On the Measurement and Determination of Trade Union Power.

The object of this paper is to develop a method by which trade-union power can be measured and by which the factors that influence the trade-union power can be identified. In the paper, two models of unions are compared--the insider-dominated union and the open union model. In both models, the outcome for wages and unemployment is determined by the asymmetric Nash solution. The method is applied to aggregate Australian data. The results suggest that union power is negatively related to the rate of unemployment, and positively related to union density, and that the accord tended to reduce union power. Copyright 1992 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd