening the hands of reformist union leaders, may actually strengthen them.
Employee Voice, Human Resource Practices, and Quit Rates: Evidence from the Telecommunications Industry
Authors: Batt Rosemary , Colvin Alexander J.S. , Keefe Jeffrey
Published: June 2015

The authors draw on strategic human resource and industrial relations theories to identify the sets of employee voice mechanisms and human resource practices that are likely to predict firm-level quit rates, then empirically evaluate the predictive power of these variables using data from a 1998 establishment-level survey in the telecommunications industry. With respect to alternative voice mechanisms, they find that union representation predicts lower quit rates, even after they control for compensation and a wide range of other human resource practices that may be affected by collective bargaining. Also predicting lower quit rates is employee participation in offline problem-solving groups and in self-directed teams. No apparent association is found between quit rates and the availability of nonunion dispute resolution procedures. Regarding human resource practices, higher relative wages and internal promotion policies predict lower quit rates, and contingent staffing, electronic monitoring, and variable pay predict higher rates.
Union Effects in Low-Wage Services: Evidence from Canadian Childcare
Authors: Cleveland Gordon , Gunderson Morley , Hyatt Douglas
Published: June 2015

Empirical evidence presented in this paper, based on survey data for Canadian childcare workers in 1991, contradicts most stereotypes of the childcare labor market. Although childcare labor was low-wage, the authors find that the union impact on wages (15%) and fringe benefits was in line with union effects found in other, better-compensated work, and they find substantial returns to education, occupational level, and firm-specific experience. The returns to the skill-related attributes were blunted somewhat in the union sector, except where such returns stood to benefit the median union voter. The findings suggest that monetary incentives can be used to encourage improvements in the education, experience, and skill acquisition of childcare workers. Unions can improve wages and benefits for childcare workers just as they can for most other workers, suggesting the viability of union organizing in this sector despite the traditional barriers to organizing low-wage service sector workers in small firms.
Changes in the Age and Education Profile of Displaced Workers
Authors: Rodriguez Daniel , Zavodny Madeline
Published: June 2015

This analysis of data from the Displaced Workers Surveys suggests that between the periods 1983–87 and 1993–97, although the likelihood of involuntary job loss declined among most age groups, including older workers, it rose for middle-aged and older workers relative to younger workers. Three potential explanations for this shift the authors investigate are changes in educational attainment, changes in the relationship between education and displacement, and industry shifts that had adverse effects on older workers relative to younger workers. The results of the analysis indicate that the relative displacement rate among college graduates increased over time, but there were few significant changes in the relationship between displacement and education within or across age groups. The probability of displacement increased significantly for workers in service-related industries across all age groups. The results do not conclusively indicate why older workers' relative risk of displacement increased but do rule out several possibilities.
Labor Market Dropouts and Trends in the Wages of Black and White Men
Authors: Juhn Chinhui
Published: June 2015

There is continuing debate over whether and to what degree estimations of black-white wage convergence are biased because they leave labor market dropouts out of the picture. If a high proportion of blacks become discouraged and cease searching for jobs, and if those dropouts have, on average, poor job prospects, the average wage of black workers who remain in the labor market will be an upwardly biased estimate of the average wage across the population. This paper introduces a simple method of imputing wages to non-workers. When non-workers are accounted for in the calculations, real wage growth for prime age black men over the 1969–98 period is reduced approximately 40%, and black-white wage convergence is reduced by approximately one-third. The author finds that a source of bias as important as falling employment rates is the growing gap between wages of workers and potential wages of non-workers.
Health Insurance Costs and Early Retirement Decisions
Authors: Johnson Richard W. , Davidoff Amy J. , Perese Kevin
Published: June 2015

The loss of health insurance may be an important component of the cost of retirement, especially for workers without retiree health insurance coverage. The authors find that insurance costs significantly reduce retirement rates for full-time wage and salary workers ages 51 to 61. Simulations suggest that a $1,000 increase in the net present value of health insurance premium costs reduces the probability of early retirement by 0.17 percentage points for men and by 0.24 percentage points for women, corresponding to elasticities of −0.22 and −0.24, respectively. The authors' models predict that expanding the Medicare program to cover those aged 62–64 would increase retirement rates for workers with employer-sponsored coverage who lack retiree benefits, if the government subsidizes their coverage. However, the impact would be small, increasing overall retirement rates by only 7%.
The Labor Market Effects of Welfare Reform
Authors: Lubotsky Darren
Published: June 2015

A major goal of the 1996 federal welfare reform was to increase the labor market participation of welfare recipients. Some analysts have speculated that if the reform is successful, this increase in labor supply may exert downward pressure on wages and reduce the employment rate of other low-skilled workers in the labor market. The magnitude of these hypothetical labor market effects is uncertain because there have not been large changes in eligibility for federal welfare programs from which to draw inferences. This study treats the 1991 elimination of the General Assistance program in Michigan as a rough analog to the 1996 federal reform. In all, about 82,000 able-bodied adults lost benefits. Comparisons with other states indicate that employment in Michigan increased by two to four percentage points among high school dropouts, which corresponds to 25–50% of the original GA caseload. There is little evidence of wage or employment declines among other low-skilled workers.
A Comparison of Conventional, Final-Offer, and “Combined” Arbitration for Dispute Resolution
Authors: Dickinson David L.
Published: June 2015

Two widely used forms of arbitration are conventional arbitration, in which the arbitrator makes an unconstrained settlement choice, and final-offer arbitration, in which the arbitrator must choose between disputants' final offers. Under an innovative, as yet unused approach called “combined arbitration,” if the arbitrator's notion of a fair settlement lies between the disputants' final offers, final-offer arbitration rules are used; otherwise, conventional arbitration rules are used. Theoretically, by combining the risks that the two standard forms of arbitration pose for disputants who do not voluntarily settle, combined arbitration should generate convergent final offers. The results of this controlled laboratory study show, however, that dispute rates are highest in combined arbitration and lowest in conventional arbitration. These results challenge the theoretical predictions for combined arbitration as well as claims that final-offer arbitration should reduce disputes compared to conventional arbitration. The results are, however, consistent with a simple theory of disputant optimism.
The Effect of Registered Nurses' Unions on Heart-Attack Mortality
Authors: Ash Michael , Seago Jean Ann
Published: June 2015

Although hospital work organization affects patient outcomes and in some states registered nurses (R.N.'s) are increasingly forming unions, the relationship between R.N. unions and patient outcomes has received little attention. This study examines the relationship between R.N. unionization and the mortality rate for acute myocardial infarction (AMI), or heart attack, in acute-care hospitals in California. After controlling for patient and hospital characteristics, the authors find that hospitals with unionized R.N.'s have 5.5% lower heart-attack mortality than do non-union hospitals. This result remains substantively unchanged when the analysis accounts for possible selection bias—specifically, the possibility that unionized hospitals have certain important but unobservable characteristics, independent of unionization, that affect patient care.
Taking Stock: Collective Bargaining at the Turn of the Century
Authors: Cutcher-Gershenfeld Joel , Kochan Thomas
Published: June 2015

Examining data from two national surveys of matched pairs of union and management lead negotiators, the authors evaluate the current state of practice in labor relations and test several propositions related to the transformation of American industrial relations. They find that 30–40% of the parties reported that they had introduced negotiated, workplace-level innovations or engaged in strategic-level interactions—both important aspects of transformation. Also, nearly half of the parties reported experience with use of interest-based bargaining practices. At the same time, relatively few parties reported relationships that were improving, and views on the extent of change differed between labor and management. Thus, there is an identifiable path supporting the transformation process, but only a minority of bargaining relationships are moving down that path.
Living Wages: Protection for or Protection from Low-Wage Workers?
Authors: Neumark David
Published: June 2015

Living wage laws are touted as anti-poverty measures. Yet they apply to only a small fraction of workers, most commonly covering only employers with city contracts. The apparent contradiction between broad anti-poverty goals and narrow coverage suggests that goals other than poverty reduction may partly underlie living wage campaigns. This paper considers the hypothesis that living wage laws act to maintain or increase rents among unionized municipal workers. By raising the wages that city contractors would have to pay, living wage laws may reduce the incentives for cities to contract out work that would otherwise be done by unionized municipal employees, hence increasing the bargaining power of municipal unions and leading to higher wages for their members. The evidence presented here, from an analysis of CPS data for 1996–2000, indicates that the wages of unionized municipal workers are indeed increased as a result of living wage laws covering contractors.
Assisting the Transition from Workfare to Work: A Randomized Experiment
Authors: Galasso Emanuela , Ravallion Martin , Salvia Agustin
Published: June 2015

Argentina's Proempleo Experiment, conducted in 1998–2000, was designed to assess whether a wage subsidy and specialized training could assist the transition from workfare to regular work. Randomly sampled workfare participants in a welfare-dependent urban area were given a voucher that entitled an employer to a sizable wage subsidy; a second sample also received the option of skill training; and a third sample formed the control group. The authors find that voucher recipients had a higher probability of employment than did the control group, even though the rate of actual take-up of vouchers by the hiring employers was very low. The employment gains were in the informal sector and largely confined to female workers, younger workers, and more educated workers. Skill training had no statistically significant impact overall, though once the analysis corrects for selective compliance, an impact for those with sufficient prior education is found.
The Effects of Mandatory Maternity and Pregnancy Benefits on Women's Wages and Employment in Taiwan, 1984–1996
Authors: Lai Yu-Cheng , Masters Stanley
Published: June 2015

The Labor Standards Law of Taiwan requires employers to offer maternity and pregnancy benefits. Because these requirements increase the cost to firms of employing young women, standard economic theory predicts that such workers will experience a relative decline in employment, wages, or both. Using data from Taiwan's Manpower Utilization Survey for the years 1978–96, the authors find that in those sectors of the economy covered by the legislation, wages and employment of young women did indeed fall relative to the wages and employment of two comparison groups, young men and older women.
Nonunion Wage Rates and the Threat of Unionization
Authors: Farber Henrys
Published: June 2015

Using CPS data for 1977–2002, the author investigates the extent to which the threat of union organization increases nonunion wages and reduces the union/nonunion wage differential. The results are mixed. Estimates employing the predicted probability of union membership as a measure of the union threat show no important link between the union threat and either nonunion wages or the union wage gap. Estimates focusing on two states' introduction of right-to-work laws, which arguably affect the threat of union organization independently of changes in labor demand, show that in one state the law was associated with a statistically significant drop in nonunion wages. Finally, an analysis of wage data for three industries that underwent deregulation—another natural experiment in which labor demand changes are unlikely to have been a complicating factor—yields stronger evidence of threat effects on nonunion wages than do either of the other two analyses.
The Impact of School Resources on Student Performance: A Study of Private Schools in the United Kingdom
Authors: Graddy Kathryn , Stevens Margaret
Published: June 2015

This article reports the results of an empirical study of the impact of school inputs on pupils' performance in private (independent) schools in the United Kingdom, using a new school-level panel dataset constructed from information provided by the Independent Schools Information Service. The authors show a consistent negative relationship between the pupil-teacher ratio at a school and the examination results achieved by pupils aged 18, controlling for the pupils' performance in examinations two years earlier. The results are noteworthy in comparison with results of studies for the state sector, relatively few of which have found a consistent and statistically significant effect of the pupil-teacher ratio.
The Wage Effects of High Performance Work Organization in Manufacturing
Authors: Osterman Paul
Published: June 2015

An unresolved question about now-widespread innovative work systems such as teams and quality programs is whether they influence wage determination. This study examines that possible association in manufacturing. The author uses data from the 1997 National Establishment Survey that allow examination of how new work systems affected not only employees who were directly involved in them but other workers as well. The key finding is that for core blue-collar manufacturing employees, higher wages were associated with High Performance Work Organization (HPWO) systems. While higher skill levels and computer-based technologies were associated with higher wages, the key mechanism appears to have been productivity gains, independent of skill and technology, that were shared via various across-the-board wage payment systems. HPWO systems appear to have increased managers' wages as well, although through different channels. The author finds no evidence that HPWO-related wage gains led to greater wage inequality among the directly involved employees.
What Did Partnerships Do? Evidence from the Federal Sector
Authors: Masters Marick F. , Albright Robert R. , Eplion David
Published: June 2015

In 1993, then-President Clinton issued a landmark executive order mandating labor-management partnerships in the federal service. The authors examine a unique set of data on the operations and effects of 60 partnerships that covered several hundred thousand federal employees. These data, plus evidence on the broader federal sector, show that partnerships provided a forum for collaborative communications and joint decision-making, improved the labor relations climate, reduced labor-management disputes, and modestly improved organizational performance. Analyses of survey results from partnership-council representatives show that perceptions of communications and decision-making were positively correlated with labor relations climate and organizational performance. The authors discuss the implications of their results for labor-management cooperation generally and labor relations in the federal sector specifically.
Employer Willingness to Permit Phased Retirement: Why are Some More Willing Than others?
Authors: Hutchens Robert , Grace-Martin Karen
Published: June 2015

Under phased retirement, an older worker remains with his or her employer while gradually reducing work hours and effort. Although older workers often express an interest in phased retirement, actual occurrences are evidently rare. A possible explanation is that employers limit opportunities for phased retirement. Using a survey of employers conducted in 2001–2002, the authors examine how and why establishments differed in their willingness to permit an older full-time white-collar worker to take phased retirement. The survey indicates that employers were often willing to permit the option, but primarily as an informal arrangement. The results also indicate that opportunities for phased retirement were greater in establishments that employed part-time white-collar workers, allowed job sharing, and had flexible starting times. Opportunities tended to be more limited in establishments where white-collar workers were unionized.
Estimating the Effect of Personality on Male and Female Earnings
Authors: Mueller Gerrit , Plug Erik
Published: June 2015

The authors adopt the Five-Factor Model of personality structure to explore how personality affected the earnings of a large group of men and women who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957 and were re-interviewed in 1992. All five basic traits—extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience—had statistically significant positive or negative earnings effects, and together they appear to have had effects comparable to those commonly found for cognitive ability. Among men, substantial earnings advantages were associated with antagonism (the obverse of agreeableness), emotional stability (the obverse of neuroticism), and openness to experience; among women, with conscientiousness and openness to experience. Of the five traits, the evidence indicates that agreeableness had the greatest influence on gender differences in earnings: men were considerably more antagonistic (non-agreeable) than women, on average, and men alone were rewarded for that trait.
Product Markets and Paychecks: Deregulation's Effect on the Compensation Structure in Banking
Authors: Wozniak Abigail K.
Published: June 2015

The author investigates how deregulation designed to promote competition in the commercial banking industry affected the compensation structure for banking employees. Using establishment-based data from the Employment Cost Index (ECI) Survey and, secondarily, Current Population Survey (CPS) data, she compares changes in the distribution of wages and benefits in the banking industry to changes in unaffected industries across states and over time. In the ECI, deregulation had no impact on overall compensation inequality in banking, but this concealed off-setting changes within the compensation structure. Manager wages fell while non-manager wages held steady, reducing between-occupation compensation inequality. In contrast, between-establishment inequality increased dramatically. Comparisons with CPS data reveal that including gender and educational controls modifies the declines in between-occupation inequality. Additionally, deregulation led to shifts in the types of non-wage benefits banking employees received, and increased between-establishment inequality is due to increased heterogeneity among small banking firms following deregulation.
Work Hours, Wages, and Vacation Leave
Authors: Altonji Joseph G. , Usui Emiko
Published: June 2015

Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the authors provide a set of facts about vacation leave. They show that on average, vacation time taken rises one-to-one with paid vacation; annual hours worked fall by about one full-time week with every week of paid vacation; the amount by which vacation time taken exceeds time paid is highest for women, union members, and government workers; paid vacation weeks are positively associated with hourly wage rates and, to a lesser extent, with nonwage compensation; and vacation time taken is weakly countercyclical. Vacation leave seems to be determined by broad employer policy rather than by negotiation between the worker and the firm. In particular, it is strongly related to seniority but depends very little on labor market experience, and for job changers it is only weakly related to vacation on the previous job.
Does Monitoring Improve Labor Standards? Lessons from Nike
Authors: Locke Richard M. , Qin Fei , Brause Alberto
Published: June 2015

Using a unique data set based on factory audits of working conditions in over 800 of Nike's suppliers across 51 countries over the years 1998–2005, the authors explore whether monitoring for compliance with corporate codes of conduct—currently the principal way both global corporations and labor rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) address poor working conditions in global supply chain factories—achieved remediation, as indicated by improved working conditions and stepped-up enforcement of labor rights. Despite substantial efforts and investments by Nike and its staff to improve working conditions among its suppliers, monitoring alone appears to have produced only limited results. However, when monitoring efforts were combined with other interventions focused on tackling some of the root causes of poor working conditions—in particular, by enabling suppliers to better schedule their work and to improve quality and efficiency—working conditions seem to have improved considerably.
The Economic Pay-Offs to Informal Training: Evidence from Routine Service Work
Authors: Liu Xiangmin , Batt Rosemary
Published: June 2015

This study examines the relationship between informal training and job performance among 2,803 telephone operators in a large unionized U.S. telecommunications company. The authors analyze individual-level data on monthly training hours and job performance over a five-month period in 2001 as provided by the company's electronic monitoring system. The results indicate that the receipt of informal training was associated with higher productivity over time, when unobserved individual heterogeneity is taken into account. Workers with lower pre-training proficiency showed greater improvements over time than did those with higher pre-training proficiency. Finally, whether the trainer was a supervisor or a peer also mattered: workers with below-average pre-training proficiency achieved greater productivity gains through supervisor training, while workers with average pre-training proficiency achieved greater productivity gains through peer training.
Trends in the Gender Earnings Differential in Urban China, 1988–2004
Authors: Zhang Junsen , Han Jun , Liu Pak-Wai , Zhao Yaohui
Published: June 2015

This paper analyzes changes in the gender earnings gap in urban China over the period 1988–2004 using urban household survey data. The mean female/male earnings ratio declined from 86.3% to 76.2%. Mainly responsible for this diverging trend were rapid increases in returns to both observed and unobserved skills, which accentuated the disadvantage associated with women's lower skill levels. The gender gap in observed skills such as education narrowed over the study period, but did not close, and there is evidence that the gap in unobserved skills widened considerably. Increased discrimination may also have served to widen the gender earnings gap. Analyses by earnings percentile and by sub-period show that although the gap widened much more at the lower end of the earnings distribution than at the upper end over the period as a whole, it widened greatly at the upper end in the most recent years (2001–2004).
Reassessing Cyclical Changes in Workers' Labor Market Status: Gross Flows and the Types of Workers Who Determine Them
Authors: Finegan T. Aldrich , Peñaloza Roberto V. , Shintani Mototsugu
Published: June 2015

This analysis, using Current Population Survey data, yields statistically compelling evidence that cyclical variations in gross flows of U.S. workers—that is, variations by business cycle phase in the number of workers transitioning from one labor market state to another each month—were substantially smaller in 1986–2005 than in 1968–86. The authors identify six types of workers who would be expected to contribute to cyclical variations in these flows. Counter-intuitively, one such group consists of individuals whose decisions to enter or exit the labor force are independent of labor market conditions. Estimates suggest that these “noncyclical movers” are an empirically important component of gross flows into the labor force. The authors contend that the presence of noncyclical movers precludes accurate measurement of the contributions of workers whose entry and exit decisions are consciously influenced by labor market conditions.
High-Involvement Work Design and Job Satisfaction
Authors: Mohr Robert D. , Zoghi Cindy
Published: June 2015

Using data from the 1999–2002 Canadian Workplace and Employee Survey, the authors investigate the relationship between job satisfaction and high-involvement work practices such as quality circles, feedback, suggestion programs, and task teams. They consider the direction of causality, identifying both reasons that work practices might affect job satisfaction, and reasons that satisfaction might affect participation in high-involvement practices. They find that satisfaction was positively associated with high-involvement practices, a result that held across different specifications of the empirical model and different subsets of data. Conversely, worker outcomes that might signal dissatisfaction, like work-related stress or grievance filing, appear to have been unrelated to high-involvement jobs. However, the data suggest the presence of self-selection: satisfied workers were more likely to increase participation in high-involvement practices, but participation did not predict future increases in satisfaction.
The Immigrant Wage Differential within and across Establishments
Authors: Aydemir Abdurrahman , Skuterud Mikal
Published: June 2015

Using 1999 and 2001 Canadian matched employer-employee data with rich information on worker and job characteristics, the authors identify the relative importance of immigrant wage differentials within and across establishments and the sources of these differentials. Whereas existing explanations of immigrant wage differentials emphasize immigrants' productive characteristics, differentials across establishments may be entirely independent of immigrants' actual or perceived skills or quality. The findings show highly non-random sorting of immigrants across establishments within Canada's major cities and geographic regions. For immigrant men, this sorting affected wage differentials more than did differences in how immigrant and native men were paid within establishments. For immigrant women, however, particularly those from less developed world regions, within-establishment wage differentials appear to have been more important. These findings raise numerous important questions for future research, such as whether the highly non-random sorting of immigrants across establishments primarily reflects immigrants' search behavior or employers' recruiting methods.
Union Competition and Strikes: The Need for Analysis at the Sector Level
Authors: Akkerman Agnes
Published: June 2015

International comparative research has found that strike incidence is higher where two or more unions bargain with an employer (“multi-unionism”), as is common in most European countries, than where only one union does, all else equal. Two proposed explanations for this relationship, both invoking inter-union rivalry as the main dynamic, are that under multi-unionism, unions (a) make propagandistic use of strikes to attract members, or (b) compete with each other by bidding up bargaining demands. To date, the evidence bearing on these hypotheses has been equivocal because, the author argues, researchers have focused on activity at the national level rather than at the lower levels that are more commonly the nexus for strike formation. The author performs empirical tests using industry-sector-level data for seven European countries for the years 1990–2006, and finds evidence clearly favoring the competitive bargaining hypothesis over the propaganda hypothesis.
The Effect of Minimum Wages on Immigrants' Employment and Earnings
Authors: Orrenius Pia M. , Zavodny Madeline
Published: June 2015

This study examines how minimum wage laws affect the employment and earnings of low-skilled immigrants and natives in the United States. Minimum wage increases might have larger effects among low-skilled immigrants than among natives because, on average, immigrants earn less than natives due to lower levels of education, limited English skills, and less social capital. Results based on data from the Current Population Survey for the years 1994–2005 do not indicate that minimum wages had adverse employment effects among adult immigrants or natives who did not complete high school. However, low-skilled immigrants may have been discouraged from settling in states that set wage floors substantially above the federal minimum.
Still Married after All These Years? Union Organizing and the Role of Works Councils in German Industrial Relations
Authors: Behrens Martin
Published: June 2015

German trade unions are seeking new ways to counteract a steady downward trend in membership that has dragged on for fifteen years. Works councils' activities aimed at recruiting new members may play an important role in such efforts. The author's analysis of data from the fourth WSI survey of works and staff councils (2004–2005) shows that almost half of all works councils supported unions' recruitment endeavors, using a wide range of methods. Works councils' willingness to take active part in membership recruitment increased substantially when works councilors were personally involved in trade union affairs and were supported by negotiating bodies. Also important was works councilor participation in trade union seminars and training sessions. Favorable perceptions of such institutions were positively associated with the likelihood that works councils would actively engage in new member recruitment. The analysis also reveals a positive association between recruitment activity and plant-level union membership growth.
Using Local Labor Market Data to Re-Examine the Employment Effects of the Minimum Wage
Authors: Thompson Jeffrey P.
Published: June 2015

Using quarterly Census data for 1996–2000, the author evaluates how minimum wages affected teenage employment at the county level. An analysis that includes all counties yields small and statistically insignificant effects, consistent with previous research using state panels. However, in counties where the minimum wage was likely binding (above the market-clearing wage for teens), the negative impact on employment was considerably larger. The effect was strongest in small counties, was restricted to “transitory” jobs and new hires, and apparently was not experienced by young adults ages 19–22. The small employment effects found in much of the literature, the author argues, at least partly reflect the estimates' inclusion of local labor markets where the minimum wage is not binding. By averaging the effects across all areas, with no disaggregation based on where the minimum wage is binding and where it is not, these studies overlook important regional variation.
The Influence of Human Resource Management Practices on Employee Voluntary Turnover Rates in the Canadian Non Governmental Sector
Authors: Haines Victor Y. , Jalette Patrice , Larose Karine
Published: June 2015

The authors tested the influence of thirteen human resource management practices on voluntary turnover rates the following year while controlling for workplace size, the presence of a separate human resources management unit, union density, industry, and region. Analysis of data from 4,160 workplaces representative of Canadian industries found that employer-provided training is associated with higher turnover, whereas internal labor markets and formal dispute resolution procedures are associated with lower turnover. The findings are consistent with predictions that some human resource management practices reduce workers' desire to leave and that training may actually make their leaving easier.
Union Influence on Voter Turnout: Results from Three Los Angeles County Elections
Authors: Lamare J. Ryan
Published: June 2015

Using voting records of several thousand people in South Los Angeles over three local elections in 2003 and 2004, the author examines the effects of political mobilization contacts by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor on voter turnout. Many view Los Angeles as a key example of U.S. labor movement revitalization and regard the County Federation's political acumen paramount to the local labor movement's success. Using logistic regressions, the author measures changes in voter propensity based on union contact for each election. He finds that all types of union contacts (including personal visits and live phone calls) significantly affect the turnout levels of voters, particularly Latinos.
Understanding the Gender Pay Gap: What's Competition Got to Do with it?
Authors: Manning Alan , Saidi Farzad
Published: June 2015

A number of researchers have argued that men and women have different attitudes toward and behavioral responses to competition; that is, women are more likely to opt out of jobs in which performance pay is the norm and to under-perform in some competitive situations. Laboratory experiments suggest that these gender differences are rather large. To check these hypotheses and findings against differences in the field, the authors use performance pay as an indicator of competition in the workplace and compare the gender gap not only in incidence of performance pay but also in earnings and work effort under these contracts. They find that although women are less likely than men to work under performance pay contracts, the gender gap is small. Furthermore, the effect of performance pay on earnings is modest and does not differ markedly by gender. Consequently, the authors argue, the ability of these competition hypotheses to explain the gender pay gap seems very limited.
Probation Length and Teacher Salaries: Does Waiting Pay Off?
Authors: Brunner Eric J. , Imazeki Jennifer
Published: June 2015

Tenure policies for elementary and secondary school teachers is a controversial issue in many states, but there is virtually no empirical evidence on how tenure affects teacher labor markets. This paper begins to fill this research void by using cross-state variation in tenure policies to identify the effects, if any, of the length of the probationary period on entry-level teacher salaries. Using data from the Schools and Staffing Survey, the authors investigate whether districts in states with longer probationary periods offer higher wages to teachers as a way to compensate for the extended evaluative period. Results suggest that they do, although effects are concentrated in districts that are most likely to be competing for teachers with districts in neighboring states with shorter probation periods. The authors also find that the relationship between probation length and wages is stronger for experienced teachers and in districts that engage in collective bargaining.
Delaying Retirement to Pay for College
Authors: Handwerker Elizabeth Weber
Published: June 2015

Does sending children to college affect the contemporaneous labor supply of older workers? Drawing on biennial waves of the Health and Retirement Survey from 1992–2006, the author tracks the labor supply of parents before and after they send their children to college and shows that parents delay retirement while they are financing their children's college education. Controlling for the total number of children who ever attend college and the total number of those whose college expenses are paid for by older parents, she finds that mothers and fathers are more likely to be working (by 10.5 percentage points for fathers and by 6.9 percentage points for mothers), less likely to be collecting Social Security benefits, and less likely to report that they are retired if they are currently paying for a child's college education. Of those working, there is little evidence that paying for a child's education has any impact on work intensity.
Is There Another Union Premium? The Effect of Union Membership on Retirement Satisfaction
Authors: Neuman Kevin
Published: June 2015

Because the “average” American is spending more time in retirement it is important to understand how satisfied retirees are with their experience. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study the author tests for a positive union effect on retirement satisfaction. The author does not find evidence for a direct union premium since positive union effects disappear after controlling for retirement planning, finances, job characteristics, and duration. However, the author does find strong indirect union effects due predominantly to union members having greater defined benefit pension coverage and less forced retirement. These results suggest that declining unionization may not reduce overall retirement satisfaction directly; however, it may do so indirectly. In addition, retirement satisfaction appears to be adversely affected by negative work conditions such as stooping and job stress. General findings also show who in society has most difficulty adjusting to retirement.
Anticipation, Free-Rider Problems, and Adaptation to Trade Unions: Re-Examining the Curious Case of Dissatisfied Union Members
Authors: Powdthavee Nattavudh
Published: June 2015

The author studies the past, contemporaneous, and future effects of union membership on job satisfaction. Using eleven waves (5–15) of the British Household Panel Survey, he documents evidence rejecting the paradox of dissatisfied union members. By separating union “free-riders” from union-covered non-members in fixed-effects equations, he finds significant anticipation effects to unionism for both prospective and covered non-members of both genders. Workers go on to report, on average, a significant net increase in their overall job satisfaction in the year unionization occurs, although this decreases with time. Moreover, adaptation to unionism is complete within the first few years of unionization. One explanation for this is that workers adapt their reported satisfaction over time to support their union bargaining efforts, which would be consistent with at least one explanation given for a union's role in fanning the flames of discontent with management during contract negotiations. That is, members may not actually be as dissatisfied with their jobs as it appears.
Do Anonymous Job Application Procedures Level the Playing Field?
Authors: Åslund Olof , Skans Oskar Nordströum
Published: June 2015

Despite anti-discrimination legislation and the potential for hefty fines, labor market discrimination remains an issue for ethnic minorities and women, particularly in the recruitment and screening process. The apparent failure of legal and voluntary interventions has created a call for anonymous application procedures (AAP), in which key identifying data is hidden from recruiters in the initial recruiting process. Using unusually rich Swedish data on actual applications and recruitments, the authors show that AAP increased the chances of both women and individuals of non-Western origin of advancing to the interview stage. In addition, results show that women experienced an increased probability of being offered a job under AAP. However, applicants belonging to ethnic minorities were equally disadvantaged in terms of job offers under conventional and anonymous hiring procedures, suggesting that racial and ethnic discrimination may be harder to circumvent than gender discrimination.
The Importance of Anti-Discrimination and Workers' Compensation Laws on the Provision of Workplace Accommodations following the Onset of a Disability
Authors: Burkhauser Richard V. , Schmeiser Maximilian D. , Weathers Robert R.
Published: June 2015

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) was the first federal disability-based anti-discrimination law that applied to a broad range of workers. Whereas some studies have focused on its impact on workplace accommodation, this is the first to do so while accounting for previous state anti-discrimination and Workers' Compensation laws. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, the authors find that prior to the implementation of the ADA, employers were more likely to accommodate workers if their disability onset was work-related and hence likely to be covered by Workers' Compensation laws. State anti-discrimination laws significantly increased accommodations to workers whose disabilities were not work-related, effectively bringing their accommodation rates in line with workers whose disabilities were. Though implementation of the ADA increased accommodation for all workers, the authors point out that failure to account for pre-existing state anti-discrimination and Workers' Compensation laws will underestimate its effect.
Revisiting Incentive Effects in Workers' Compensation: Do Higher Benefits Really Induce More Claims?
Authors: Bronchetti Erin Todd , McInerney Melissa
Published: June 2015

An important question to ask regarding social insurance programs such as workers' compensation (WC) is to what extent do higher benefits lead to more claims? The authors of this study revisit incentive effects of WC, using 25 years of data (1977–2004) from the March Current Population Survey (CPS) to estimate the relationship between WC cash benefit levels and the frequency of WC receipt. Providing new evidence on the subject, they demonstrate that conclusions regarding workers' incentives to claim benefits differ dramatically depending upon how one controls for the confounding influence of an individual's past earnings. The authors' expanded empirical specifications, which include flexible earnings controls, yield benefit-participation elasticities smaller than 0.1. Their findings suggest that WC claims are not particularly responsive to changes in benefit levels and that labor supply disincentives may warrant less concern than economists or policymakers have typically exhibited. The authors also find that WC receipt was less responsive to benefit variation after 1990 than in previous years.
The Decreasing Effect of Skin Tone on Women's Full-Time Employment
Authors: Akee Randall , Yuksel Mutlu
Published: June 2015

The authors investigate the effect of skin tone on labor market outcomes to determine the extent to which differences in full-time employment probabilities are due to the persistence of racial and gender discrimination or other unobserved differences. Using the Coronary Artery Risk in Young Adults (CARDIA) survey for the period spanning 1985 to 2000, which includes both African American and white young adults, as well as an objective measure of skin tone from a light-spectrometer and a self-reported measure of race, they find that the effect of skin tone on employment diminished over time. These results hold across both samples as well as within the African American subsample. Further investigation indicates that all the labor market gains can be attributed to African American women, whose outcomes converged with those of their white counterparts by 2000. Similarly, within the subsample, the employment outcomes of darker-toned women converged with those of lighter-toned women. There were no changes in the employment probabilities for African American men in the 15-year panel data. The expansion of full-time employment opportunities occurred primarily in the low-skilled service occupations.
Union Influence in Post-Socialist Europe
Authors: Croucher Richard , Rizov Marian
Published: June 2015

Examining enterprise-level union influence in post-socialist countries, the authors hypothesize that calculative human resource management (HRM) is more strongly associated with low levels of union influence than collaborative HRM. Using the United Kingdom as a benchmark, they find that in the countries under study, calculative HRM is indeed more damaging to union influence than collaborative, although to a much lesser extent than in the United Kingdom. They also find that union influence corresponds to enterprise union density and is most apparent when the business cycle is unfavorable; they explain their findings by reference to East European members' continued attachment to unionism for nonbargaining reasons.
General Human Capital and Employee Mobility: How Tuition Reimbursement Increases Retention through Sorting and Participation
Authors: Manchester Colleen Flaherty
Published: June 2015

Using administrative data from a large establishment that implemented a tuition reimbursement program, the author examines the relative importance of two channels by which these employer-sponsored general training programs increase employee retention. The first channel operates through the type of workers that sort into firms with tuition reimbursement programs versus firms without a program. The second channel is the direct effect on retention due to employees participating in the program. In this setting, the author finds that 80% of the program's overall effect on retention comes through sorting. The author also exploits information on degree major to evaluate potential mechanisms outside standard human capital theory for how participation in general training increases retention.
The American Jobs Crisis and its Implication for the Future of Employment Policy: A Call for a New Jobs Compact
Authors: Kochan Thomas A.
Published: June 2015

The author proposes a new Jobs Compact to close the nation's jobs deficit, to create sufficient high-quality jobs to raise wages and end thirty years of wage stagnation, and to update and strengthen labor and employment policies. A set of market and institutional failures are identified as root causes of these problems, and local innovations and policy proposals are suggested for overcoming them. Achieving these objectives will require a stronger voice in national policymaking as well as proactive efforts to mobilize and coordinate the constituencies that share an interest in and responsibility for employment policy and practice. The author calls on the president and the secretary of labor to lead these efforts by mobilizing and engaging business, labor, women, ethnic, community, and education leaders at regional and national levels.